James McQuaid offers some strategies for shaking off the faulty assumptions arts organizations tend to make, and suggests some organizations we could learn from.
Tag: 10.13.14
A Longtime Usher Explains How Everything Has Changed At The Music Hall
“I remember when you couldn’t get an orchestra seat Friday afternoon without a subscription. To hear the orchestra Friday afternoon was an honor. They came to the concerts as if they were going somewhere. They dressed up, and acted the same way.”
Now There’s Even A Prize For Roman Catholic Lit ($25,000, No Less)
The George W. Hunt Prize, sponsored by the Jesuit magazine America and Yale’s St. Thomas More Chapel, stipulates that nominees “should be familiar with the Roman Catholic tradition … [and] be a person of sound moral character and reputation and must not have published works that are manifestly atheistic or morally offensive.” (Good luck to the jurors on hashing that out.)
World-Religions-Barbie Exhibition Cancelled By Buenos Aires Gallery
“Emiliano Paolini and Marianela Perelli’s Barbie: The Plastic Religion would have featured 33 Barbies” – and a few Kens – “as sacred figures from Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Argentine folk religion.” (Conspicuously missing: Islam.)
Why Are All The Great TV Shows On Sunday Night?
“It seems counterintuitive to pit all of TV’s best series against one another, as anyone who’s tried to program a DVR on Sundays can attest. But there is in fact a method to the networks’ madness, and five reasons why Sunday night’s quality TV overload exists – and won’t be going away anytime soon.”
Tobias Picker’s Big Plans For Opera San Antonio
Says the composer, now artistic director of the reborn company: “I would like to do a range of repertoire from Monteverdi to the present day. … American repertoire is extremely important. We’re living in a golden age of American opera. There’s a tremendous amount of opera being written today. … [I’d like] to get to the point where we can commission a new opera [every year].”
The Nazi Statue That Has Uruguay All Verklempt
“Weighing 700 pounds and with a wingspan of nearly 9 feet, the statue is a rare surviving example of the ultimate Third Reich symbol of an eagle perched atop a swastika.” A Montevideo businessman salvaged it from the wreck of a battleship and wants to sell it; the government of Germany would rather it sink back into the River Plate (but would settle for having it smelted); the Uruguayan government is stuck in the middle.
It’s Totally Unfair That Americans Are Included In The Booker Prize, Says Australian Author Who’s Already Won It Twice (And Lives In New York)
Peter Carey: “I find it unimaginable that the Pulitzer or the National Book award people in the United States would ever open their prizes to Brits and Australians. They wouldn’t. … The old Booker had a particular cultural flavour. … There was and there is a real Commonwealth culture. It’s different. America doesn’t really feel to be a part of that.”
John Cleese Quits Movies, Says He’s “Looking Forward” to Death
“I have only got five or six years left and I will be gone – I won’t have to worry about ISIS or Ebola. I am looking forward to it. … Most of the best people are dead – I will be in excellent company having a wonderful time.”
Meet “The Bob Dylan of Russia”
Boris Grebenshikov earned that sobriquet not only because of Dylan’s influence on his text-heavy, socially conscious songs, but also because “his audience includes, in the words of one professor, ‘pretty much any educated Russian between the ages of 30 and 50’.”