Thanks to a $2.5 million gift from Comcast/NBCUniversal and the Roberts Foundation, the Philadelphia museum, which opens on April 19, has raised a total of $152 million for its building and endowment.
Tag: 04.05.17
International Diplomacy Isn’t Theatrical, But Playwrights Keep Putting It Onstage – How Do They Pull It Off?
And they do pull it off: Oslo. A Walk in the Woods. Stuff Happens. The Prisoner’s Dilemma. Pacific Overtures. (Okay, that was gunboat diplomacy.) Even Call Me Madam. “[Alexis Soloski] recently discussed stagecraft and statecraft with the authors of past, current and coming plays. Unfortunately, writing hasn’t improved their own negotiating skills. ‘That’s why I have an agent,’ [one of them] said.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.05.17
Doin’ It: Vocabulary
Last fall (in ABCD and Community Engagement) I floated a label – Community Based Artistic Development – for this work. CBAD implies, rightly, that participatory projects can be important to the health of the arts and to arts organizations. But in order to craft participatory experiences, it helps to have language that guides understanding of the options. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-04-04
A Trouble With Museum Boards
When I started writing that headline, above, I wrote “the” trouble with… But I quickly corrected myself, because … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-04-05
Celebrating Thirty Years, Moving On
Doug Varone and Dancers shows old and new works at the BAM Harvey Theater. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2017-04-05
The Complete Jazz Masters Concert
The Monday concert that paid tribute to the 2017 National Endowment For The Arts Jazz Masters is now online, all three hours of it. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-04-05
Short-Attention-Span Music?
“Online streaming services offer countless choices, so there’s no reason to stick with a song that doesn’t grab you right off the bat. And many people don’t: Research from 2014 found Spotify subscribers skip about one-third of sampled songs after a mere 20 seconds. But perhaps more interesting is the notion that this new reality is changing the way music is written and recorded.”
Six Years After Revolution, Egypt Resumes Big Museum Projects
As culture officials wait for a tourism revival, the revolution has had the positive side-effect of inspiring local interest in Egyptian heritage. The number of Egyptian visitors to the Islamic museum has “risen exponentially” since the reopening, prompting GEM to rethink its projected audiences.
Exit Interview: Brent Assink On Leaving The San Francisco Symphony
The absolute number of total attendance at the symphony has dropped about 10 percent during Assink’s tenure. In effect, more individuals are coming, but less often. The good news is that the average age is dropping. What’s also changed are donor profiles and giving patterns, particularly in the last two years. The amount per donor has increased slightly and there is a new culture among donors, which is increasingly tied to Silicon Valley — as Assink put it, “with everything that that means.”
General McChrystal: Don’t Kill PBS – It Makes Us Smarter
“Public broadcasting makes our nation smarter, stronger and, yes, safer. It’s a small public investment that pays huge dividends for Americans. And it shouldn’t be pitted against spending more on improving our military. That’s a false choice. This might seem like an unlikely position for me, a 34-year combat veteran. But it’s a view that has been shaped by my career leading brave men and women who thrive and win when they are both strong and smart.”
A Look Back At Renée Fleming’s (Soon-To-End?) Opera Career
It hasn’t been said officially, but it’s widely rumored that her upcoming run as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier at the Met will be her final appearance in staged opera. Charles McGrath talks to one of her closest friends, her college voice teacher, a former manager, a former publicist, Met General Manager Peter Gelb, and others who have figured prominently in her career.
Hermitage Bumps Up Security After St. Petersburg Bombing
“‘All visitors are being inspected, which surely might cause inconvenience for the museum’s guests,’ the museum said in a statement … The Hermitage also said it had reached an agreement with Rosgvardia, the new National Guard created by President Vladimir Putin in 2016, to strengthen security at the museum.”