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Orchestra League Launches New Commissioning Program

The initiative announced on Thursday will build on those efforts, pairing each of the six composers with five ensembles. The program, which will cost at least $360,000, will be financed by the Toulmin foundation. - The New York Times

Stiff Sentence For Artworld Fraudster Rattles Art World

In other words, the sentence was meant to scare off or inhibit potential fraudsters with the threat of substantial incarceration time. With it, Judge Stein seemed to view the art market as rife with fraud. - ARTnews

Meet Pitchbot – Media Criticism Through Parody

With his account, NYT Pitchbot imagines the Times formula for stories as a kind of wheezing algorithm, a bot churning out contrarian headlines and half-baked hot takes. - Columbia Journalism Review

Imagination Is Critical For Learning. So Why Don’t We Teach It?

Studying the imagination is the most exciting and accurate way to heal the terminal divide between the sciences and the humanities. But, more importantly, Imagination Studies, or imaginology, also promises to reunite the body and the mind, reintegrate emotion and reason. - Aeon

Today In Chutzpah: This Couple Tried To Shoplift A Basquiat

An as-yet-unidentified man and woman walked into Taglialatella Galleries in Manhattan, headed to a Basquiat screen print, searched it on their phone, took it off the wall and tried to walk right back out.  A gallery assistant stopped them, though they did manage to steal a two-thirds-empty bottle of whiskey. - Hyperallergic

The Latest AI Superpower? Describe An Image And The Computer Will Create It

In each case, the text at the bottom of the image was the prompt fed into the program, and the picture above, the output. Just to stress: that’s all it takes. You type what you want to see and the program generates it. - The Verge

Yes, Happily-Ever-After Is Okay In Serious Literature

"I argue that there's something in our human DNA that seeks the Happily Ever After (HEA). ... According to researchers, these fairytale endings can be traced as far back as the Bronze Age, long before literature had even the language to describe itself." - Literary Hub

How Pacific Northwest Ballet Is Progressing With Diversity

“The company is more racially diverse today than it was in 2020, when about 30% of the company was BIPOC. Racial identity should only be identified by the individual, but the company is currently about 45% individuals of color with five dancers identifying as Black or Brown." - Seattle Times

This Young Man is A Natural Male Soprano, And He’d Like To Try Singing Lucia

Samuel Mariño, a 29-year-old Venezuelan whose voice never dropped, specializes in Baroque castrato roles, but he sees no reason not to sing female parts. (He already does Cherubino, written for a woman.) Oh, and he's definitely not trans, but he sees no reason not to wear skirts, either. - The New York Times

Canada Tries To Make A Case For Internet Regulation Because Of… The Arts?

The emphasis: that material cultural and live performance follow the virtual. It’s an odd hierarchy to be asserting to an arts gathering emerging from a pandemic where everything went virtual – only to reveal how much the physical and the actual matter. - The Globe & Mail (Canada)

Can Newcomers To Dance Follow What Happens In A Story Ballet?  Christopher Wheeldon Isn’t Worried

"I don't think we should be afraid of tackling complex stories and not feeling like the audience has to understand every second; one of the beauties of dance is that we get to escape into this poetic abstraction, even within a story ballet." - The Guardian

Today’s Students — The Problem With “Excellent Sheep”

Excellent sheephood is inherently competitive. Its purpose is to vault you into the ranks of society’s winners, to make sure that you end up with more stuff—more wealth, status, power, access, comfort, freedom—than most other people. This is not a pretty project, when you look it in the face. - Bari Weiss

It Takes Some Real Heroics To Keep Alaska Public Radio’s Far-Flung Stations On The Air

Beyond Alaska's few cities, APR's stations are sometimes the only local ones available, "mixing Morning Edition with all flavors of music, emergency announcements, swap-and-shop shows and personal announcements for family members in remote, roadless villages. ... The station managers and engineers who keep it running are the unsung heroes." - Current

Town Councilman In Wales Is Driven To Resign Because He Can’t Stop The Weird Rumor That He Is Banksy

"Pembroke Dock town councilor William Gannon, age 58, was just elected earlier this month, but he couldn't quell rumors about his supposed illicit artistic activities in January, which he believes may have been started by his political opponents." - Artnet

Why Is Russia Looting Ukraine’s Museums?  It’s Not Just Greed

"These latest thefts are in keeping with Putin's attempts to erase Ukraine's independent history and promote his own expansionist model of a new Russian empire. ... These works have been chosen to undermine Ukraine's national identity. Paintings by western European artists have not been targeted." - The Guardian

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