London has one of the most vibrant cultural scenes in the world. So why does it need a new plan for cultural infrastructure? For the same reason cities need to plan for any other services or physical amenities. And this isn’t just about preserving or building buildings or creating cultural zones. – Arts Professional
Tag: 03.22.19
Two Very Different Australian Productions Of “West Side Story” Spark Debate About Clashing Cultures
The two productions are emblematic of a broader shift in the industry as a whole: one that is trying to be more thoughtful and inclusive, but is still dominated by old habits and modes of thought under a predominantly white, male leadership. – The Guardian
RSC’s Artistic Director On Shakespeare’s Greatest Actor
“Richard Burbage was the go-to leading actor for the greatest playwrights of the 17th century. RSC artistic director Gregory Doran assesses the legacy of the first man to play Hamlet and Lear, four hundred years after his death.” – The Stage
They Say Blockchain Is Going To Revolutionize The Publishing Business. Is This Just Hype?
Perhaps not since the advent of the internet itself has a single technology buzzword captured the imagination of so many. Book publishing is no exception: a growing number of startup companies, people in existing companies, and investors are touting the promise of blockchain technology for publishing. Meanwhile, skeptics say that blockchain cannot possibly live up to all the hype. – Publishers Weekly
Two Chicago Ensembles Make A Mission Of Programming Female Composers
Oboist Ashley Ertz started the group 5th Wave Collective especially to perform and promote music written by women. “Since April 2018, the volunteer-based group of more than 115 musicians has performed works by more than 50 female composers via 12 concerts throughout Chicagoland.” And the Chicago Sinfonietta under composer Mei-Ann Chen — who perform more female-authored music in a single program than the Chicago Symphony manages in several seasons put together — has just released a recording titled Project W: Works by Diverse Women Composers. – Chicago Tribune
Bill T. Jones On The Artistic Struggle To Make Art Useful
“I wanted to make a piece about a man who saves himself through art. I don’t want people to think he’s just a train wreck. The most important thing an artist has is the will to do something — it’s evidence of life and a spiritual wellness, even if the body is decrepit.” – Washington Post
Prescribing Art As Medical Treatment
The museum prescription was inspired by a movement in what’s called social prescribing. This has kind of taken off more in the UK. And in looking at the literature, we see that doctors were prescribing, in addition to things like eat better and get out there and walk more often, they were prescribing social activities within the patient’s community, with the belief that that was going to accelerate their healing and give them opportunity for more agency, that I am a participant in my healing. I’m not just waiting for something to be fixed for me. – Hyperallergic
Maya Turovskaya, ‘The Soviet Susan Sontag’, Dead At 94
She co-wrote the famous documentary Ordinary Fascism, which was seen by millions of ordinary Soviet citizens (and got past the censors because it was, on the surface, about the Nazis), but she spent most of her career as a widely admired theatre and film critic, “writing cultural criticism that was erudite and cleareyed — and that managed not to outrage the Soviet authorities.” – The New York Times
The Exquisite Awkwardness Of Literary Parties
It must be that people don’t remember real parties well enough to re-create them with any accuracy. There’s too much missing information. Fictive parties evoke this sense of impaired time by impairing the narrative, with non sequitur, snippets of nonsense conversation, and continuity errors. It’s often suddenly 2 AM. Whole hours may go by in the space of a sentence, as in A Handful of Dust: “They drank a lot.” Those four words are one paragraph, and contain so much. – Paris Review
‘Seismic Shift’: American Children’s Books Have Rapidly Become More Diverse
“Campaigners have hailed a ‘seismic shift’ in US children’s publishing after statistics showed that the number of kids’ books featuring African-American characters has more than doubled over the last 10 years, and the number featuring Asians more than tripled.” – The Guardian