Is it ego, recognition from others, the catharsis of a journey of self-discovery or the conviction the information contained in the book is something the world desperately needs? That’s a complicated question. I can attest there’s something very gratifying about seeing your name in print. It just depends on what it’s worth to you. – San Francisco Chronicle
Tag: 08.05.19
Anthologizing Abraham
When I watch a dance that I’ve also seen a few years earlier, I perceive it differently. Has it changed? Maybe. Have I changed? Of course. I’ve viewed and written about all but one of the Kyle Abraham works works performed this past week at Jacob’s Pillow, and things catch my attention that evaded it before. (And here’s another question: do I only remember what I wrote about and forget what I didn’t mention earlier?) – Deborah Jowitt
Images Of War: It’s Us, Where We Live, Work, Shop
Phil Kennicott: “Now the war has come to Walmart. And Hooters. And Sam’s Club and McDonald’s, and an unnamed but homey looking restaurant that has a $7.99 Lunch Special. If this doesn’t look like war, that’s only because we so reflexively resist the idea of a war on American soil that we refuse to see the obvious.” – Washington Post
Turns Out The First Sonnet Cycle Ever Published In English Was By A Woman
Most textbooks have said that the first English sonnet sequence was Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella (1591). Yet three decades earlier, Anne Vaughan Lock’s A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, a 26-stanza paraphrase of Psalm 51, was published as an appendix in a 1560 volume of Lock’s own translations of a set of Jean Calvin’s sermons. – The New Yorker
Rethinking Gentrification: Maybe It’s Not So Bad?
The researchers come up with some startling findings. In a paper published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Quentin Brummet and Davin Reed say that urbanites move all the time, for countless reasons, and that gentrification has scant impact on that constant flow. Those who stay put as a neighborhood grows more affluent often see their quality of life rise and their children enjoy more opportunities. Those who leave rarely do worse. – New York Magazine
Leonard Slatkin On The Role Of A Music Director During An Orchestra Strike
“In virtually every case, there lurks a question that each musical leader must ask themselves: Should I get involved or stay on the sidelines? It is a valid query, but one that is filled with potential peril, no matter which path the conductor chooses. Disputes over the past decade have shown both sides of this decision and its aftermath.” – Tim Smith Blog
Seattle Arts Groups Protest State Proposal To Require Non-Profits To Pay Employees More Overtime
In a letter on behalf of the Seattle Art Museum, the Seattle Opera, the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Seattle Symphony, the Seattle Theatre Group and a who’s who of other ritzy local institutions, the signatories warn that L&I’s proposal “is unreasonably too high, and would negatively impact the arts and culture services and programs we offer to our communities.” – Crosscut
Dancers At Rome’s Ballet In Open Rebellion Against Their Director, Who Is (They Say) Disrespectful And Abusive
According to a letter from the dancers’ unions at the Rome Opera Ballet to the theater’s board (a letter which Italy’s largest press agency published in full), Eleonora Abbagnato screamed obscenities at them, threatened (with more obscenities) not to renew their contracts, and called the Rome Opera “a shit theater.” What’s more, Abbagnato is often absent from the company she’s supposed to be running, as she is still an étoile at the Paris Opera Ballet. – Gramilano (Milan)
Inquirer: Curtis Institute Response To Sexual Harassment Charges Shows It Needs Outside Help
“A credible and qualified professional from outside Curtis and the cultural community of which it is a part ought to take an unsparing look at what if anything happened, and why, and how any new allegations of this type ought to be handled, and prevented from happening again. The findings of such a review ought to be made public.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
Adorno’s Theories Of Culture 50 Years Later
It is hardly surprising that, especially in the United States, where the arts were expected to conform to democratic tastes, the demanding high Modernism of Adorno’s aesthetic philosophy has never received so warm a reception. Greater prestige was conferred on his one-time colleague Walter Benjamin, who, unlike Adorno, embraced the “dissolution of the aura” of the individual artwork that promised, via “mechanical reproduction,” to make high culture newly accessible to the masses. – New York Review of Books