Maurizio Cattelan has set up a hotline where folks from anywhere can “confess their sins.” Those the artist/father-confessor considers most in need of repentance will be invited to confess to him in real time during an April 23 live-stream. “In a world of sin, absolution has never been so close,” he says. - Euronews
From ACT in San Francisco to Berkeley Rep to Stanford Live, producers and presenters are moving starting times from 8:00 to 7:30, 7:00 or even 6:30. So far, there have been lots of favorable comments and very few complaints. - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)
The Basque government is already familiar with the Reina Sofía’s condition report—which deems the painting too fragile to travel—and that it is instead requesting a feasibility report from independent technicians on how a transfer to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao could be carried out safely. - ARTnews
There is every reason to be wary when a foreign-owned corporation stakes a claim to defending Canada’s cultural sovereignty, but the case of HarperCollins calls for particular skepticism. - The Walrus
No L.A. institution has taken as risky a leap in this century as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. With the opening of the $724-million David Geffen Galleries, LACMA has effectively erased and reinvented itself, trading a fragmented campus core for a sinuous, hovering concrete megastructure. - Los Angeles Times
“In those days, you might as well say: ‘And by the way, I love cock,’” he said about his 1996 interview to promote The Birdcage. “But I wasn’t ready; I wasn’t brave enough. I was a character actor. I wasn’t thinking I was going to become a leading man.” - The Guardian
Speculative and futuristic visions of environmental calamity are being imagined globally through environmental fiction. Eco-dystopian novels can help people process their fears or mourn the loss of a more stable climate. - The Conversation
This is a war over whether technology will merely optimise calculations or eliminate a quintessentially human element such calculations can’t capture. But beneath these debates, the question still lurks: what makes us so special? And can it be computed? - Aeon
Research on cultural ecosystems suggests that institutional collaboration is crucial to sustain vibrant arts production. This is especially the case as music and the arts face increasing pressure from shifting funding models and post-pandemic austerity. - The Conversation
These developments suggest a rough future for a certain kind of writing: nonfiction that’s based on reportage more than on personal experience or celebrity—a.k.a. long fact, literary nonfiction, or narrative nonfiction. - The New Republic
The company hadn’t produced its beloved staging of the Stravinsky ballet, with sets and costumes by Geoffrey Holder, since it went on hiatus in 2004 due to financial problems. DTH was resurrected in 2013, but until now it didn’t have enough dancers available to perform the piece. - The New York Times
A chance encounter fifty years ago "helped fuel a lifelong quest: mapping a musical route that mirrored the trans-Atlantic slave trade and birthed nearly all of the popular music that we now take for granted, including rock ’n’ roll and hip-hop." - The New York Times
The most successful and lucrative family vlogs are indiscreet almost by definition—and yet the wrong kind of indiscretion can derail the whole gravy train. - The New Yorker
For a jury that has spent weeks listening to experts debate market definitions, vertical integration and other fine points of antitrust law, the testimony about Irvine’s failed amphitheater, and other disputes, has provided a perspective on how all the abstractions play out in real life for taxpayers, industry insiders and concertgoers. - The New York Times
By the end of the 1990s, the “fastest mouse in all Mexico” had been pulled from US television amid concerns about stereotyping and racist caricature. Yet the cartoon character remained popular in Latin America, and numerous Hispanics in the States complained about his banishment. And now there’s a Speedy feature film coming. - The Conversation
