Yearly Archives: 2021
How Translating Language Opens A Writer’s Mind
In translating, you pose yourself a question—or it is posed to you by the text; you have no satisfactory answer, though you put something...
San Jose Opera Picks A New General Director
Shawna Lucey has some 15 years of opera and theater experience, having worked at such companies as Santa Fe Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Gran...
Why Is A New Moscow Museum Recreating An American Soap Opera?
Every day through March 22, 2022, a team of 80 actors and technicians is carrying out the vision of the Icelandic performance artist Ragnar...
The 13-Year-Old Who’s Become Famous For His Car Pictures
The Woodinville eighth-grader has made a name for himself in the art of “forced perspective” photography, a technique that creates an optical illusion by...
Literary Translators Are Finally Demanding The Recognition They Deserve — On The Book Cover
"For decades, translators in the U.S. have been ... working in the back rooms of literature even as they play a central role in...
A Museum On The Border Between North And South Korea (What Could Go Wrong?)
Unimaru, as it's called, opened in September in a former customs clearinghouse in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). Visitors must get a permit from the...
Why The Music They Play While You’re On Hold Is So Infuriating
So where did hold music, the most vanilla of genres, go wrong? When experts have spent decades crafting tinkling tones to placate us, why...
Can Newly-Won Artistic Freedom In Sudan Survive Post-Coup?
After longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in 2019, the country saw "the flowering of an artistic community that had long been harassed, censored...
The Collapse Of NeoLiberalism
The challenge for the neoliberals was—how do you design institutions that safeguard the rights of property over borders, in an era when everyone is...
Greg Tate, Cultural Critic And Pioneering Writer On Hop-Hop, Dead At 64
He made his mark as a staff writer for The Village Voice, covering everything from rap to Black hardcore, African-American identity to Michael Jackson....
Have We Forgotten The Art Of Listening?
Being able to engage in the practice of mindful, aesthetic and critical listening is as important to democracy as literacy. Yet, in comparison to...
Sondheim’s “Assassins” And American Gun Culture
"In Assassins, the gun serves not as a tool of self-defense … but as an instrument of self-expression and self-realization. The assassins, who saw...
The Sondheim Musical The Tributes Haven’t Been Mentioning
Assassins — "It wasn't exactly a flop, but it's not exactly celebrated, either. … The songs are just as catchy, melodic, and surprising as...
Can Anna Wintour, The Very Avatar Of Old-Style Condé Nast, Remake Its Titles For...
This year she's been focused on turning seven of Condé Nast's biggest publications into global brands, each under one leader. She is also ensuring...
Justin Peck May Have Been The Perfect Person To Choreograph The Remake Of “West...
He grew up watching Jerome Robbins's original choreography in the film, and he's danced it himself in the West Side Story Suite Robbins created...
Playing A Real Person In A Biopic Is Harder Than Ever
There are four major actresses in contention for an Oscar this year for biopics. While the Academy likes to reward such work, the denizens...
Finally, African Medical Students Are Getting Textbook Drawings That Depict The Black Bodies They’ll...
"On November 24, Ibe posted a drawing of a Black fetus in utero on social media, calling for more diversity in medical illustration....
Marjorie Tallchief, Last Of The “Five Moon” Native American Ballerinas, Dead At 95
The younger sister of Maria Tallchief, Marjorie studied under Ernest Belcher and Bronislava Nijinska and was the first American to become an étoile at...
Perplexed Publishers: Social Media Followings Don’t Translate To Book Sales
Followings can affect who gets a book deal and how big an advance that author is paid, especially when it comes to nonfiction. But...
UK Broadcasters Pledge To Go BAME-less
The catch-all description for black, Asian and minority ethnic people will be ditched in favour of the use of more specific terms to describe...
An Irish Plan To Break The Record For Most Nationalities In A Choir
At time of writing, 77 countries have registered. A total of 109 are needed to break the record. But “where better”, asks Brophy, “to...
New TV Network Seeks To Narrow Definition Of America
Americana. American traditions. Safe storytelling. It’s the coded language the network uses about its content, as much as the content itself, that reveals its underlying...
Science: Why Doing Nothing Is Essential To Creativity
The default mode network is also known as the imagination network. This is the brain’s resting-state circuitry—the regions that come online when you’re not...
Can Virtual Reality Fix Work?
It’s easy to virtually collaborate. The hard part, of course, is convincing people that, when it comes to their regular work, staring through Fresnel...
Orwell Estate OKs Retelling Of “1984” From Viewpoint Of Winston Smith’s Lover
"Orwell's estate said it had been 'looking for some time' for an author to tell the story of and that Newman, who...