Opinion
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National Endowment for the Arts
Grants for 2023
By: - Jan 10th, 2023The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is pleased to announce the first round of recommended awards for fiscal year 2023, with more than $34 million in funding to support the arts nationwide. This is the first of the NEA’s two major grant announcements each fiscal year and includes grants to organizations through the NEA’s Grants for Arts Projects, Challenge America, and Research Awards categories.
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Sardinia 2022
Tracking Brill Family History
By: - Jan 03rd, 2023Around Six years ago, I signed up for the National Geographic Family History DNA Test. For around $125, I received a Cheek Swab Kit and some paperwork. I was instructed to reveal nothing more than my Name and Age. A few weeks later, I received a box which included a Printed Brill Family History based solely on the DNA I presented. The National Geographic Report let me know that I am Jewish and that my Father’s Family started in the Middle East and traveled to Sicily around a thousand years ago.
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Peter Gelb Announces Cut Backs at Met Opera
General Manager Only One Surprised by Ticket Sales
By: - Dec 28th, 2022It comes as a surprise to noone who attends Met Operas that the House is in trouble. Only Peter Gelb, who at first said that people were asleep after Covid, seems to find the Met Opera's failure to sell tickets news. His response is also odd. The operas he proposes to produce to cure are chamber operas unsuited to an opera house too large for our times.
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Daoist Traditional Practices and Stillness
By: - Dec 27th, 2022Zen Buddhist teaching and the use of Koans are for the purpose of disabusing one from thinking, and instead simply acting. Quiet oneself sufficiently, be fully present in the moment, and the correct response to the moment will arise on its own – naturally, instinctively, organically.
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Gloucester Encounters: Essays on the Cultural History of the City 1623-2023
Four Hundred Plus Years
By: - Dec 24th, 2022With the 2022 publication of Gloucester Encounters: Essays on the Cultural History of the City 1623-2023, edited by Martin Ray, we have a kick start launch of a year of commemoration in 2023. Originally planned for six writers it was expanded to 36 by editor Martin Ray. It reads like a pot luck supper with savory chapters as well as many not so. But you won't leave it feeling hungry for Gloucester.
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America's Foremost Arts Cities
Pittsfield Makes the List
By: - Dec 15th, 2022The Arts Vibrancy Index report is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to better understand how the arts and culture sector contributes to a community’s economy and public life. Now in its seventh iteration, the report has helped organizations evaluate where to relocate or focus their operations; provided clarity for funders on how and where to invest; and made it easier than ever for communities to learn how to cultivate arts vibrancy in their area.
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Herman Melville and the Berkshires
60,000,000 Copies of Moby-Dick Have Been Published
By: - Sep 29th, 2022By the 1930s, Herman Melville's novel became an example of Great American Writing and was studied in many University English Programs. The interest in Herman Melville continues such that since his death on this day (September 29) in 1891, more than 60,000,000 copies of MOBY-DICK have been published around the world!
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Theatre in Conneticut
Moving Forward from Shutdowns
By: - Sep 18th, 2022The fall theater scene in Connecticut is starting. It will include everything from hard-hitting comedy/drama such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Tony-winning musicals – 42nd Street, Fun Home and Sunset Blvd and everything in between. In fact, two shows – the Great Gatsby and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? are getting two productions each.
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'62 Center at Williams College
The 2022-2023 Season
By: - Sep 12th, 2022The ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance unveiled its live, in-person performances celebrating diverse and challenging theatre, music, and dance programming for the Williams College community and beyond.
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Arnold Printworks of North Adams
Dolls Faithfully Reproduced by Ralph Brill Gallery
By: - Sep 03rd, 2022Celia Smith and her sister-in-law Charity Smith had been sending letters to the Arnold Print Works requesting a meeting for their New Idea – Printed Cloth Dolls. They never received a reply, so with a Sample Doll in hand, they made the trip to North Adams in 1890, but were turned away at the door. Initially the dolls were hand made with cloth scraps. They caught on and sold well. Arnold Print Works agreed to Buy the Partners’ Patented Designs. Royalties were10 Cents per Printed Fabric Yard. In the 1892 Holiday Season, 200,000 Doll Sheets were Sold.
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Manfred Honeck Conducts at Elbphilharmonie
Pittsburgh Symphony Shimmers
By: - Aug 26th, 2022Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony have developed a specialty: revealing the texture of sound. In a concert at Elbphilharmonie, an event in the orchestra’s 75th year of touring, they displayed daring and diverse sounds not often heard. The Maestro and the musicians find buried clues to the balanced mix of rhythms, dynamics in detailed performance directions.
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Slavery Remembrance Day in the US
Dealing with Past Atrocities
By: - Aug 22nd, 2022On July 27, 2022, a bill creating a Slavery Remembrance Day, introduceed by Congressman Al Green of Houston, Texas, passed in Congress. August 20th was the date in 1619 White Lion ship with 20 “and odd” Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrived in the British colony Point Comfort in Virginia.
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MASS MoCA Union
Work Stoppage August 19
By: - Aug 15th, 2022Unionized employees of MASS MoCA voted by a 96% vote to engage in a one-day work stoppage on August 19, 2022. Employees will be picketing the Museum all day and asking visitors to express support for a fair contract for staff.
