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Vice Media Wants To Sell Itself Off — In Pieces, If Necessary

"Several buyers have expressed preliminary interest in acquiring Vice outright, ... (though) it also is exploring options to sell the company in parts."  Just five years ago, Vice Media was valued at $5.7 billion; its failed IPO last year was valued at $3 billion, a price it wouldn't get now. - CNBC

New York City Removes All Regulations On Sotheby’s, Christie’s, And Other Auction Houses

Now the city won't even require auction houses to be licensed, let alone disclose such things as whether they have financial interests in the items they're auctioning. The change is part of a broader package passed by the City Council to help businesses recover post-pandemic. - The New York Times

Dave Chappelle Physically Attacked While Onstage At The Hollywood Bowl

"Footage showed someone running on stage and tackling Chappelle during his performance at the Netflix Is a Joke festival ... on Tuesday night. ...Chappelle, 48, was apparently unharmed and returned to the stage to finish his set." - The Guardian

The Physical (And Spiritual) Power Of The Vibrations From A Single Musical Note

Though horribly abused and exploited by various New Age fads over the years, the old intuition still holds: vibrations reveal a lot about life, consciousness and the integrity of matter. - The Spectator

If America Didn’t Already Have Public Libraries, We’d Never Invent Them Today

I can imagine the internet hot take: Why punish people who can afford to buy books by making them free to read for everyone? Or: Government giveaways: why we shouldn’t let people who can afford books read them for free. - Chicago Tribune

The Essential Problem When Writing About Music

As far as I can tell, most writing about music is built on analogies and cliches. This is understandable; you can’t describe music literally because it wouldn’t give an accurate representation of what it is you’re hearing. - 3 Quarks Daily

How James Corden Turned His Show Into A Social Media Phenomenon And Changed Late Night

"What James Corden has done incredibly well is to leverage this TV content, and amplify it with social media to create fame." - BBC

Polish Government Replaces Museum Director For One More Ideologically Aligned

“I am not going to get rid of the conceptual art that was acquired for the collection and is exhibited. But I intend to diversify the offer, introduce other narratives. No one said that you should only deal with pro-environmental, gender, or queer art that is promoted by the Western cultural institutions.” - ARTnews

These Are The Books School Districts Are Being Forced To Ban

The United States is facing an unprecedented wave of schoolbook banning. PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for freedom of expression, tallied 1,586 book bans in schools over the past nine months, targeting 1,145 books. - Washington Post

Statue Of Pioneering Native American Ballerina Stolen, Hacked Up, And Sold For Scrap Metal

The bronze sculpture of Marjorie Tallchief was part of a monument at the Tulsa Historical Society honoring the "Five Moons," American Indian women from Oklahoma who became renowned ballerinas during the mid-20th century. The thieves sold the cut-up bronze to a recycling center for $250. - MSN (The Washington Post)

Do Arts Non-Profits Do Things Backwards?

Solving the external problem has to come first. Then a good nonprofit strategizes the second part. Good faith efforts require that to happen in that order. Sadly, almost all nonprofit arts organizations – at best – try to do this in reverse order. - Alan Harrison

So-Called “Wicked Bible” Or “Adulterers’ Bible” Turns Up In New Zealand

The 1631 printing of the King James Bible gets its nicknames, and its fame, from a typo: the printers omitted the word "not" from the Seventh Commandment, rendering it "Thou shalt commit adultery." Only about 20 copies now remain; this is the first discovered in the Southern Hemisphere. - The Guardian

Are Big Stars Still A Draw On Broadway?

You bet. The relationship an audience has to a Broadway star is all the more intense for being in-person. Knowing a body in space, the parabolas of certain gestures, the side angles of expressions, the timbre of a wisecrack, the mood of a certain strut lend an illusion of kinship. - Los Angeles Times

Immersive Van Gogh Shows Are Old Hat. The New Hotness Is Immersive “Bridgerton” Experiences

"The Queen's Ball: A 'Bridgerton' Experience" is one of several costume parties quasi-theatrical pop-up events based on famous media franchises (Star Wars and Game of Thrones, for instance) to materialize recently in downtown spaces left vacant in the wake of COVID. Kriston Capps pays a visit. - Bloomberg CityLab

Something New In Hollywood: The 50-Something Female Lead

It’s been a slow burn, but Hollywood is finally recognizing a trend corporate America long ago seized upon: The spending power of the 50-something woman. This is the largest demographic, according to a 2018 Forbes report, earning annual salaries of over $100,000. - New York Post

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