Art

Indianapolis Museum/Newfields CEO Resigns After Week Of Outcry

“We are sorry. We have made mistakes. We have let you down. We are ashamed of Newfields’ leadership and of ourselves,” the board said in a statement announcing the departure of Charles Venable in the wake of heavy criticism over a very unfortunately worded job listing. This was the latest in a series of controversies over Venable’s leadership and the way he has reoriented the museum. – ARTnews
Tags: Art, Visual, Venable, Charles Venable, 02.17.21

Technical Director, NFA Virtual Convention 2021

The Technical Director is responsible for all aspects of operations and implementation for the 4-day NFA Virtual Convention, Aug. 12-15, 2021. Responsibilities include all program integration with virtual platforms, logistics of key components and the smooth running of all virtual components. The National Flute Association (NFA) was founded in 1972 as a common ground for flutists to exchange ideas and inspiration and has expanded in the decades since to include a quarterly magazine, an annual...
Tags: Art, Jobs, Chicago, Microsoft Office, NFA, National Flute Association NFA, NFA Convention

Study: Are “Minor” Literatures More Nationalistic?

“Our data consists of digital editions of 200 works of prize-winning fiction, divided into four subcorpora of equal size: U.S.-American, French, German, and a collection of novels drawn from 19 different “minor” European languages. We ultimately find no evidence to support Casanova’s theory that minor literatures are more nationalistic than literature produced within major cultural capitals. Indeed, the evidence points to the exact opposite effect.” – Cultural Analytics
Tags: Art, Words, Casanova, 02.16.21

Can Historians Be Traumatized By What They Study?

“The phenomenon of the historian traumatized by history remains unstudied and is not widely known. Yet anyone who has documented depravity knows the symptoms. After writing a book on the Armenian Genocide, a process that took me five years, I found it impossible to slip comfortably into sleep. All kinds of catastrophes visited me—still visit me—in that space before dreams.” – The New Republic
Tags: Art, Ideas, 02.16.21

AI Researchers Are Increasingly Worried About The Ethical Implications Of Their Work

Just as some computer scientists seem oblivious to ethical concerns, others appear to be trigger-happy with their moral outrage. – The New Yorker
Tags: Art, Ideas, 02.16.21

YouTube Chief Talks About What’s Next, Misinformation, And New Features

YouTube is planning an official rollout for “Applause,” a feature—already in testing—that lets viewers make cash payments to their favorite creators by initiating an on-screen clapping effect. Like existing features such as Super Chat, “it’s a token of my appreciation of some monetary value.” – Fast Company
Tags: Art, Media, Youtube, 02.16.21

Now We Know What New Orleans Without Mardi Gras Music Is

His city—our cities—aren’t empty now. They’re just pretty much shut down. There’s a social media campaign attached to the Jazz & Heritage Foundation’s new outreach efforts, asking for posts in response to the question, “Have you ever been saved by a song?” Our answer is and will be, yes. – The Daily Beast
Tags: Art, Music, New Orleans, Jazz Heritage Foundation, 02.16.21

How The Bay Area’s Hip-Hop Dance Crews Have Kept On Through COVID

“When the first COVID-19 lockdown rippled across the Bay Area last March, the dance community reeled. … But as the pandemic unfolded, the crews adapted: leveraging technology to rehearse remotely, dancing outdoors and performing via YouTube or Instagram as live events disappeared. Over the last year, they’ve found ways to keep dancing together, strengthening their community and confronting social justice issues in the process.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Tags: Art, Dance, Bay Area, 02.12.21

The Five Flavors of Strategy

As the chaos and confusion of the global pandemic shows distant glimpses of something less chaotic, the question of “strategy” is emerging once again. Now that arts organizations are making space to imagine the “next normal,” it’s worth remembering what “strategy” actually is and does. – Andrew Taylor
Tags: Art, Ajblogs, 02.17.21

Getting A Grip On Australia(s) Through Graphic Novels

“Comic creators have been wrestling with contemporary Australia and its identities in a series of publication coming out this year. What they show is a nation divided by racism and on a collision course with dystopia rather than being ‘one and free’.” – ArtsHub (Australia)
Tags: Art, Australia, Words

Struggling With The Meaning Of Cultural Appropriation

“Your poem was meant to be a complex double portrait of both the Black caregiver and your white grandmother, and the racist logic and history that bound them both. Did you, a young white person, the child of people you freely admitted had been shaped by racist beliefs, have any claim or relationship to this voice? Our workshop worried this question for an hour without resolving it. And while our discussion never devolved, as I was concerned it might, into open hostility, it also didn’t make any...
Tags: Art, Ideas, 02.16.21

