For more than 20 years he sang the lyric baritone repertory at the world’s top opera companies, with Mozart’s Don Giovanni a specialty. But, before the lockdown, he had been canceling appearances frequently, and he continued to do so as opera production restarted in Europe this summer and fall. Now he has revealed that, due to persistent back problems, he has ended his performing career and been named artistic director at the opera house in Wrocław, Poland. – OperaWire
Tag: 09.30.20
Frick Will Show Its Collection In The Old Whitney Museum
The Frick’s two-year tenure in the Breuer — the 1966 Brutalist building owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and recently occupied by the Metropolitan Museum of Art — will allow the Frick to continue exhibitions while its 1914 Gilded Age mansion on Fifth Avenue undergoes renovation. – The New York Times
A Manifesto To Activate Creative Workers
Americans for the Arts: “The next Administration must boldly activate the nation’s 5.1 million arts and cultural workers to address critical infrastructure, community development, innovation, and public health needs. Creative workers, and the hundreds of thousands of creative businesses they drive, have been devastated by Coronavirus more than almost any other sector —one study pegs the creative worker unemployment rate at 63% and a collective income loss of over $60 billion but stand ready to heal, strengthen, rebuild, and reimagine our communities.” – Americans for the Arts
A Justification For A New LACMA?
LACMA’s buildings from the 1960s were pedestrian, vertical, confining, the mid-1980s addition looking from Wilshire Boulevard like a giant mausoleum. Zumthor and Govan are clearly attempting to place the art-going experience on a higher, newer plane, one that forsakes the normal strategies. Yes, the risks are great, but so are the possibilities. – Los Angeles Times
Trust
Crazy-making. So much so that, of course, it’s hard to concentrate on issues around community engagement. Even so, occasionally something bubbles up that returns me to my CE thinking. One such instance was a New York Times article, “How to Actually Talk to Anti-Maskers.” – Doug Borwick
Event for Jasper
Happy 90th birthday, Jasper Johns! Many thanks for sharing your present with who knows how many thousands of people. It’s entirely appropriate that the “gift,” titled Event2 for Jasper Johns, began and ended with James Klosty’s 1969 photograph One Way to Dry a Leotard (Johns’s Flag painting with a leotard hooked over one of its corners). – Deborah Jowitt
Movie Theatres Are Retreating After Reopening
Many circuits, including AMC Theatres, Regal Cinemas and Cinemark — the country’s three largest chains — are beginning to limit the number of showtimes, as are scores of other chains and independent houses in order to reduce costs, sources say. Some, including Cinemark and Marcus Theatres, are going further and closing a small number of their cinemas on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. – The Hollywood Reporter
Disney Plans To Lay Off 28,000 Workers
Parks worldwide shuttered in March. Many are open now but at reduced capacity, including Disney World in Orlando, which resumed most operations in July. Disneyland in Anaheim, California remains closed. – Deadline
A New Arts Vibrancy Index Report (Even Though The Arts Are Largely Shut Down)
At a moment of such considerable environmental hostility and uncertainty about the future, we offer this report as a celebration and reminder of the arts’ enduring importance, resiliency, and vibrancy. – SMU Cultural Data
The Art Of Musical Thinking: Using Melody As Metaphor For Moving Through Life
“The art of musical thinking offers a perspective and a context for composing our experiences. It provides a philosophical foundation that embraces dissonance alongside harmony, and casts sound and silence as equal protagonists in a democracy. … In the same way that we don’t have to practise botany to appreciate the lessons of balance and replication in the beauty of nature, we don’t have to be professional musicians or professors of theory to engage in the art of musical thinking.” – Psyche