Finally – Orchestras are Changing

Talk to orchestra leaders around the country, and you find a new consensus about what community work means: a new approach to an orchestra’s role, even a new approach to training musicians. Leaders of some of the most innovative orchestras stress the need to find different ways to perform and get the music out there. But it’s a hard thing to talk about without lapsing into routine orchestra-speak — and an even harder thing to spotlight for a public.

Are Anthropologists Actually Spies?

One American anthropologist asked for a file kept on her by the secret police in Romania – and she was shocked to find that more than 70 people had informed on her during her time there, and that the secret police thought she was a spy. She tries not to judge her friend/informants, but other anthropologists “believe they do better research when they embrace and act on their moral reactions to the world they are trying to understand.”

The Getty Villa Revamp Is Finally Finished, With The Art Ready To Tell A Longer, Broader, Less ‘Fanboy’ Story

Historians may rejoice, while fans of mythology might be a little sad: “One driving force behind the renovation was to put artworks into proper historical context. Mr. Potts and his team have rearranged works in the permanent collection galleries to tell a more chronological story, from 3000 B.C. to 400 A.D., largely presenting Greek works on the first floor and Roman on the second. Gone are the entertaining themes like ‘gods and goddesses’ that mixed figures from different periods in a pantheon of superheroes.”

French Singer Johnny Hollyday’s Assets Frozen By Court As It Considers Inheritance Dispute

French law forbids the exclusion of any children, but the singer left his estimated £100 million estate only to the daughters he adopted with his fourth wife. But he made his will in California. “A judge will now have to weigh up whether Hallyday, 74 when he died of lung cancer in France, was a US or French resident, thereby deciding if his will breaks French law.”

This Seems Like A Good Plan: No More Hotel Auditions, Says Actors’ Union

And no auditions in “private residences” either. At least, that’s the SAG-AFTRA goal, part of a #MeToo result: “The hotel audition guidelines build on the union’s Code of Conduct on Sexual Harassment released in February. Hollywood figures, including disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, are accused of making unwanted sexual advances on dozens of women in these private meetings.”