Paul Ganson, Who Saved Detroit’s Orchestra Hall, Dead At 79

The Detroit Symphony’s assistant principal bassoonist from 1969-2004, he had been with the orchestra one year when he launched the Save Orchestra Hall campaign, which rescued from the wrecking ball the venue that the DSO had left in 1939 and ended up returning to in 1989. A memorial statement from the orchestra said, “Paul’s extraordinary impact on the DSO cannot be overstated. … We literally would not be where we are today without Paul.” – Detroit Free Press
Tags: Art, People, Detroit, PAUL, Detroit Symphony, DSO, 02.16.21, Paul Ganson, Save Orchestra Hall

Martin Scorsese: How Streaming Is Killing The Movie Art

Scorsese acknowledges streamers benefit his career (without Netflix there would be no “The Irishman,” and without Apple there would be no “Killers of the Flower Moon” on the way), but writes “the art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator” by conceptualization of films as “content.” – Harper’s
Tags: Apple, Art, Media, Netflix, Scorsese, Harper, Martin Scorsese, 03.21

How Bang On A Can Changed Contemporary Music

These days, Bang is a sprawling artistic conglomerate, with an annual budget of $2 million to $2.5 million, a dedicated record label, a virtuoso chamber ensemble (the Bang on a Can All-Stars) to carry its branding internationally, an active commissioning program, a summer residency and a distinctive performance format — the new-music marathon concert — that is practically a trademarked part of the organization’s identity. – San Francisco Chronicle
Tags: Art, Music, 02.16.21

Hollywood’s Hottest Young Director Is A Chinese Woman Who Makes Westerns

Chloé Zhao came to L.A. from Beijing to finish high school and go to college, got a poli-sci degree from Mount Holyoke, went to NYU film school, and ended up making three feature films at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. One of those caught the eye of Frances McDormand — and now Nomadland is a major Oscar contender, Zhao has won more awards in a single season than any filmmaker in history, and she’s currently making a Marvel blockbuster. – New York Magazine
Tags: Art, Hollywood, Media, Beijing, Frances Mcdormand, Nyu, Zhao, Mount Holyoke, Chloe Zhao, 02.16.21

Opera Singers Help Long-Term COVID Patients Get Their Breath Back

“Called E.N.O. Breathe and developed by the English National Opera in collaboration with a London hospital, the six-week program offers patients customized vocal lessons: clinically proven recovery exercises, but reworked by professional singing tutors and delivered online.” – The New York Times
Tags: Art, Music, London, 02.16.21

Why Disney Really Fired Gina Carano From ‘The Mandalorian’

It wasn’t just because she likened being a conservative in America today to being a Jew in 1930s Germany on Instagram. “Carano had become a lightning rod among Star Wars fans and a headache for Lucasfilm, … [and] had repeatedly been warned by those around her about her social media behavior.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Tags: Art, Media, Germany, America, Lucasfilm, Gina Carano, 02.16.21, Instagram Carano

John Malkovich as eerie identical twins: Sandro Miller's best photograph

‘I wanted to pay homage to work that made my knees buckle. John looked nothing like Diane Arbus’s twins. But on set his spirit left and theirs came in’Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer. The prognosis wasn’t 100% positive and there were days when I’d lay in bed wondering if I’d ever be able to shoot again. I’m self-taught, and I started thinking about the images that had changed the way I thought about photography – work by Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Diane Arbus, work...
Tags: Art, Photography, Culture, Art and design, John Malkovich, John, Diane Arbus, Sandro Miller, Irving Penn Richard Avedon

What Better Use For An Empty IKEA Store Than As An Arts Center?

That’s what could happen in the English city of Coventry: the Swedish furniture chain closed its store there last year, Coventry is the UK’s City of Culture for 2021, and the big interior space could hold artwork that the current museum can’t. The city council votes on a plan next week. – BBC
Tags: Art, UK, Coventry, Issues, 02.16.21, Better Use For An Empty IKEA

Indianapolis Museum Staff Demand CEO Resign Over Job Posting

A group of 85 Newfields employees and members of the Board of Governors released a public letter Tuesday that calls for president Charles Venable to step down after the arts campus apologized for the wording in its job description for a new director. – Indianapolis Star
Tags: Art, Indianapolis, Visual, Board of Governors, Charles Venable, Newfields, 02.16.21

