“The question … is far more complicated that it first appears. (What does ‘best’ mean? What does ‘the arts’ mean?)” There isn’t all that much evidence to look at, but Chris Jones surveys what’s there. – Chicago Tribune
Tag: 02.19.20
Amar Ramasar Is Not Leaving Broadway’s ‘West Side Story’. Neither Are The Protesters Who Want Him Fired
Ramasar, who was sacked from, and later rehired by, New York City Ballet following his role in the nude photo-sharing scandal at the company, is playing Bernardo in the new production by Ivo van Hove. Protesters at the theatre most nights, and their fellows on social media, want West Side Story‘s producers to fire Ramasar and for audience members to boo him; the producers say they’re not going to discipline him for an incident that happened somewhere else two years ago. Neither side seems inclined to budge. – The New York Times
Louvre Cancels Show Of Bulgarian Icons After Bulgarian Government And Church Object
Curators intended the June exhibition, titled “Art and Cultures in Bulgaria between the 16th and 18th Centuries,” to examine the influence that Islamic art had on Bulgarian Orthodox religious art during that period, when Bulgaria was under the control of the Ottoman Empire. This approach did not go over well in present-day Bulgaria. – ARTnews
Radical Empathy
For many, many people going to a concert hall or a museum is a foreign, anxiety-producing prospect. If we want new communities to take advantage of what we have to offer, we need to develop the capacity to imagine what doing so might be like for them. We need empathy. And since the experiences of the arts can be so unfamiliar the empathy must be extreme. – Doug Borwick