Just a month after the director of the Tretyakov Gallery was forced to resign after being pressured to make the exhibits "in line with spiritual and moral values," Marina Loshak is stepping down (voluntarily, she says) as director of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. - MSN (The Washington Post)
"The conductor Richard Bonynge ranked her among the top four sopranos of the 20th century. And according to Ms. Zeani, Maria Callas's husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, confided to her that she was 'one of the very few sopranos that my wife is frightened of.'" - The New York Times
O-1 visas for “individuals with extraordinary ability or achievement” would increase from $460 to $1,655. P-2 visas would jump from $460 to $1,615. The USCIS proposed the changes in January, arguing that the new rates would reflect an increase in costs at the agency. - MixMag
Spotify says it's not been able to reach an agreement with the owners of the tracks after the old one expired. Soundtracks with millions of plays were among the deleted hits. - BBC
The Functional Grammar of Dance (FGD) explains how body parts create meaning by interacting with the space and the people surrounding dancers in a performance. We used it to annotate and interpret data collected from live dance rehearsals. - The Conversation
The more pressing question, now that theatres are back in some kind of business, is: How is business? Are audiences coming back at anything like pre-pandemic levels? And are theatres able to make ends meet? The evidence is mixed, and seems to vary by region. - American Theatre
Using this data from the brain, audiences create a non-conscious edit of the film in real time – reinforcing the films’ respective stories of science-fiction dystopia and a wandering, daydreaming mind. - The Conversation
Collective campaigns, lawsuits, international rules and IT hacks are all being deployed at speed on behalf of the creative industries in an effort, if not to win the battle, at least to “rage, rage against the dying of the light”, in the words of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. - The Guardian
The oasis town of Chinguetti in north-central Mauritania, a major trans-Saharan trading stop in centuries past, has 13 libraries housing more than 6,000 manuscripts. As desertification spreads ever onward, outside experts fear for the books, but their custodians are holding on. - MSN (The Washington Post)
Paradoxically, we may come to want the things that we cannot have in an instant, that demand our time and patience before they will reveal all they have to offer: the art that demands that we slow down. - 3 Quarks Daily
"When I'm anchoring, I never have trouble, because the NPR studio is soundproof — there's no background noise to distract you, and I wear great headphones that I can crank loud. It's harder when I'm out in the field. … So far, there has always been a workaround." - MSN (The Washington Post)
Her ideas of war had come from art—from photographs of the devastated city of Warsaw, which appeared deserted in the still images; from books that described battle and carnage. In real life, people got used to war quickly. - The New Yorker
"What could be more pressing than an operetta about the housing crisis? This is something that everybody in Australia is grappling with at the moment. What was funny in adapting it from corrupt Soviet bureaucrats to greedy Melbourne landlords was that it was hilariously, disturbingly easy." - The Age (Melbourne)
In an identity crisis we question our purpose in life, what our role or place in society is, what values we ought to be committed to, or the meaning and significance of our activities. But having purpose, meaning, and a commitment to certain values doesn’t quite individuate us either. - 3 Quarks Daily
Earlier this month a video of five teen girls dancing -- bareheaded, outdoors -- to the Rema/Selena Gomez hit "Calm Down" went viral. The girls were promptly arrested, detained, and forced to make a video of repentance. Now women all over Iran are making similar videos and posting them in solidarity. - BuzzFeed
