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8-Year-Old Complains About NPR’s Lack Of Dinosaur Coverage

"My name is Leo and I am 8 years old. I listen to All Things Considered in the car with mom. I listen a lot. I never hear much about nature or dinosaurs or things like that. Maybe you should call your show Newsy things Considered, since I don't get to hear about all the things. Or please talk...

Canadian Artists Debate Universal Basic Income

“If we artists had a basic income, that stress and fear over basic necessities would no longer weigh over our heads and we could be much more productive. It would help grow the economy, because when people have the means to do more than just get by, they put more back into the economy.” - The Tyee

Long Overdue: Breaking Gender Norms In Ballet

Christopher Rudd’s creation is the first romantic same-sex pas de deux in ABT’s history, and one of the first—if not the first—to celebrate queer lust so explicitly in ballet. Such a feat, while to be applauded, is long overdue for a world in which more than half of the men who perform in and champion the artform are members...

Why This Afghan-Born Poet Is ‘The Father Of Uzbek Literature’

Alisher Navoiy was born in 1441 in Herat, now in Afghanistan but historically a Persianate city. He wrote in Arabic, Persian, and Chagatai, the Turkic literary language used all over Central Asia in the Middle Ages and considered the ancestor of modern literary Uzbek. In one of his most famous treatises, he compared Persian (with a centuries-old literary tradition...

When Keith Urban And Nicole Kidman Went To The Opera (The Police Were Called)

It started with a standing ovation. "At this point, allegedly, the gentleman swatted Academy award-winning Kidman with his program, prompting Urban to accuse the man of assaulting his wife. Quick as a flash, Urban summoned his burly security to escort the couple and Kidman’s mum out of the audience, while Opera House security were sent in to retrieve the...

George Washington Carver Wasn’t Just A Food Scientist, He Was A Gifted Painter

In fact, he was a very promising art student, excelling at plants in particular, but a professor who worried that he couldn't support himself as an artist suggested he go into botany — and the rest is history. His career came full circle: one of the 300 uses he came up with for peanuts was to make inexpensive paints....

Central, Eastern European Governments Take Aim At Museums

Hungary, Poland, and now Slovenia are assembling and executing a “playbook” to shift cultural institutions to the right. Often, the rhetoric around this has blended fears of anti-communism with populist, nationalist, anti-immigrant, and, in some cases, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. In the process, political memory has become a flashpoint in Europe’s so-called culture war. - Artnet

How’s New York’s Dance World Navigating A Year Of Pandemic? