Yearly Archives: 2021
Globalization Has Been Widely Misunderstood. It’s Important To Be Clear About It
We are at a critical juncture: a relatively long period of stability in mainstream thinking about economic globalisation has given way to a situation...
Has The Pandemic Shown Us How America Could Fund The Arts And Artists Properly?
The shutdown introduced many ordinary people to the precarity that gigging artists have always faced, and the expanded unemployment benefits — with fewer restrictions...
How A Small Labor Dispute At Strathmore Hall Led To Baltimore Symphony Withdrawal
The escalation of events — from a contract with about a dozen employees to an ugly public battle between two of Maryland’s flagship arts...
“The Internet At Its Utopian Best”: In Praise Of The Public Domain Review
"'A frictionless world' in which evidence of the imagination floats around in the empyrean 'without cost, without registration, and without restrictive conditions on their...
Broadway Attendance Down. But What Does It Mean?
The anecdotal evidence, gleaned from social media and private conversations with industry leaders, suggests a variety of challenges — lingering fears of the coronavirus, the...
Divers Are Discovering Golden Treasure From An Ancient Indonesian Empire
"Local divers exploring Indonesia's Musi River (on the island of Sumatra) have found gold rings, beads and other artifacts that may be linked to...
Broadway Box Office Slips Again. Did It Open Too Soon?
Big picture: the 27 shows currently running grossed $19.66 million together last week, with 168,169 butts in seats. That’s a 11% box office drop...
Some Dancers Are Starting To Rebel Against The Zero-Body-Hair Standard
Says one choreographer, "It's not the first fight I would pick about the homogeneity of bodies on stage. But there's something archaic in dance...
The Bionic Gloves That Let João Carlos Martins Play Piano Again
His international career was hobbled over and over again by a breathtaking series of mishaps, comebacks, and more mishaps that ultimately left him unable...
CNN’s Online Video Is Much More Divisive Than What It Airs On TV, And...
Yes, of course, it's ultimately to make more money, but here's a glimpse of just how different the content is and a look at...
Archaeologists Have Mapped Genghis Khan’s Lost Capital — And It’s Not What You’d Expect
Using equipment designed for geophysics, researchers scanned the site of Karakorum, chosen by Genghis and built by his two successors, and found that the...
Alice Childress Should Have Been The First Black Female Playwright On Broadway, After 66...
Her Trouble in Mind treats a touchy subject, even now: it's about an interracial cast rehearsing an anti-lynching play written and directed by whites....
New Marvel Film “Eternals” Banned In Saudi Arabia And Kuwait
Sources report that the decision is because Disney's Marvel Studios refused the request to cut a male-male kiss. Eternals is the first film in...
Afghan Dance Teachers In Exile, Cut Off From Students And Homeland
Makhloot had an entire crew of professional hip-hop dancers in Kabul (including one woman) and hoped to compete in breaking at the 2024 Olympics....
Royal British Columbia Museum To Close Indigenous Galleries, “Decolonize”
The Becoming B.C. gallery, which focuses on the story of European settlement in B.C. and has been widely criticized for pushing a colonial narrative, will...
Why “Mistakes” In Language Are Actually Progress
Someone in my line of work hears around him a linguistic feast, where many just hear the English language going to the dogs. -...
The Impossibility Of Translating
To put it less politely, translation is a bitch. - Granta
Edinburgh Fringe Once Again Feeds The West End
There remained no shortage of quality work presented at the fringe, but its own aesthetic had changed over this time, contributing to making it...
Why Museums Should Cut Down On The Art In Storage
Museums should downsize storage for commercial, environmental, social and ethical reasons. Post-pandemic with their revenues ravaged, they need to take a hard look at...
How Shondaland Became An Empire
In Shonda Rhimes’ renewed pact, the bullet points specify that Shondaland will now be, as Rhimes puts it, a “one-stop shopping” source for Netflix...
What’s The Secret Of Poetry’s Power? It’s The Rhythm, Baby
"Poems meet the raw needs of our most vulnerable inner selves in a disarmingly primal way, using a simple tool no other sort of...
A Reason To Invest In The Arts In The South?
A recent study found that a person living in the South received only $4.21 in arts and culture funding from philanthropy, compared to the national average...
The Art World’s Most Wanted Criminal (No, Not Inigo Philbrick)
"Not so long ago, Christian Rosa was a buzzy young artist on the rise. Now he's facing a series of charges related to alleged...
A First: Big Museum Opens Its Entire Collection To Visitors
Normally, only some six to ten percent of collections at major museums around the world, the rest kept in closed storage depots. That will...
How Did 21st-Century TV Comedy Get So Dark?
"BoJack Horseman, Fleabag, Veep, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are among the comedies that have left the traditional sitcom form in the dust. … The laughs...