Tag: 04.02.19

The Humanities Are Disappearing From Our Universities. Here’s Why We Should Care

There is, of course, the economic argument. Overall, arts and culture contribute more than $760 billion a year to the US economy—4.2 percent of GDP. But there’s an awful lot of “soft” power too. “They incubate ideas, provide ethical standards, and raise questions about the status quo—functions that are becoming ever more important as the tech world, ridden by scandal and crisis, faces a moment of reckoning.” – New York Review of Books

Beyond ‘The Ring’ And The Machine: High-Tech Opera At The Met And Elsewhere

William Kentridge’s stagings of The Nose and Lulu were, and next season’s Wozzeck will be, packed tight with video imagery. (Yet they’re surprisingly easy for the stage technicians.) The whale boats in Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick couldn’t have existed without 21st-century technology. The animation in Barrie Kosky’s widely-traveled production of The Magic Flute is so intricate that some singers have to be strapped into place. David Patrick Stearns looks into the modern-day wizardry on the opera stage. – WQXR (New York City)

Taylor Mac: How A Misfit Kid From Stockton Grew Into A Macarthur Genius Drag Diva

Sasha Weiss: “When I once made the mistake of calling his drag a ‘persona,’ or a character he plays, he promptly corrected me: ‘I’m just exposing what I look like on the inside.’ Wearing jeans and a T-shirt is his way of hiding; drag is the opposite — it’s revealing, with tremendous confidence and panache, who he really is, and making room for the audience to be as odd and authoritative and mischievous and exposed as he is.” – The New York Times Magazine

‘The Apollo Theater Of The South,’ Long Derelict, Restored To Its Art Deco Glory And Now A Working Arts Center

Before World War II, the Attucks Theater was the center of Norfolk’s thriving historically black business district. Like many such buildings, it fell on hard times in the late 20th century, hitting bottom as a pawn shop and decaying storage space. Now it’s a busy center for the arts for its community and city as well as a presenter of big-ticket performers. – CityLab

Women’s Prize For Fiction Trying To Figure Out Gender Criteria After Controversy Over Trans-Non-Binary Semifinalist

“The Women’s Prize for Fiction has said it is working on a policy around gender fluid, transgender and transgender non-binary writers after featuring non-binary author Akwaeke Emezi on its latest longlist. … Emezi became the first non-binary trans person to be nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction last month, for debut novel Freshwater. – The Bookseller (UK)

Salvador Dalí, Book Illustrator

“Throughout the second half of his life, Dalí had a curious side-project … illustrating the Western canon: Don Quixote and Macbeth in 1946; The Divine Comedy between 1951 and 1964; the Bible between 1963 and 1964; Alice in Wonderland in 1969; Henry V and Henry VI in 1970; The Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel in 1973; and Paradise Lost in 1974. Browsing a shelf of the West’s most renowned titles, it’s surprisingly hard to find one for which he didn’t do the pictures.” – Artsy

The Comma Queen Reports From The Big Copy Editors’ Convention

The New Yorker‘s Mary Norris on the American Copy Editors Society annual conference: “But the centerpiece of the weekend is the session at which the A.P. announces changes to its annual style guide. It was standing room only in Narragansett A as Paula Froke, the lead editor of the A.P. Stylebook, ran through her slides. … You could feel the excitement in the room when a slide appeared with the heading ‘HYPHENS!'” – The New Yorker

Is This How Martha Graham Would Celebrate 100 Years Of Women’s Suffrage? (Probably So)

“This season, the Martha Graham Dance Company [starts] its two-year EVE Project, commemorating the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment that gave women the power to vote. Included are two new works: Pam Tanowitz’s Untitled (Souvenir), in which she merges Graham’s steps with her own; and Deo, a collaboration by Maxine Doyle and Bobbi Jene Smith. Inspired by the myth of Demeter and Persephone, Deo explores issues surrounding women and mortality with, aptly, an all-female cast.” – The New York Times

European Parliament Moves To Do Away With ‘Freeport’ Facilities For Art Trans-Shipment And Storage

Freeports were created as duty-free facilities for temporary storage of art and valuables in transit. But with the EU having eliminated banking secrecy, art has become an asset class — and a vehicle for tax evasion and money laundering. So the number of freeports in Europe has mushroomed, with tax evaders and money launderers storing assets there long-term and in secrecy. – The Art Newspaper