Tag: 04.06.17

Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.06.17

Accessible or hospitable
We talk a lot in the arts about being “accessible” — which tends to mean open and available to many different people. The assumption (and often the experience) is that a lot of artistic work … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2017-04-06

Barratt’s Back: A Harbinger of the Met’s Administrative Readjustments?
Last July, it was reported that the Metropolitan Museum’s deputy director for collections and administration, Carrie Rebora Barratt, was one of those who had taken a voluntary buyout at the Met. Now, it appears, she’s … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-04-06

 

Big Warning: Moths Are Devouring England’s Important Heritage

“A particularly destructive species, Monopis sp., also known as the pale-backed clothes moth, has recently been discovered for the first time by English Heritage, which is now enlisting the help of the public to map the spread and intensity of a menace that only a few decades ago seemed as relevant a historical plague as the Black Death. Anyone with a precious cashmere sweater now resembling a piece of lace will sympathise.”

A Growing Nationalism In Harpsichord Playing Is Killing It

I’ve heard leading figures in the harpsichord world give recitals that were played as if someone had died. Personally, I’d rather have dental surgery than hear recitals such as these, but there are those who applaud the fact that “you always know where you stand with them.” Really?! Could you imagine going to bed with someone like that, always knowing where you stand with him? “OK, see you same time, same place next year!”

Don Rickles Dies At 90

“When Mr. Rickles developed his stand-up act in the 1950s, his humor was considered shocking, with a raw, abrasive, deeply personal edge. If he wasn’t the first “insult comic,” he was by far the most successful and most widely imitated, becoming a fixture on television and in nightclubs for decades.”

Why Authoritarians Attack The Arts

University of Chicago sociologist Eve L. Ewing: “Art creates pathways for subversion, for political understanding and solidarity among coalition builders. Art teaches us that lives other than our own have value. … Authoritarian leaders throughout history have intuited this fact and have acted accordingly.”

English National Opera ‘Would Not Survive’ Without Musicals, Says Producer Who Does Musicals There

Michael Linnit, who co-produces the musicals presented at the Coliseum, ENO’s home theatre (and London’s largest), said the company “only produces its opera six months of the year, so we facilitate those six months by taking in musicals, producing a lot of money for it. … It [ENO] would not survive without the additional rental weeks.”

Writers Look, Whereas Painters See. But There’s A Link

“Of all the arts, writers most envy music, for being both abstract and immediate, and also in no need of translation. But painting might come a close second, for the way that the expression and the means of expression are coterminous—whereas novelists are stuck with the one-damn-thing-after-another need for word and sentence and paragraph and background and psychological buildup in order to heftily construct that climactic scene.”