Arts news

• Founder Of IMDb To Step Down As CEO After 35 Years

  21-01-2025 18:15 via theverge.com
  
  Needham started building the database that later became IMDb in 1990. He remained CEO even after selling the website to Amazon in 1998, overseeing major changes like the rollout of its IMDbPro subscription and an update that lets professionals hide their age. – The Verge
  
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• Thomas Søndergård Makes His Mark On The Minnesota Orchestra

  21-01-2025 18:06 via nytimes.com
  
  Since succeeding Osmo Vänskä as music director in the fall of 2023, he has shown a flair for programming, thrown himself into community engagement (he insists on conducting family concerts himself), and enchanted the musicians. Says one principal, “We’re still on our honeymoon.” – The New York Times
  
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• For Musicians, How Old Is Too Old?

  21-01-2025 17:44 via nightingalessonata.com
  Since the elimination of mandatory retirement in symphony orchestras and with union protections making it difficult to fire older players, many orchestras include members who look as though they just arrived from a retirement home. – Nightingale Sonata
  
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• Trump’s favourite artists – from the fawner who made him Gatsby to the court sketcher who tackled his bullet-grazed ear

  21-01-2025 17:18
  
  He snubbed Andy Warhol, fell for himself in tennis whites and asked a trial artist to Mar-a-Lago to capture his likeness after the assassination bid … we take a tour of the new president’s taste in artAmerica does not just have a new president. It also has a new king of pop art: Andres Serrano. It was Serrano who foresaw that Trump would prove to be an American phenomenon of a totally new kind. In 2016, when I interviewed the creator of the notorious work Piss Christ, Trump was runn
  
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• Jules Feiffer, award-winning political cartoonist and writer, dies at 95

  21-01-2025 17:16
  
  The provocative Pulitzer prize-winner was known for his edgy comic strip and his screenplay for Carnal KnowledgeJules Feiffer, the Pulitzer prize-winning artist and writer, has died at the age of 95.His wife, JZ Holden, confirmed his death to the Washington Post. He died of congestive heart failure at his upstate New York home on 17 January. Continue reading...
  
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• Controversy Over Two Oscar Contenders’ Use Of AI On Actors’ Voices

  21-01-2025 17:03 via theguardian.com
  
  The re-recording mixer for Emilia Pérez said that AI software was used to extend the vocal range of star Karla Sofía Gascón to reach that of her songs, and The Brutalist editor Dávid Jancsó used an AI program to correct the pronunciation in Adrien Brody’s and Felicity Jones’s Hungarian dialogue. – The Guardian
  
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• Why Scotland’s Government And Its Arts Funding Agency Are Like A “Dysfunctional Divorcing Couple”

  21-01-2025 16:34 via scotsman.com
  Alan Cumming, who made the comparison, provides a good example: he was hired in September to run the Pitlochry Festival Theatre and “invite the world’s best theatre artists” to perform. He still doesn’t know whether the company will be funded even for this summer. It’s like this throughout the sector. – The Scotsman
  
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• KERA, Dallas’s Public Radio & TV Outlet, Announces $100 Million Expansion

  21-01-2025 16:02 via keranews.org
  
  “The station, which began broadcasting on television in 1960 and recently celebrated its 50th anniversary in radio, is expected to move out of its current building … at the end of February and break ground on a new building … later this year.” – KERA (Dallas)
  
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• The British Museum And Its 8 Million Objects, 6 Million Annual Visitors, Hundreds Of Researchers, And Overlapping Crises

  21-01-2025 15:35 via theguardian.com
  
  “It is a sprawling, chaotic reflection of Britain’s psyche over 300 years: its voracious curiosity and cultural relativism; its pugnacious superiority complex; its restless seafaring and trading; its cruel imperial enrichment; its brilliant scholarship, its brutality, its idealism, its postcolonial anxiety.” – The Guardian
  
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• Large Ancient Bathhouse/Spa Uncovered In Pompeii

  21-01-2025 15:01 via euronews.com
  
  “The newly unearthed spa complex comprises the classic Roman trio of thermal rooms — calidarium (hot), tepidarium (warm), and frigidarium (cold) — alongside a spacious apodyterium (changing room). … The remarkable discovery, located in insula 10, offers a rare glimpse into how wealthy Romans fused leisure, art, and political ambition within their homes.” – Euronews
  
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• Britain Should Offer Tax Deductions For Corporate Arts Philanthropy As France Does

  21-01-2025 14:36 via ft.com
  
  “Introduced in 2003 by then culture minister Jean-Jacques Aillagon, this policy incentivises corporate philanthropy for arts and charities by offering a 60 per cent tax relief on donations, capped at 0.5 per cent of a company’s annual turnover. The law has transformed France’s cultural funding.” – Financial Times
  
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• When People Are Losing Everything, Is Protecting Art Always Important?

  21-01-2025 14:00 via artsjournal.com
  The fires in Los Angeles have been brutal. Billions, if not trillions, will be needed. And the posh Getty Villa in posh Malibu, originally owned by and named for climate destruction activist, became a giant, vacuum-sealed symbol. It raises complex questions.
  While its gardens were destroyed, its bought-and-sold antiquities was sealed and spared. Oh, and the people who worked there didn’t die, so, you know, there’s that. (This work © 2025 by Alan Harrison is licensed under CC BY-
  
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• Cartoonist Jules Feiffer, 95

  21-01-2025 14:00 via msn.com
  “The Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter and children’s book author was one of the most humorously neurotic literary voices of his generation. … (He) found his voice in comics that provided a sardonic and sarcastic takedown of authority and conventional wisdom.” – The Washington Post (MSN)
  
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• The Great Wave: why has this become the defining image of our era?

  21-01-2025 06:00
  
  Almost two centuries after its creation, Hokusai’s print is more popular than ever, featuring on everything from nail art to Lego to socks. What is its appeal?You are never far from a great wave. Its foaming crest froths and sputters like ghostly fingers or monstrous claws raking over tote bags and journals. You can probably find it miniaturised in your emoji keyboard on your phone, and fading on a mouse mat or pair of socks somewhere nearby. The image – officially known as Under the
  
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