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Every Breath You Take
I Can See for Miles
By: - Jul 22nd, 2022Wudang is the center of Daoism in the world, where the early monks went to hide from the Emperor’s soldiers. The Chinese emperors were fearful that the people would follow the Daoist priests and monks instead of them, and they killed many of them, destroying thousands of temples over the centuries.
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Peter Gelb Unfiltered
Jeff Brown of VAN Magazine Interviews the Met Opera's GM
By: - Jul 04th, 2022What a last seven years it’s been for Peter Gelb and the Metropolitan Opera: Conflicts among board members and between labor and management; allegations of sexual abuse against late music director James Levine; COVID furloughs that left orchestra members in serious financial trouble; the firing of Anna Netrebko over her refusal to denounce Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Jeffrey Arlo Brown sat down with Gelb to talk about those issues, plus Gelb's aesthetic priorities for the Met and whether he has a secret Twitter account.
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San Antonio’s Young Women’s Leadership Academy
Tried to Deny Afro-Indigneous Senior, Kayla Price Graduation Ceremony
By: - Jun 07th, 2022On Friday June 3rd, the Dean of Schools and Principal at San Antonio’s Young Women’s Leadership Academy tried to deny Afro-Indigneous senior, Kayla Price, from walking in her ceremony because of the eagle feather beaded onto her graduation cap. The Young Women’s Leadership Academy (YWLA), part of the San Antonio Independent School District, ranks in the top 20 high schools in the United States. Per their Non-discrimination Statement,
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The Dishwasher Dialogues
Down and Out in Paris in the 1970s
By: - May 11th, 2022The Dishwasher Dialogues is a tale of being down and out in Paris in the 1970s. George James Light and Rafael Sinclair Mahdavi share tales of staying alive working at Chez Haynes a soul food restaurant. It reads like a hipster's Beggars Opera. Literally this is a saga from rags to almost riches.
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Figuration Reconsidered
Sidelined by the Mainstream Art World
By: - May 05th, 2022The artists Martin Mugar and the late Addison Parks often engaged in lively discourses about issues in contemporary art. This is reposted from Mugar's blog Painting from July 16, 2012. Arguably the content is still relevant; particularly in Boston where aspects of figuration have morphed from the Boston Expressionists of the 1930s through the present. The Museum of Fine Arts is currently presenting the controversial Ku Klux Klan paintings of Philip Guston who taught at the Boston University School of Fine Arts. Guston found a haven in Boston while on the lam and shunned as reactionary by the NY art world.
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BSO's Andris Nelsons to Munich Philharmonic
New Orchestra Replaces BSO
By: - Apr 29th, 2022The Munich Philharmonic Orchestra will take over two more concerts at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg on May 20 and 21. The orchestra is filling in for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which had to cancel its entire European tour for this spring due to a major corona outbreak among the musicians*. The Munich Philharmonic is looking forward to these two concerts with Andris Nelson.
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DigBoston Suspends Print Edition
Plans to Publish On LIne
By: - Apr 22nd, 2022Desperate times call for desperate measures. We have to shut down the print edition of this publication for the second time since March 2020 effective immediately. For those of you that follow the American news industry—its local print markets in particular—this should come as no surprise.
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Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater
Biography by Alexis Greene
By: - Apr 13th, 2022Alexis Greene is the author and editor of numerous books about theater, including The Lion King: Pride Rock on Broadway, written with Julie Taymor, and the biography Lucille Lortel: The Queen of Off Broadway. In addition to writing and editing books about women and theater, Greene’s career spans acting, theater criticism and teaching. She holds a PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York
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Museum of Fine Arts Boston: 1870 to 2020, An Oral History
Review by Martin Mugar
By: - Apr 09th, 2022Through his blog Painting, the artist Martin Mugar posts think pieces about theories of fine arts. He applies in depth critical analysis to a probing review of the Charles Giuliano book Museum of Fine Arts Boston, 1870 to 2020: An Oral HIstory.
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March 16 An Anniversary of Sorts
Long and Winding Road
By: - Mar 16th, 2022At seven AM, March 16, 20221 my friend Michael drove me to Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield. Along the way he told truly terrible jokes to distract me from major surgery for severe spinal stenosis. It entailed five vertebrae. Thankfully, the next three days were a blur and I was out of my gourd on oxy. In rehab/ slammer there was a homeless woman camped in my room with her daughter. They ordered pizza but wouldn't share. That now seems so long ago and far away.
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More About Ukrainian Writer and Artist Julia Kissina
Digging Deeper
By: - Mar 02nd, 2022When Bill Wadsworth sent images and asked what I thought the response was to post Ukrainian Writer and Artist Julia Kissina. Calling attention to this artist in exile could not have been more timely and relevant. It evoked significant reader responses and raised basic questions. This second posting addresses that interest. Many have asked where they may view the work and there was a query from a curator regarding a possible exhibition.
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Dewey Hall's Sourdough Bread Baking Competition
Tasty Event in the Berkshires
By: - Feb 09th, 2022Dewey Hall is to hold a sourdough bread baking competition on Friday, March 4th. Attendees will be invited to sample the contestants' breads, wine from DéPart, beer from Big Elm Brewery, and cheese from Rubiner’s Cheesemongers, and have the opportunity to win loaves of freshly baked sourdough bread via a raffle.
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