“The book industry is too complicated to distill into any one of those sweeping theses. Print books have persisted, but ebooks are not going away. Amazon is powerful, but physical bookstores are still here. The book is not immune to the powerful digital forces that have re-shaped so much of the rest of the world. At the same time, books have been able to resist the forces of change because books really are different.”
Tag: 04.14.16
Opera News Lays Off Publisher, Editor
Brian Kellow, “features editor since 2000, has been laid off as of April 12. So has Diane Silberstein, from the relatively new position of publisher. Both appear to have been cost-cutting moves. No further changes in staff, or the magazine itself, are anticipated at this time.”
The New Guy Taking Over The Art Gallery Of Ontario: I’m Super-Excited
Stephan Jost: “The institution of the museum is one of the few places where you can come and self-educate on your terms. ‘Do you wanna know about African art?’ We can help. One of the exciting things about being [at the AGO] is that, yeah, I know something about photography; I know something about Old Master prints and in three years I’m sure going to know something about Canadian art!” Avidity, it seems, is his middle name.
This Year’s Cannes Festival Lineup
The 49 titles unveiled on Thursday represent 28 countries in all, with an especially strong showing for Romania (with two films in competition, past Palme d’Or winner Cristian Mungiu’s “Baccalaureat” and Cristi Puiu’s “Sierra-Nevada,” and debut “Dogs” in Un Certain Regard) and, of course, France.
Reconsidering Robert Mapplethorpe
“It’s easy to forget that when first widely exhibited in the 1980s, his photographs of men were brash and disconcerting. His ascent in the art world provided generations of gay artists the courage to examine their own sensibilities without self-censorship.”
Reviving 18th-Century Paris’s Version Of A Broadway Musical Revue
Opéra-ballet, “a frothy, sometimes louche amalgam of dance and singing, was wildly popular in early 18th-century France but then largely disappeared, arousing interest again only in recent decades.” William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, with stage director Robert Carsen, are bringing to the US the most popular example of the genre, André Campra’s Les Fêtes Vénitiennes.
Anne Jackson, 90, Half Of Famed Acting Couple
“If not quite on the same level of stardom as Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne or Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, Ms. Jackson and [Eli] Wallach came close. [For five decades] they captivated audiences with their onstage synergy, displaying the tense affections and sizzling battles of two old pros who knew both how to love and how to fight.”