05.15.17 – Page 3 – ArtsJournal Wayback

West Bank Archaeological Site/Museum Must Deal With All Religions And Cultures, Rules Israeli Supreme Court

“Tourists at Tel Shiloh face ‘dissonance’, [the plaintiffs’ lawyer] says, because labels in Hebrew and English primarily underscore the Jewish biblical history about Israelites and the Tabernacle, while many of the ancient buildings and artefacts on display date from the Muslim and Byzantine periods.”

Uh-Oh: A Third Of The Metropolitan Opera’s Seats Were Unsold This Season

In the 2015-16 season, the Met took in 66 percent of its potential capacity. Some numbers are improving a bit more substantially: The company’s paid attendance rate, which includes discounted tickets, rose to 75 percent this season from 72 percent in 2015-16. And the company said it attracted 80,000 new ticket buyers this season, up from 74,000 the year before. The challenge is turning those newcomers into regulars.

Arizona’s Largest Theatre Gets A New Director

David Ivers was artistic director of the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City from 2011 until stepping down earlier this month to accept the same title with Arizona’s leading producer of live theater. He takes over on July 1 from David Ira Goldstein, who has led the company for 25 seasons — including the current one, which was nearly canceled in the midst of a financial crisis.

Are “The Arts” Really A Brand?

“One problem is that all of those organizations that have their own individual brand within our sphere, very few, if any at all, spend any concerted or coordinated effort at pushing for the overall sector brand change. What is needed is consideration by every organization, that in addition to marketing itself as valuable, is the simultaneous marking of the value of the overall arts. And not just in times of defending the arts against specific attacks such as the recent NEA issue. And, of course, countless of our organizations unable to do much about their own brand.”

Before There Was Modern Behavioral Economics, There Was Plato…

“Almost 2,500 years before the current vogue for behavioural economics, Plato was identifying and seeking to understand the predictable irrationalities of the human mind. He did not verify them with the techniques of modern experimental psychology, but many of his insights are remarkably similar to the descriptions of the cognitive biases found by Kahneman and Tversky. Seminal papers in behavioural economics are highly cited everywhere from business and medical schools to the social sciences and the corporate world. But the earlier explorations of the same phenomenon by Greek philosophy are rarely appreciated.”

TV Ratings Are Way Down. But Does Anyone Care?

This is not the same thing as saying, “Ratings don’t matter anymore.” We’re not in a post-ratings world — at least not yet. As long as revenue from advertisers remains part of the network TV business model, ratings will matter. Broadcasters aren’t Netflix or HBO. They still want to live up to their name and find shows with a broad appeal, like This Is Us or The Big Bang Theory. But after a decade of audience erosion, including double-digit declines for the vast majority of shows this season, networks have finally accepted reality: People aren’t watching the TV the way they used to, and selling commercials isn’t enough to pay the bills (and make a big profit).

In A Challenge To Hollywood, The World’s Largest Movie Studio Is Being Built In China For $8.2 Billion

Projected to open officially in August next year, it will contain the world’s largest production facility: 400 acres, 45 sound stages, one a record-breaking 10,000 sq metres. It’s an attempt by Wang Jianlin – China’s richest man and the founder of the overarching Dalian Wanda group – to steal some of Hollywood’s thunder.

Hamburg’s New Elbphilharmonie Concert Hall Is A Sensation. Why?

Why this building? What about its design, its location and the implicit social messages embedded in its architecture have made it so successful? Carsten Brosda, a senator in Hamburg’s state government and head of its cultural authority, says location is a primary factor in its success. “I was never a fan of iconic buildings because so many of them are rather generic,” he says. But Elbphilharmonie is exceptional, located in the geographical heart of the city, on a site that demanded some exceptional public use. “There were architects saying this is on the verge of being unbuildable, but that is what makes it unique.”

Ravi Shankar’s Opera, Composed From His Deathbed, Is All About Myth, And Love

Ravi’s daughter Anushka Shankar: “Here he was aged 90, not yet content to rest on his laurels but still wanting to push the boundaries to further horizons. It was simply another area in which my father was able to imagine something that hadn’t been done yet – an Indian opera. Such a thing had incredible scope for creating bridges between two wonderful traditions from the east and west.”

Tag: 05.15.17