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Whatever Happened To The Statue Of Voltaire In Paris That Got Pulled Down In The Summer Of 2020?

It hasn't been seen since; many people feared that city authorities decided to melt it down, as the Vichy regime did with its predecessor in 1941. Finally, a deputy mayor has said it will be back "sometime this year" and explained why it's been gone so long. - The Observer (UK)

Understanding The Evolutions Of Traditions

Although small modifications do not undo a tradition, small changes can aggregate into significant deviations. For example, if someone is tall, then if they were a half a millimeter shorter, they would still be tall. A minor change is minor. But these small changes can aggregate. - 3 Quarks Daily

How Aleshea Harris Puts Black Life Onstage

Hilton Als: "Harris's aim as a playwright is to remove the kitchen sink and slather the stage with blood and celebration. … Just as Tennessee Williams made 'deliberate cruelty' a major concern of his work, Harris aims to show how love can make you a target." - The New Yorker

The New Online Choreographers

Among this blossoming crop of teachers and influencers, and the legions of creators making their moves into memes on TikTok, Angela Trimbur, 40, stands out. Underpinned by an intimate, self-revealing aesthetic, she fluidly navigates from sweaty group class to phone screen to ambitious project. - The New York Times

Serge Diaghilev Was Not A Good Guy: Bronislava Nijinska

The pathbreaking choreographer once wrote, " He victimised the ballet artists when they left his company and tried by all means possible to prevent their employment by other companies. … To create one's own and to destroy somebody else's – this was his principle." - The Observer (UK)

Could Our Conscious Minds Exist In Virtual Worlds?

Once one has been presented with the hypothesis that we could exist as the conscious beings we are in a purely fabricated world of experiences, or even that we already may exist in such a world, one is presented also with a certain set of obvious issues to consider. - The New Atlantis

“What Does It Mean To Make Black Film History Accessible?” Why Maya Cade Created The Black Film Archive

"My driving question for all of this ... has been: What does this mean to a Black person? And not just the Black people I know or hope to know. But what does this mean to a Black person who may not be familiar with film?" - The Hollywood Reporter

“I’m A Fool, What Have I Done” — The Museum Guard Who Drew Eyes On That Russian Painting Speaks

"Aleksandr Vasiliev, a decorated veteran of the Afghan and Chechen wars, told journalist Elena Pankratieva that he believed the 20th-century work by Anna Leporskaya was a 'children's drawing' and claimed he was goaded by teenagers to deface it." - ARTnews

Why Some Composers Are Fuming About This Year’s Classical Grammy Nominations

"Letters of complaint have been sent to the organisers, the Recording Academy, arguing that the tracks in question – by two separate artists, Jon Batiste and Curtis Stewart – have been 'mis-categorised'. Their objections have absolutely nothing to do with quality, but genre, say the musicians." - The Observer (UK)

The Editor Who Published “Maus” Recounts His Decision To Go Ahead With It

Tom Engelhardt, then at Pantheon Books: "The feeling that I simply had to do Maus was one of the two least rational decisions I ever made in publishing. … In some gut way, I simply knew that a world without this book would be a lesser place." - TomDispatch

Why Is There A Staff Exodus At Philadelphia’s Public Radio Station?

"In interviews, 10 former and six current WHYY staffers cited lower pay than at other media outlets, a lack of opportunities for advancement, a haphazard emphasis on short news pieces to the detriment of longer stories that attracted them to public radio." - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Scotland Allocates Yet More Money To COVID Arts Recovery

£16 million may not seem like much to Americans, but it can go a long way in a nation as small as Scotland. - The Independent (UK)

Belgium Takes First Big Step Toward Returning Looted Art To Congo

The Belgian government has turned over to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's prime minister an inventory list of 85,000 items in the country's Afrikamuseum, about 70% of the museum's entire collection. The two countries will work out which items should be repatriated. - The Brussels Times

Trump’s New Social Network Soars To Top Of Apple Store (But New Users Encounter Errors)

While it seemingly has attracted broad interest, many users who attempted to sign up for Truth Social accounts on Monday (Feb. 21) have reported encountering error messages reading “Something went wrong. Please try again” when they have tried to sign up. - Variety

The Problem Of Writing Fiction Of Now During The Pandemic

“It seemed too soon to be writing about the pandemic, which we were living through, but it also seemed hard to be writing about anything else. If it’s set now, it has to be part of the story.” - The New York Times

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