Way back in 1985-86, Anne Hamburger started up En Garde Arts in place of writing a master’s thesis at the Yale School of Drama. (“At the time, no one knew what that was; audiences identified theatre companies with the buildings they occupied.”) In this essay, Hamburger explains how she put together some of her early successes, why she closed En Garde Arts in 1999 and reopened it a decade later, and why that intervening decade completely changed how her company works. – HowlRound
Tag: 05.02.19
‘The Most Famous Exhibition Nobody Saw’
That’s how Tate Modern director Frances Morris describes the 1989 Paris show Magiciens de la Terre. As The Economist‘s anonymous-as-usual correspondent writes, “The exhibition was in some ways a flop. In others it was a harbinger, or catalyst, of the way the art world would change with globalisation in the next three decades.” Here’s why. – The Economist
At The World’s Only Ventriloquism Museum
The Vent Haven Museum, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati in northern Kentucky, houses nearly 1,000 dummies, some 150 years old. Most of them, especially those that are or used to be famous, are off-limits to present-day ventriloquists, amateur or professional. – Smithsonian Magazine
Ballyhooed Space Art By MacArthur Genius ‘Fails To Deploy’
Orbital Reflector, sculptor Trevor Paglen’s 100-foot-long, titanium oxide-coated, $1.5 million diamond-shaped Mylar balloon, was launched into orbit in December and was meant to be visible from the Earth’s surface. But the balloon never inflated and has lost contact with the satellite system that could command it to do so. Paglen blames the January government shutdown. – The Art Newspaper
This Opera Company Posted A Profit Of $5.6 Million (!) For 2018
Mind you, the operating surplus was only just over $342,000 (in local dollars), but even that isn’t bad for such a money-losing art form. But several million dollars in bequests came in last year, sending the consolidated profit figure soaring. Which company? Opera Australia. – Limelight (Australia)
Why Don’t Men Learn More Languages? It’s Not Masculine?
A study from Canada reveals undergraduates consider language learning to be a feminine pursuit, and that men with traditional beliefs about the proper roles of men and women report less interest in such study if their masculinity has been threatened. – Pacific Standard
The Artist Who Painted Michelle Obama’s Portrait Is So In-Demand Now That She Has Assistants, And A Manager
Amy Sherald: “With a successful career, you have to hire some assistants to help, otherwise I can imagine that you would have to snort a lot of cocaine and drink a lot of coffee to just, like, get through life.” – The Cut
Doreen Spooner, Who Blazed A Trail On Fleet Street, Has Died At 91
Spooner made her name with a photo of the woman at the center of the John Profumo scandal, but she did much more. “‘Who’d ever imagine a woman might be a photographer on a national newspaper?’ she wrote in a 2016 memoir. ‘A woman might be a tart or a monarch, but a press photographer?'” – The New York Times
The New JJA Awards Announced
Congrats to the Jazz Journalists Association award winners! – Doug Ramsey
Alex Ross: The Fascinating, Complicated, Difficult Legacy Of Furtwangler
“Could modern performers recapture Furtwängler’s elasticity of style? Most likely not. Scholars such as Robert Philip and Kenneth Hamilton have shownhow the advent of recording permanently changed the way music is played. Effects of rubato and portamento—bending the tempo, sliding from note to note—sounded messy when heard on disc, and they were already passing from fashion in the mid-twentieth century.” – The New Yorker