Category: today’s top story

“One out of every three Americans, or about 78 million people, visited an art exhibition or attended a performing arts event in 2012. That figure represents a drop across the board since the last survey in 2008, but the slide was steepest for musicals and plays.”

“The report, State of Play: Theatre, marks the first major investigation into the sector by the world’s largest ticketing company and mixes information from its own ticket transaction data with survey responses from a representative sample of the UK population, as well as a selection of theatregoers from abroad.”

The arts figures receiving this year’s $625,000 genius grants include choreographers Alexei Ratmansky and Kyle Abraham, authors Karen Russell and Donald Antrim, pianists Jeremy Denk and Vijay Iyer, playwright Tarell McCraney, and photo and video artist Carrie Mae Weems.

The outburst in the opera house capped an evening of picketing outside it, as opera patrons in black tie and ball gowns were met with chanting protesters and a 50-foot rainbow banner that said “Support Russian Gays!”

“The Prado is not an amusement park, and certainly not a casino. We have the great art already–education is what will carry us into the future.”

Is The Art Register a boon for thinly stretched law enforcement art recovery units, or a shady company that hoards info about stolen artworks until museums cough up exorbitant fees – or both and more?

Tucked at the end of an article about Friday’s fundraising gala for the organization that has locked out its musicians for a year was this: According to the musicians’ spokesman, “there has been ‘soft interest’ from unspecified quarters in the notion of having the players stage their own Sibelius concerts with Mr. Vänskä at Carnegie, free of management involvement, as unlikely as that may seem.”

“I have been asking my fellow middle-class urbanite parents that question. About dance, they say things like, “Ballet teaches them poise,” or, “Ballet helps them be graceful.” And about violin or piano they say, “It will give them a lifelong skill,” or, “They’ll always enjoy listening to music more.” It does not take a rocket scientist, or a Juilliard-trained cellist, to see the flaws in these assertions.”

“At present, the £50,000 ($79,850) prize only considers works by writers from the Commonwealth, Ireland or Zimbabwe. … Announcing the changes in London on Wednesday, the Booker Foundation said: ‘The expanded prize will recognise, celebrate and embrace authors writing in English, whether from Chicago, Sheffield or Shanghai.'”

“The benefits here are obvious: Readers get better coverage — both more of it and higher quality — and the paper saves money by not having to hire a professional journalist. It’s the kind of small-bore savings that media bigwigs are talking about when they say improving the health of the news industry will require a lot of small moves at least as much as a few big ones.”