The spokesperson said in a statement: "We can confirm that the artwork at the end of 'The Outlaws' was an original Banksy, and that Christopher Walken painted over that artwork during the filming of this scene, ultimately destroying it." - CNN
If spending this kind of money on something as flimsy as a JPEG seems absurd, recall that collectors have bought empty space, a closed gallery, and a duct-taped banana. The fine art world hasn’t been held back by such concerns. - Wired
We leave it to you to speculate on which direction St. Peter will send him for that, but his work did spark enormous changes in American arts and intellectual life — not least through the riotous 1975 colloquium "Schizo-Culture" he organized at Columbia. - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
As projections of nuclear fear themselves recede into memory, new fears (of global warming, environmental collapse) have come to replace them, locating such films within the wider context of apocalypse culture. This suggests that we have indeed entered an age of complacence. - PopMatters
Not, in this case, the early-20th-century American genre of variety show. This is 19th-century Parisian vaudeville: popular boulevard comedies depicting simply drawn characters from the bourgeoisie — and sometimes including sharp social satire, as during the cholera outbreak of 1832. - The Public Domain Review
Charles Blow: "Perhaps no other word of the moment is so under attack as “woke,” a word born as a simple yet powerful way of saying, be aware of and alert to how racism is systemic and pervasive and suffuses American life." - The New York Times
"Actors in training get to try out different techniques and approaches, learning to develop a character through movement, script analysis, or emotional connection; they take classes honing their bodies and voices. In my MFA writing program, we got … workshop and some books." - Catapult
UATX’s founders for years have used their various platforms to bemoan the state of higher education and propose how to fix it. They’re about to get a crash course in the real-life challenges of the job. - The New Republic
Well, there's no point in trying to deny that some people have more natural aptitude. However, writes neuroscientist Gayle Doherty, everyone has the ability to feel and respond to rhythm and can, with some work, dance well enough to enjoy it. - The Conversation
Joshua Kosman: How long can an artistic culture survive and thrive on the work of the same circumscribed set of a dozen or so dead white European males? - San Francisco Chronicle
In the latest university rankings from Times Higher Education, the top two schools for arts and humanities in the world are, perhaps surprisingly, Stanford and MIT. TES Chief Knowledge Officer Phil Baty explains why, and why it matters. - World Economic Forum
According to this manifesto, it's "a tool for reimagining the past, present, and future. It makes scenarios real enough to feel possible, inspiring dialogue, interaction, and even policy changes." Actually, it's speculative fiction focusing on sustainable design ideas that aren't (yet) practicable. - World Economic Forum (Neste)
Is this a potential long-term income source or an big old asset bubble? Opinions differ, but the studios aren't letting even a short-term chance at monetizing their existing intellectual property slip by — and using yet another way to keep fans (literally) invested in their franchises. - Variety
The Wife of Willesden is an update to Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale," transferring the setting from a carriage carrying pilgrims to Canterbury to a group of 21st-century characters doing a pub crawl through the northwest London neighborhood where Smith grew up. - The New York Times
"After a two-year stalemate that sparked a feud with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra," — which cancelled several concerts this fall because of the standoff — "Strathmore has reached a tentative agreement with its unionized box office staff that extends their contract through June 2024." - MSN (The Washington Post)
