“More than half of all Canadians listen to music daily, read fiction several times a month or more and have visited a museum or art gallery in the last year. The numbers who go to concerts and plays are smaller, but when asked what kind of event they like to attend outside the home, 34 per cent of Canadians chose the arts while 29 per cent chose sports. That last stat contains a big message for business sponsors who sometimes prefer to lend their names to sporting events because they judge them to be more popular – and more populist.”
Tag: 11.20.14
Art And The Tyranny Of Forcing You To Watch
“More and more artworks define and dictate the time their audience must give them. Too many videos are made like feature films, with a start and finish, and the clear message that you need to watch the whole thing to understand it. Performances too can be like plays, with a defined start and end. This is so wrong – like those weird old photos of 1960s audiences primly watching happenings.”
$600 Million Expansion Of Colonial Williamsburg
“The campaign, which officially starts Saturday, includes a $40-million upgrade to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, adding 8,000 square feet of new gallery space to the building that houses the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum and the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum.”
How Paperback Books Helped Win World War II And Create New Demand For Books
“By the end of the war, the Armed Services Editions had ushered in a new era for the publishing industry, which had previously balked at printing paperbacks. The experiment showed that if books could be printed in an affordable way, publishers could reach a new audience.”
Secrets And Suicide At The 92nd Street Y
“Sol Adler devoted his life to the 92nd Street Y, courting its billionaires and burnishing its cultural power. But when he brought scandal to its doorstep, the institution kicked him to the curb. And that, his family says, is what killed him.”
ArtPrize Is Expanding To Dallas
The world’s richest art competition, with $200,000 prizes awarded by jury and public vote, is stretching beyond its Grand Rapids home for the first time. ArtPrize Dallas, which will be administered independently, will open its first edition in April 2016.
“Serial” Addresses The Backlash Directly (More Or Less)
“Up until now, it has seemed a little bit like Serial was occurring in a vacuum, removed from the fandom and hubbub surrounding it. But on this week’s episode – which came after a week of mounting backlash online and a public statement on Reddit from a man claiming to be Hae Min Lee’s brother – the show seemed to reach a brand new level of self-awareness.”
Use Your iPhone At The Orchestra Or Opera? In Philly, Sure!
“The technological barbarians are at the gate – and are being welcomed graciously. Only three years after an errant ringtone during the New York Philharmonic’s performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony sparked an international uproar, two august Philadelphia institutions are telling audiences to keep their phones on – within particular limits.”
Return Of The Repressed? John Cameron Mitchell Will Be Playing Hedwig On Broadway
The writer and original star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch “said he was initially reluctant to play Hedwig again after his yearlong run downtown and then in a 2001 film adaptation. But as he watched [Neil Patrick] Harris, Andrew Rannells and Michael C. Hall in the role over the last seven months, … ‘I was kind of itching to do it, and if I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it, because I’ll be too old.'”
“A Capacious Sensibility” – Mike Nichols As Theater Director
“It made perfect sense that the man who was one of the original producers of the musical Annie was also the Broadway director of Hurlyburly, David Rabe’s cocaine-strewn drama about Hollywood hedonists. Or that after hitting box office gold with the musical spoof Spamalot, he switched gears and concentrated on dramas by Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter … He had tremendous instinct not only for what was funny but what could grab an audience, surprise them, wake their minds, move them to indignation or, better yet, tears.”