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A Documentary About Photographer Nan Goldin Wins The Golden Lion At Venice

Filmmaker Laura Poitras' All the Beauty and the Bloodshed takes home the top prize, rare for a documentary. "The film examines Goldin’s art, life and her activism in protesting the family and Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, for their roles in the opioid crisis." - The New York Times

A Kidnapped Goddess Returns To Italy

"More than 70 stolen antiquities, some more than 2,000 years old, were seized from collections in the U.S. and returned to their native countries of Italy and Egypt this week." And 27 of those were from the Metropolitan Museum of Art - which probably knew these goods were hot. - NPR

San Francisco Opera At 100

From modest beginnings in 1922, the company has grown and blossomed to become one of the preeminent organizations in American opera. - San Francisco Chronicle

The Internet Should Be Public Space. It’s Not. Time To De-Privatize?

There’s a lot of discussion today, including in Congress, about why parts of the web are so toxic and what to do about it—better content moderation? Updated monopoly laws?—but it seems that no one wants to say that the problem is that the web was commercialized in the first place. - The New Republic

The Tangled Strings Around Freedom Of Speech

Free speech requires a robust exchange of views without the coercion of threats and violence, and self-censorship in response to social pressure is a genuine risk. Yet by definition, there is no free speech if one person is allowed to make an argument and another is not allowed to object to it. - The Atlantic

Why We Need To Think About Science Literacy In A Different Way

Several lines of contemporary scholarship emphasize what might be gained by moving from a focus on science education to a focus on reciprocal power-sharing, cooperation, and exchange between researchers and citizens. - Boston Review

Messy City, Clean City: The Tension That Makes London London

This distinction between the messy and the neat, the organic and the planned, helps us understand why London so often dislikes modern buildings. Modern architecture is often plain, clean, formal — it disrupts and diminishes London’s brouhaha of shapes and styles. - The Critic

Reconsidering Gauguin (In Fiction)

Daisy Lafarge’s debut novel, Paul, takes a unique approach to an ongoing question: How, in the age of the #MeToo movement, should we interact with the work of men like Paul Gauguin? - The Atlantic

Could Climate Change Wipe Out Australia’s Summer Outdoor Theatre Scene?

"As the climate becomes more unpredictable, and extreme heat, violent storms and bushfire smoke more common, Australian producers are being forced to grapple with their effects on their casts, crews, audiences and financial bottom line." - ArtsHub (Australia)

A Life Well-Lived: Remembering Lars Vogt

Vogt brought people together in many places and on many levels: at his Spannungen festival in Heimbach, Germany, which became a musical home for a generation of musicians and listeners; for children with his Rhapsody in School project; with his two orchestras; and with audiences from the stage. - Van

How Do You Revive Bob Fosse’s “Dancin'” Without Bob Fosse?

Choreographer Christine Colby Jacques and director Wayne Cilento, who both were in the original 1978 production, are re-creating (a word Colby Jacques doesn't like) the revue this year.  The challenge: the '78 Broadway staging was never videotaped, and there's not much footage from elsewhere, either. - Dance Magazine

How Today’s Billionaires Distort And Impede Things We Care About

The great fortunes of today's robber-barons have a vast, distorting influence on our society, bending our most urgent projects away from evidence-based policy and towards the pet theories of billionaire dilettantes. - Pluralistic

This One Cool Trick Gets Completely Intact Language Past China’s Censoring Software

That software, like the rest of the government of the People's Republic, uses Mandarin Chinese.  It doesn't read Cantonese. - Quartz

Inside Riccardo Muti’s Relationship With The Chicago Symphony

“You are the last orchestra and the most important orchestra where I have been music director. Your memory will accompany me in my heart to the end of my life. You, Chicago, are the Symphony of my heart. Grazie.” - New City

The Premiere Of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass”: An Oral History

"Lenny was feverishly finishing music even as the premiere was approaching. I remember hearing that Alvin Ailey would be waiting for the next piece of music that would involve dance so that they could rush to put it together." - MSN (The Washington Post)

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