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Would We All Be Better Off without Philanthropy?

Philanthropists rarely make the large, unrestricted gifts that the receiving institutions really want, and so the two parties bargain: over the purpose and the control of a gift, over the form of credit, over how much the institution has to raise from other sources as a condition. - The New Yorker

“Imagineering” Existed For Decades Before Disney Trademarked The Word

The people who coined the word, it seems, were the Word War II-era marketers at, of all companies, Alcoa.  And through the 1980s and '90s, there were at least five books with "Imagineering" in the title. Here's the story of the word and how Disney co-opted it. - Tedium

The New Energy Behind Street Dance

“Dancing is a form of escapism for some of us,” Diamond Hardiman, a 28-year-old dancer from Chicago, tells me. “So it’s about being real and honest, yes. But at the end of the day it’s also about being tough. You know, like, solid. And being free.” - Mic

More Inflammatory Opinions From David Mamet (About Theater, Not Just Politics)

"What play did you ever see that's changed your life? That's not the purpose of theatre." "Acting has nothing in the world to do with feelings. Zero. ... What I'm looking for in an actor is the knowledge and courage to stand still and say the stupid fucking words." - American Theatre

How Ukraine’s Most Prominent Novelist Is Recording The War

“I think everybody should do what he can do best for the country. The snipers should kill the enemy. The singers should sing for the soldiers and the refugees. What I can do is write and tell things, and that is what I am doing.” - The New York Times

If We Described Someone As “A Vocal Figure Skater”, Whom Would You Picture?  Probably Not Allan Clayton

You'd probably picture some winsome soprano singing the Queen of the Night and Zerbinetta, not a big, bearded tenor who sings Peter Grimes. But that's how composer Brett Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn describe Allan Clayton, for whom they wrote the title role in their Hamlet. - The New York Times

Director Guillermo del Toro: The Current State Of Movie-Making Is Unsustainable

“We are in the present losing more movies from the past faster than ever before. It seems like we aren’t, but the mere disappearance of physical media is already having corporations curating what we watch, faster for us." - IndieWire

“Linguistic Convergence” — Why Folks Tend To Start Mimicking The Speech Patterns Of The Folks They’ve Been Talking With

"People tend to converge toward the language they observe around them, whether it's copying word choices, mirroring sentence structures or mimicking pronunciations. ... In fact, people converge toward speech sounds they expect to hear – even if they never actually hear them." - The Conversation

Juilliard’s Dean Of Dance Has Been Shepherding Through Some Big Changes

"Four years ago, Alicia Graf Mack — a former star of Dance Theatre of Harlem and Alvin Ailey — took the reins of the dance division, with plans to usher in an altogether more diverse experience. The pandemic, alongside changing conversations around race and gender, shifted that evolution into high gear." - Vanity Fair

Looks Like Even France’s Film Industry Has Had Enough Of Roman Polanski

His career flourished there after he fled statutory rape charges in the US in 1973. But there was a huge backlash when he won three CĂ©sars for An Officer and a Spy in 2019, and he couldn't get French financing (and had trouble getting actors) for his latest film, The Palace. - Variety

Is That Long-Lost Painting The Italian Police Just Recovered Really A Titian?

The Carabinieri say so, but at least two prominent art professionals disagree: Titian scholar Andrea Donati ("sensationally wrong ... I cannot even see the shadow of Titian in this portrait") and art historian and former Italian culture minister Vittorio Sgarbi ("If that's a Titian, I'm Napoleon!"). - Smithsonian Magazine

“This Is No Longer A Magazine Company”, Says CondĂ© Nast’s CEO

Roger Lynch: "We have 70 million people who read our magazines, but 300-something million that interact with our websites every month and 450 million that interact with us on social media. Our audience is already telling us that's not the way they interact with us." (podcast with transcript) - The New York Times

“Saturday Night Live” Was A Sexual Harassment Hotbed

"Multiple former female staffers from the early aughts of the long-running sketch show described an environment that was routinely uncomfortable and at times unsafe. ... At worst, the environment was a space where they were objectified and often preyed upon." - Mic

Even As It Impresses The World, South Korea’s Film/TV Industry Is Struggling Domestically

"Insiders say the Korean film industry is facing a host of deeply rooted challenges that were only exacerbated during the pandemic, from the rise of streamers to widespread consolidation that has led to giant conglomerates dominating and squeezing out smaller, more adventurous releases." - The Hollywood Reporter

France Has A(nother) New Culture Minister

Rima Abdul Malak, who as a child fled with her family to France from the Lebanese Civil War, succeeds Roselyne Bachelot, who was in the position for only 22 months. (France has had 15 culture ministers in the past 30 years.) - The National (Abu Dhabi)

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