Peter Hunter and David Smith tricked selling sites over two-and-a-half years, buying £4m worth of tickets that they sold for £10.8m. They targeted events including Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift gigs and Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, Leeds Crown Court heard. – BBC
Tag: 02.13.20
Why Has A Whole Series Of Private Art Museums Shut Down?
Just last year in L.A., the Marciano and the Main Museum ended operations, and the year before that, the Pasadena Museum of Californian Art. In recent years there have been similar closings in Paris, London, Vienna, Moscow, Cape Town, Beijing, and Chengdu. Georgina Adams identifies three reasons for these failures — funding, disengagement, and generational change — that boil down to the same thing: the danger of relying on a single founder-donor. – The Art Newspaper
How Hard Is It To Be A Freelance Theatre Critic Under California’s New Gig Law? This Hard
Lily Janiak, the only theatre critic in the entire Bay Area to have a staff position, writes about her friend and colleague Sam Hurwitt, who was earning all too little money before the law AB5. Now, with the new cap of 35 submissions per year before an outlet is required to put a freelancer on staff (which outlets insist they cannot afford to do), Hurwitt thinks he may have to abandon criticism altogether. – San Francisco Chronicle
Coronavirus Is Devastating The Arts In China
“Movie releases have been canceled in China and symphony tours suspended because of quarantines and fears of contagion. A major art fair [and a performing arts festival] in Hong Kong [were] called off, and important spring art auctions half a world away in New York have been postponed because well-heeled Chinese buyers may find it difficult to travel to them.” – The New York Times
Denied Visas, Siberian State Symphony Cancels U.S. Tour
The 81-musician orchestra, based in the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk (a few hundred miles northeast of where the borders of Mongolia, China, Kazakhstan, and Russia meet), was to have made a two-week tour in February and March of regional cities in California, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. U.S. Customs and Immigration Services gave no reason for the denial of the visas. – Orange County Register (California)
Shock: Entire Board of French Movie Academy Resigns
The shock announcement by the 21-member board of the Association for the Promotion of Cinema – the organization overseeing the Cesar Academy – comes on the heels of industry-wide backlash following 12 Cesar nominations for Roman Polanski’s “An Officer and a Spy.” The Cesars were also heavily criticised for shutting out feminist personalities such as director Claire Denis and author Virginie Despentes from one of recent gala events preceding the ceremony. – Variety
When The Doctor Called The Star Ballerina With Terrible News
“He said, ‘You have to promise me you won’t go into work today. I just could tell by the tone. I said, ‘I’m going to be able to dance again, right?’ And he said to me, ‘Well, we’re just going to take it one day at a time.’ It was one of the worst days of my life.” – The New York Times
Peak TV? Yes – Here’s How Many Shows Were Available To Watch Last Year
Folks like to joke that there’s just too much TV to watch, but rarely do they back it up with facts. Now, they can. According to new data from Nielsen, there were 646,152 unique programs available in 2019 across network TV, cable, streaming services, and every other kind of outlet. – Wired
A Human Response To Amazon’s Algorithms: Custom-Designed Book Subscriptions
Two bookstores in England are offering book(s)-of-the-month services in which, after some discussion with the customer, a knowledgeable staffer selects and ships books the staffer thinks the individual recipient will like. – The Guardian
Why’s New Zealand Rescuing The Classical Radio Station And Not Ours? Ask Māoris
With a public outcry having convinced Radio New Zealand’s management not to eviscerate its classical service, advocates for the country’s Māori-language radio stations are arguing that they have been underfunded for decades and deserve a fair share of broadcasting resources. – The Spinoff (New Zealand)