It’s not just the sexualized, weirdly tiny Mary Wollstonecraft; it’s not just the naked Medusa in the park; it’s not just that rather iffy sculpture of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth all sitting down to plan universal suffrage. No. It’s the arc of public art for its entire history – and we do mean history in this case. “Two millennia of European and American history could be told through a genealogy of equestrian monuments to men, from Marcus Aurelius to Gattamelata, from Confederate generals to Kehinde Wiley’s exhilarating riposte, Rumors of War (2019). (And that’s just one genre!) One reason Wiley’s monument succeeds is that it has a heroic model to subvert. But women have no such models.” – Hyperallergic
Author: ArtsJournal2
The Carols From Kings Will Go On, To An Audience Of No One
No one except the BBC, of course. “For many of us, it is the moment when Christmas really starts: the soaring voice of a boy soloist at King’s College, Cambridge opening its iconic Christmas Eve service with Once in Royal David’s City.” No one will be in the pews this year. – The Observer (UK)
When ‘The Last Gasp’ Isn’t The Final Breath For A 40-Year-Old Theatre Company
The 76- and 71-year-old women who founded and run Split Britches were in London when COVID-19 hit New York hard, so they didn’t come back for a while – but where to stay, and how to make the new work they were supposedly putting up at La MaMa in April and the Barbican in June? And where to stay in London? Enter an empty house with running water, electricity and one chair. – The New York Times
In Praise Of Classical Music Radio
Radio in particular – and Portland’s All Classical in particular. There’s a lot of media nowadays, and a lot of choices to make – perhaps too many. “Radio cuts through all that. You make one decision – tune to a station – and then passively take in whatever it has to offer. Maybe it’s a bunch of Haydn or Mingus, maybe it’s an hour of spooky Irish music, maybe it’s interviews with local composers you’ve never heard of playing music composed by kids who go to school with yours.” – Oregon ArtsWatch
How To Pandemic-Proof Our Griefstricken, Routine-Longing Brains And Hearts
It’s not easy, knowing familiar holidays are here and we just can’t expect to celebrate them the same way. “Our brains are literally overburdened with all the uncertainty caused by the pandemic. Not only is there the seeming capriciousness of the virus, but we no longer have the routines that served as the familiar scaffolding of our lives.” But now, knowing some things about our new lives, we have to create new routines. – The New York Times
And Yet, A Live Performance Truly Beats Livestreaming
Ireland is reopening in some ways, but arts venues are expecting a third wave of coronavirus infections and another shutdown after Christmas. How should they plan? “Covid-19 has profoundly changed parts of our world. Business travel has been killed by the Zoom call. The absurdity of the daily rush hour has been exposed by home working. Some of these changes may turn out to be permanent. But when it comes to art and culture, lockdown has revealed a contrary truth: live will always be better than livestream.” – Irish Times
A Century Of The Widening Gyre
One hundred years after the last massive, worldwide pandemic, Yeats’ poem feels close at hand. “I would scarcely call ‘The Second Coming’ a holiday poem. But it makes you feel that that a page of history is about to flip: one epoch is about to give birth to another.” – NPR
In 2020, The Performing Arts Livestream Winter Holidays
Members of Live Arts Maryland might be practicing outdoors, as far apart as possible, with earmuffs and scarves on, but on the day of their performance, “individual performers in A Celebration of Christmas will sing carols from their homes and will be joined, online, by an orchestra ensemble in a YouTube livestream.” – Baltimore Sun
What Fairytale Of New York And It’s A Wonderful Life Have In Common
And what they tell us about a culture that celebrates Christmas above all, decontextualizing the artists’ other work. “The Pogues had already put out two of the most original albums of the decade by the time they released ‘Fairytale’ in 1987; I can’t remember the last time I heard anything from either played on the radio. Were Frank Capra around today, he would be able to relate.” – The Guardian (UK)
The UK’s Culture Secretary Asks Netflix To Label ‘The Crown’ As Fiction
Who would write this twist into the series? Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden “is expected to write Netflix a formal request that a label is added to the beginning of each episode, clearly stating that the series is fictionalized. Dowden’s demands echo worries that the series will do lasting damage to the image of the British monarchy.” Ahem. – Variety