Nexus

Can the arts be a stimulus for democracy? The question may seem strange because, in principle, there does not seem to be a relationship between the arts and democracy. What do theater, dance, cinema, and painting have to do with democracy? Or rather, what do these artistic manifestations have to do with politics?
The short answer: They have a lot to do with each other, and …

The city of Yogyakarta, which sits between the Indian Ocean and the volcanic mountain Merapi at the heart of Java island, has long been known as one of the arts and culture capitals of Indonesia. It is the capital of the ancient Javanese kingdom of Yogyakarta, a descendant of the Islamic Mataram Kingdom.
Since the 1990s, especially after the fall of President Suharto in 1998, …

Community theater never has been a dirty term for me. To me, community theater is about engaging your community and telling its stories. If the actors, writers, or directors get discovered along the way, by other theater companies or Hollywood or whatever, that’s great. That’s sort of what happened to me when my comedy-drama screenplay, Real Women Have Curves, was made into a 2002 feature …

A little more than 10 years ago, someone emailed me a video of the Helsinki Complaints Choir, a group of people very seriously singing about complaints that were both mundane and funny and large and significant. I watched it over and over. A few years later I saw a film about the artists behind the group, Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen, who were organizing Complaints …

One of the most common pieces of advice given to new writers is “Kill your darlings.” The Australian writers Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman have turned this advice on its head. They’re not interested in killing their darlings, but they have become very interested in killing their audience.
In 2015, Kaufman and Kristoff published Illuminae, a sci-fi novel they’d spent the past few years working …

The phone rang in the office of Salvador Salort-Pons, then Curator of European Paintings at the Detroit Institute of Arts. “I found a Van Gogh painting outside the public library, and I don’t want someone to steal it!” said the woman on the other end of the line. “Don’t worry, though, I’ve deployed my husband to protect it.”
Six years later, Salort-Pons is now the Director …

Engagement is an important word in the nonprofit arts industry, often paired (at a minimum) with arts, audience, and community. Over the last decade, “engagement” has very nearly become worn out. Not too long ago, when “community engagement” was the hot topic in the industry, it was used to mean almost anything anyone thought was a good idea. I once saw an arts organization donate …

When can you really feel arts engagement in your bones? How do you know that you have achieved genuine engagement?
For those of us who work at the Oakland Museum of California, one moment came during our exhibition “All Power to the People: Black Panthers at 50,” which was on view at OMCA from October 2016 through February 2017. The realization arrived with a simple …

Since its founding in 1963—with Laurence Olivier as artistic director and Kenneth Tynan as dramaturg (plus a rep company that included new faces Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, and Lynn Redgrave)—the National Theatre has been one of the jewels in Britain’s cultural crown.
As an American arts journalist living in London, I have always appreciated what a luxury it is to have access to a …

Experiment—constantly and fearlessly, every single day.
That’s the best advice I can offer from my own career working in museums to connect the arts to different people, communities, disciplines, and places. The art of arts engagement flows from this recognition: Because the arts connect to so many things, artists and arts organizations need to always be trying new things.
I’ve tried everything from giving museum tours in …