"This long-lost urban web encompassed nearly 1,000 settlements across 650 square miles, linked by an immense causeway system, which was mapped out with airborne laser instruments, known as LiDAR." - Vice
Believe it or not, the movie still hasn't made a profit: it will need to gross between $1.5 billion and $2 billion to recoup its famously high costs. The original Avatar, released in 2009, is the highest-grossing film in history at $2.97 billion. - Variety
Throughout 2022, and at times before, the company has weathered conflicting business strategies, rifts between management and key teams and non-existent human resources practices, sources said. - ARTnews
"What we’re seeing throughout the entire performing arts sector at least in Milwaukee is people are coming out for the traditions and the pieces and the performances that they know already, but they’re not particularly adventurous to go see new plays, new operas or new pieces of music." - Milwaukee Business Journal
2022 was a year chock-full of controversies in our industry as museum masterpieces were covered in mashed potatoes, artists fretted about being replaced by robots, and Christie’s tried to be cool but just came off as offensive. - Artnet
How does a billion years go missing? The Great Unconformity has long been a geological mystery, in no small part because it is a challenge to reconstruct history when records of history are missing. - Nautilus
History is not a window into the past, but something made by people looking at the past through whatever evidence survives. Rather than hiding this process behind claims to historical accuracy, we wanted historical sources and the historian’s research process to be front and centre. - The Conversation
All of the major cable network operators — A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery — have seen annual output of scripted and unscripted content decline when compared with cable’s peak year for output, which is 2014. - Variety
"Today's Tedium talks about Santa Claus as a visual and cultural icon who has had more changes in style than Madonna, a figure that seemingly every single celebrity has dressed up as at some point in their careers. Ho, ho, ho." - Tedium
The danger of the current moment is a second hollowing: the relegation of even lower-budget productions to commercial oblivion, the ever-widening gap between the spectacular successes and the quiet failures. In a way, the industry has done itself in, aesthetically. - The New Yorker
"Ironically, the ban has brought droves of new readers to his work, ... (and Maus) sold 665,000 copies this year, more than triple its 2021 sales. But the renewed attention has also been exhausting, and left him with little time or energy for his art." - The New York Times
In 1969, thieves cut Caravaggio's Nativity With Saints Lawrence and Francis of Assisi from its frame at the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo. Since 2010, there's been an annual commission for a new painting for the empty space, and Beecroft's work is a sly homage to the original. - Artnet
The matter is more complicated than it appears, and those who try to capitalize on the expiring “Steamboat Willie” copyright could easily end up in a legal mousetrap. - The New York Times
"That piano is so central ... that (August) Wilson's script dedicates half of its mandate for the play's setting to a description of the instrument. ... The seemingly obvious artistry of the piano speaks to intense research, precise dramaturgy and the arduous labor that brought its design to fruition." - Broadway News
