Yearly Archives: 2021
Los Angeles’s Iconic Cinerama Dome To Reopen Under New Ownership
"The Cinerama Dome first opened in 1963. The venue survived a demolition scare in 1998, when a proposal by Pacific Theatres would have stripped...
The Rockettes Are Canceled For The Season
The COVID-caused cancellation comes at an terrible time for the performers and staff. Many other shows are canceling for the weekend or week as...
Bridgerton Plus TikTok Stars Equals A Grammy Nomination
There is no Bridgerton musical, and yet ... the pandemic lack of Broadway "left room for voters to be more adventurous, opening the door...
How Twitter Distorts Intimacy (And Context)
The frequency of context-destruction is no accident. Twitter rewards high-context speech, and then gives us the perfect tool to decontextualize that speech. Twitter is...
Apple Streaming Has Been Crap For Classical Music. So It Bought An Expert
With a view to improving that experience, presumably, Apple acquired dedicated classical music streaming service Primephonic in August 2021. In a press release, the company...
The Further Adventures In Testing Whether Hybrid Performances Of Theatre Draw Audiences
"The show sold a bit below their historical average—which the company anticipated, not least because of the rising concern around yet another COVID variant—but...
The Problem With Grand Narrative Histories Of Humanity
By producing an overarching story of life, Big History is meant to fill the void that was left by the processes of secularisation that...
Is The Sackler Disgrace A Warning To Other Potential Museum Funders?
The resulting glare is sure to have a dampening effect on future donations from individuals or families whose wealth derives from practices today considered...
Movie Musicals Flopped This Year. Is The Genre Dead?
Studio executives and box-office pundits expected audiences to show up for In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen and West Side Story, and not just...
Consider The Velvet Painting
"They are the ultimate kitsch, and in this era of hipster aesthetic, they lend themselves well to some ironic display. But does dark velvet...
San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge Has Been Singing Since June. Now A Fix
“After studying this phenomenon extensively, we’ve determined that the sound comes from new and more aerodynamic railing that we installed on the west sidewalk....
Did You Know Charles Dickens Wrote A Successor To “A Christmas Carol”?
Mind, it's not a sequel. Dickens published a series of five Christmas novellas; A Christmas Carol was the first. London's Dickens Museum hopes to...
Health Care, Hospitals And Design Choices
The basic trajectory of hospital design has, so far, been toward buildings that are ever bigger, more complex and more sealed off from the...
How David Hallberg’s Australian Ballet Put Together A Gala Program In Four Days
The return-from-lockdown galas the company did in Sydney and Melbourne were different: each city got to see pieces which were cancelled there before. But...
Was Modernist Architecture Really The Product Of Brain Damage?
Why should it matter that the people who gave us modern architecture in the 20th century had traumatic brain damage and disorders? For one, the...
New Art Museums Are Opening All Across Australia
"An injection of more than $2.4 billion has already resulted in five major openings since late 2020, with another half-dozen projects well under way....
China Cracks Down On The Dancing Grannies
Under legislation to update China’s noise pollution ordinances, to be sent to lawmakers next week, dance enthusiasts will face limits on the volume of...
Sydney’s Arts Venues Are Getting Very, Very Worried About Omicron
As summer arrives, COVID is spreading again in New South Wales; experts expect 25,000 new cases per day in the state by late January....
The Last-Minute Saviors Of The Paris Opera Ballet
"When Valentine Colasante was called up to replace an injured dancer in the Paris Opera's Don Quixote, a three-hour ballet that she had performed...
A Bunch Of Public Radio Stations Are About To Get Additional Frequencies
This fall FCC offered a rare opportunity to apply for new non-commercial signals. Public radio networks in New England, the South, and especially the...
Anthony Tommasini’s Farewell Essay As New York Times Chief Classical Critic
While he can't help mentioning some things that he believes mustn't remain as they are now, the title of this piece is "What Shouldn't...
Juilliard School Gets $50 Million To Expand Program For Young Black And Hispanic Schoolkids
The gift from the California foundation Crankstart will enable Juilliard to increase enrollment in its Music Advancement Program from 70 to 100 students, provide...
Philadelphia Theatre Company’s Artistic Director Steps Down
After five years, Paige Price will depart at the end of this season, having led the company through a difficult period that included a...
Clarice Smith, Beloved DC-Area Painter And Philanthropist, Dead At 88
She and her late husband donated many millions to humanities endeavors in greater Washington — notably to the National Gallery of Art, George Washington...
Do Computers Need To Be As Smart As Humans? Probably Not
Will deep learning eventually become “artificial general intelligence” (AGI), matching human intelligence in every way? I don’t believe it will happen in the next 20...