Owning a disputed, possibly wildly valuable, art work is a cruel test of any person’s aesthetic values, basic reason, and innate (often well-disguised) capacity for greed. Close your eyes and there are millions of dollars hanging on the wall. Open them, and there is nothing to see. - The New Yorker
Historical stagecraft expert Wendy Waszut-Barrett paints backdrops and wing pieces with the same material that European craftsmen used four centuries ago: distemper paint, made simply of pigment and glue. Here's a report on how she fabricates and deploys the paint and on the advantages it offers. - Early Music America
These groups may indeed be performing the most innovative composers. But what is also emerging is a much more heightened gravitational pull of music to money. This has meant that for composers to survive they’ve become much more fiercely competitive. - Ludwig Van
"(He was) a founder of the so-called Group of 5, norm-shattering Swiss directors who helped drive a new form of national cinema. His best-known films tended toward a stark neorealism, laced with incisive dialogue and an arid wit, and often centered on characters struggling against conformity." - The New York Times
Using Yunchan’s Rach 3 video for comparison, these numbers put the Van Cliburn competition viewership well above some of the biggest television show premieres in history. - Ludwig Van
"After spending the past few years teasing its literary ambitions and acquiring the audiobook platform Findaway for $119 million, Spotify has formally launched its audiobooks business as an à la carte model that will allow users to purchase and download individual audiobooks." - The Hollywood Reporter
PNB is a vastly different company now than it was in 1972: More than 50% of its dancers self-identify as people of color (up from 27% 10 years ago) and the company’s repertoire has morphed into a smorgasbord as heavy on contemporary dance and modernist ballets as it is on old favorites. - Seattle Times
Kazu Hiro, who turned Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill and Bradley Cooper into Leonard Bernstein: "I hate to see 'This actor is unrecognisable.' It's so easy to make someone unrecognisable. The point is how the makeup represents this character. What we are doing is part of the storytelling." - The Guardian
Our current debates about disinformation and the pernicious effects of social media could be rather more productive if the participants would bother to read Lippmann—not because Lippmann provides any workable solutions, but because his analysis of the extent of the problem is so clear-eyed. - The Bulwark
Other winners included a study of why ducklings swim in a straight line formation (the physics prize), research on ritual enemas in Mayan pottery (the art history prize), and developing an algorithm to help gossips decide when to tell the truth and when to lie (the peace prize). - Ars Technica
The German capital's ethnological museum has started displaying videos or modern copies of the works it has returned to the countries from which they were taken during the colonial era. Is that enough? Or is it just whitewashing? - The Guardian
"Like the classic 19th-century ballets that display massed ranks of identically costumed, identically moving dancers, the rituals have shown us many military units from Britain and the Commonwealth moving with the kind of as-one-being synchronicity that is the dream of ballet directors the world over." - The New York Times
With the queen's death and the ascension of a new king (who won't have time for all the causes he supported as Prince of Wales), organizations are anxiously trying to line up new royal patrons. Here's an explainer about why this is felt to be so important. - The New York Times
The Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia printed an article this weekend quoting Allen saying that his next movie (his 50th) would be his last; on Monday, his representative denied it to Indie Wire. But Allen has definitely said that he does not find making movies for streaming fun. - The Hollywood Reporter
"Salman al-Nabahin unearthed the mosaic pavement, thought to date from the fifth to the seventh century AD, six months ago while working in his olive orchard in Bureij refugee camp, about half a mile from the border with Israel." - Reuters
