“We are living in the age of subscription of everything right now. My friends and I joke that one day you will be able to get a life subscription, and then one day, you unsubscribe, and then you die.”
Tag: 08.21.18
UK Festival Directors Lobby Against Complex, Expensive, Cumbersome Artist Visa Process
“The overly complex process leads to mistakes being made by both applicants and by assessors, and refusals being made for visas that could theoretically be granted. The situation has led to artists now telling festivals they are much more reluctant to accept invitations to come to the UK due to the visa process, despite the assistance we receive from bodies such as the British Council and UK embassies across the world.”
A 1,600-Year-Old Poetry Trope, Revived For The Contemporary Middle East
“Stopping by the ruins” – wuquf ‘ala al-atlal – was one of the primary themes of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry: the poet visits the ruins of a spot where he once camped with his beloved, now lost to him. The trope was already being mocked as a cliché and parodied by the eighth century CE, but it held on, and today a new generation of writers and other artists is using the imagery of the ruins to address the devastation caused by wars and violence in the Arab world.
Contemporary Austin And Blanton Museum Give 500 Artworks To 17 Other Texas Institutions
“Last year the Contemporary Austin and the Blanton Museum of Art announced that 700 works of art from Contemporary’s permanent collection would be transferred to the Blanton, a move that solidified the Contemporary’s focus on collecting outdoor sculpture for its Marcus Sculpture Park. … Today, the Blanton and the Contemporary announced that some 500 of the 700 artworks have now been transferred to 17 Texas art museums. The Blanton has formally acquired 200 pieces of the Contemporary’s legacy collection.”
Smithsonian’s Freer And Sackler Galleries Name New Director
“A Middle East historian and author who is president of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York will be the next director of the Smithsonian’s Asian art museums. Chase F. Robinson will begin his tenure on Dec. 10 as the director of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art … He succeeds Julian Raby, who retired in December after 15 years.”
New Contemporary Ballet Company Debuts In Orlando
United Ballet Theatre gives its first performance on Sunday at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. Reporter Matthew J. Palm talks to the company’s founder, 33-year-old former Orlando Ballet member Joseph Gatti, and others involved with UBT’s birth.
Hanna Mina, Dean Of Syrian Novelists, Dead At 94
“[He] chronicled the lives of the poor and oppressed in dozens of books as one of the first Arab novelists to employ social realism … Mr. Mina’s career spanned half a century, and several of his works were adapted for film and television. But only two were translated into English.”
A New Gehry-Designed Concert Hall In LA Has Big Implications For The Future Of Orchestras
The YOLA Center in Inglewood is a milestone project for the LA Phil’s Youth Orchestra LA project. Not only will it be a way to produce an unprecedented ethnically diverse new generation of musicians but it also promises to be a new model for ways a cultural institution can serve a community, with the added cachet of it being designed by the architect behind Walt Disney Concert Hall.
What Science Has To Say About Innate Aesthetic Preferences
“Perhaps the most broadly established aesthetic preference is the one of curvature over angularity,” they write. “People like the appearance of otherwise equivalent shapes and objects more if those contours are round rather than sharp and angular, and this is the case in various cultures around the globe.”
Giving Hedda Sterne Another Chance
Hedda Sterne is not a name you hear very often, so I was pleased last spring when I learned that the Amon Carter Museum of American Art was giving her a solo exhibition.