Cool Stuff: Grab Patrick Connan’s Cornetto Trilogy Print Set and Wait for All of This to Blow Over

This year doesn’t mark a special anniversary for Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz or The World’s End, but that’s not stopping Vice Press and artist Patrick Connan from celebrating Edgar Wright‘s series of films known as The Cornetto Trilogy. The producer of officially licensed art, posters and merchandise for various cult and mainstream movies, television shows, comics, books and games is releasing a set of three prints inspired by each film in the trilogy starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. In fact...
Tags: Art, Comedy, Movies, Horror, Sci-fi, United States, Nick Frost, Edgar-Wright, Simon Pegg, Cool Stuff, Shaun, Patrick Connan, Shaun of the Dead, Action/Adventure, Hot-Fuzz, The World's End

Actress Fired From ‘The Color Purple’ After Anti-Gay Posts Loses Lawsuit

A British employment tribunal unanimously rejected Seyi Omooba’s claims of breach of contract and religious discrimination, finding that “there is no breach of contract because the claimant was in prior repudiatory breach … the contract was empty because the claimant would not have played the part, and her conduct, pulling out at a late stage, had she not been dropped when she was, would have wrecked the production.” – WhatsOnStage (UK)
Tags: Art, Theatre, Seyi Omooba, 02.17.21

French Mayor Ordered Museums Reopened, COVID Be Damned. French Court Orders Them Closed Again

An administrative court in Montpellier ruled that Louis Aliot, mayor of Perpignan (and Marine Le Pen’s number-two in the far-right party National Rally, and also her ex-partner), could not place his orders above those of President Macron, who instituted the latest lockdown. (Note, however, that we have here a far-right politician who has tweeted publicly that “culture is an essential need that asks only to be expressed.”) – Artnet
Tags: Art, Montpellier, Visual, Macron, Perpignan, Louis Aliot, 02.15.21

San Francisco Opera Is Returning To Live Performance With A Drive-In Show

The company’s first staged presentation, set for April and May, will be a 90-minute English-language adaptation of Rossini’s Barber of Seville on an outdoor stage (repurposing what would have been the set for this season’s opener, Fidelio) before an audience parked in cars in Marin County. The other big event will be free streams of San Francisco Opera’s sold-out 2018 Ring cycle. – San Francisco Chronicle
Tags: Art, Music, San Francisco, Barber, Seville, Marin County, San Francisco Opera, Rossini, 02.16.21

Second City Has A Buyer

Last summer, after the pandemic led to the layoff of two-thirds of the company’s staff and accusations by alumni of color of , co-owner and executive producer Andrew Alexander resigned; in October, he put Second City up for sale. Final purchase negotiations are now reportedly underway with private equity firm ZMC, which is owned by the CEO of the video-game company behind Grand Theft Auto. – Financial Times
Tags: Art, Theatre, Andrew Alexander, ZMC, 02.16.21

San Francisco Opera To Return To The Stage With Drive-In Opera

“There is a certain visceral quality about being in the same location together and experiencing art. I’m giddy with anticipation at the thought of reconnecting with that important part of our lives.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Tags: Art, Music, San Francisco, 02.17.21

Ruth E Carter: 'Nothing is set in stone until the camera starts rolling'

The Oscar-winning costume designer of Black Panther talks her illustrious career as well as her future, including what to expect from the Marvel sequelThere were a number of historic breakthroughs as a result of Marvel’s blockbusting adventure Black Panther: the highest-grossing film from a black director, the highest-grossing film with a black lead and the first ever black winner for the best costume design Oscar.The winner was Ruth E Carter, whose major moment of recognition came after a caree...
Tags: Art, Fashion, Film, Atlanta, Culture, Art and design, Black Panther, Ruth E Carter, Scad Fash Museum of Fashion Film

Tights! Spatulas! Action! The madcap world of chain reaction videos

Need your hair cut? Cake served? No problem! Lockdown has led millions to discover the work of Joseph Herscher and friends, whose absurdly complicated ‘labour-saving’ machines reveal the potential for magic in the everyday“It’s one thing to maim myself,” says Joseph Herscher. “But maiming someone else? I’m not sure I could live with that. At least I’d have it on tape, but it’d still suck to be killed by one of my machines.”Herscher, 36, is a chain reaction artist who works out of his bedroom in ...
Tags: Art, Comedy, Science, Technology, Film, Youtube, Culture, Brooklyn, Engineering, Art and design, Television & radio, Sculpture, Installation, Children's Tv, Rube Goldberg, Short Films