“Pessimistic essayists and philosophers may not cast the same narrative gloom as fiction writers, but the implications of their work tend toward the universal. Indeed, to believe that unhappiness was merely a question of immediate circumstance and particular character might be seen as a crass form of optimism.”
Tag: 05.26.17
Why Are Americans So Resistant To The Idea Of State-Funded Culture? (A European Wants To Know)
“In Western Europe, support for the arts is in great part the result of centuries of patronage culture. Cultural policy there is as much the product of longe durée tradition as it is about the post-war concept of welfare. And for countries like France, the arts inform its self-conception as a great nation. In the 1980s, the French government appointed a minister for Rock and Roll, to try to fix the country’s flagging presence in that field. By contrast, private interest has always had a large stake in the cultural policy of the United States.”
Why Some People Find Audience Participation Completely Terrifying
Basically, the fear is the same as that of public speaking – except, as Christine Ro explains, that one of the best tools for combating the fear of public speaking isn’t available for audience participation.
An Unknown Play By Edith Wharton (!) Emerges
As Rebecca Mead reports, the manuscript of The Shadow of a Doubt wasn’t hidden in a trove of papers in some remote attic; it was right there in a collection of theater manuscripts at a well-known research library.
Why This Collector Paid $110 Million For A Basquiat
“You’re talking about a handful of masterpieces, which are distributed among a few collectors who are not sellers,” said the art dealer Brett Gorvy, a former Christie’s chairman. “You’re going to have to wait a long time if you are a major collector to see another extraordinary painting like this.”
Opera And Broadway Have A Fruitful Relationship – If Only More Opera Fans Understood That, Says Anne Midgette
“It seems arbitrary to assert that Broadway musicals exist in a separate category from an art form that happily embraces popular forms such as opéra comique, Singspiel and operetta (all of which involve spoken dialogue interspersed with sung numbers). Those opera lovers who profess to look down on musicals act as though the genre were best represented by Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick.”
Why Are So Many Americans So Hostile To Government Funding Of The Arts?
In most wealthy countries, the idea of completely abolishing the equivalents of the NEA and NEH would be politically poisonous if not unthinkable; in the United States, there have been factions calling for those agencies to ve terminated for pretty much their entire existence. Why is the U.S. such an outlier on this issue? Josephine Livingstone argues that the reasons lie deep in the nation’s history.
John Mace, Voice Coach To Broadway And Campaigner For Marriage Equality, Has Died At 97
“After learning the singing exercise solfeggio from an older brother, he took voice lessons at a school sponsored by the Works Progress Administration and at 14 was singing on a local radio station with the Pawtucket Boys’ Club Harmonica Band.” And as a sophomore at Juilliard in 1948, he met the partner he finally got to marry in 2012.
This Tiny Rural Town Transformed Itself With A Small Grant From The NEA
A $25,000 grant to Fergus Falls, Minnesota, led to leveraging of quite a bit of private money and the transformation of a (beautiful) old mental hospital into artists’ residency living spaces and performance spaces as well.
What Happens To Art, And Music, When The Sources Of Revenue Just Float Off Into The Ether?
This is a big, big problem: “The digital distribution of music is not fairly compensating the people who create it, and continual touring cannot make up the difference.”