This Year's Sundance Festival Sits At A Cultural Crossroads

"If the festival’s organizers have found themselves unexpectedly responding to cultural shifts, filmmakers too have seen their work take on new and expanded meaning in the face of the current political environment."

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Lack Of Diversity Among Our Theatre Critics Is Hurting The Theatre

"The lack of diversity in theatre criticism not only does a disservice to the field and the readers, but also to the playwrights and productions. Certainly such artists as Suzan-Lori Parks and Ayad Akhtar, and others artists of color whose work speaks particularly to questions of identity, deserve to have their work scrutinized by a more diverse group of critics. In the age of Hamilton fanatics in New York, Chicago, London, and beyond, audiences have proven that there is not just space but a hunger for stories by and about people of color that work to rewrite, expand, or totally replace the white canon. So where are their peers in criticism?"

Article source here:Arts Journal

How Superstar Mentality Is Endangering The Art World

"The superstar phenomenon is pervasive in the art market. My research of the last few years has documented the increasing dominance of the top end of the market. A very small number of artists, and the galleries representing them, drive the bulk of sales value, while others struggle to survive.
While this top-heavy bias has increased over the last 10 years, the superstar effect has been observed for at least a century."

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Curse Of The One-Hit Choreographer

For choreographers, the postpartum pangs that follow a big triumph can summon doubts about their ability to duplicate a career's artistic zenith. Critics sneer, ballet masters and directors stifle skeptical looks, audiences question, producers pressure and choreographers agonize about the label of "one-hit wonder." Has he backed himself into a corner? Has she burned out on ideas? How do you bring something original to the stage without copying yourself or experimenting with disaster?

Article source here:Arts Journal

Why Some Bad Movies Become Cult Classics (And Others Just Don't)

"Not all bad movies are entertaining. To be worthwhile, they require a sense that someone was actually trying. ... Making a purposefully lousy movie is like wearing a Female Body Inspector T-shirt: You might get a cheap laugh, but ultimately, you're just a guy with questionable taste."

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Good Readers Versus Bad Readers

The good reader’s cultural elevation always relied on his oppositional relationship to the curiously undifferentiated mass of bad readers, who struck Nabokov—and have struck many teachers and literary scholars since—as a kind of irritating background noise; always already present and unworthy of any serious or systematic consideration.

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The Long, Surprising History Of Dinosaur Art

"Works of paleoart - a genre that uses fossil evidence to reconstruct vanished worlds - directly shape the way humans imagine the distant past. It's an easy form to define but a tricky one to work in. Paleontological accuracy is a moving target, with the posture and life appearance of fossil species constantly reshuffled by new discoveries and scientific arguments. Old ideas can linger long after researchers have moved on, while some artists' wild speculations are proved correct decades after the fact."

Article source here:Arts Journal