Stories

The sketches below the surface show all the ways it could have gone wrong. - The Observer (UK)

Serious choreographers, pandemic, cruise ship? Yes: "The creative team has plunged into the challenges of making a work at sea as part of a large corporate enterprise." - The New York Times

And cultural workers need the money, and purpose: "Creative jobs dropped 53% between late 2019 and mid 2020, recovering only halfway since then, and the prolonged pandemic continues to threaten re-openings of art spaces." - Hyperallergic

Six point one million dollars says he did not (and a company that owns the rights to his likeness also did not). - The New York Times

Imagination, hard work, and a big dose of luck propelled Richard Antoine White's career, he says. - Baltimore Sun

"It is hard to get perspective on your surroundings when your face is being ground into the dirt, or as Van Peebles might have put it, when the Man’s foot is stuck in your ass." - The Atlantic

The prize was supposed to be populist, but now, and for the past few years, it seems to be idealist instead. " The traditional criteria for judging the prize... seem to be out of the window. - The Guardian (UK)

After trying for a month, "more than 100 young artists, teachers and their relatives affiliated with the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, a celebrated school that became a target of the Taliban," finally escaped, heading for Portugal. - The New York Times

And we can even find it pleasurable - once the cravings for instant responses from our phones wear off. - Psyche

Smith, who backed Gladys Knight and Dionne Warwick, formed his own quartet, and collaborated with hundreds of others, said the organ was "sunshine, rainbows, the rain, the wind, the storm, the flowers. ... It’s like sitting in a spaceship and you don’t know where you’re going." - Washington Post

"If you see 45 gestures, made independently, strung together with various musicality and rhythms, against a beautiful song, and then the same gestures juxtaposed to a speech about civil rights, are they the same gestures? And I say they are and they are not." - Time

For this to work, "museums need to acknowledge NFTs as a natural step in the evolution of contemporary art in sync with our digitally driven lives, whose emergence has only been catalysed by the pandemic." - Hyperallergic

The Romanian "embodied an ideal of the complete musician in his roles as composer, virtuoso violinist and pianist, conductor, teacher and generous mentor to younger artists." And the country attracted 32 orchestras from 14 countries for the 25th Enescu Fest. - The New York Times

Can adding 21 members, six of whom are Black, solve the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's PR issues? "While some within the organization believe that the Globes could still be resurrected for 2022, many outside the group ... remain skeptical that it is truly committed to change." - Los Angeles Times

"After only one show, Aladdin was paused again because COVID-19 cases were detected within the company." Testing allowed the show to resume for one more performance before multiple new positive tests led to a two-week shutdown. - CBS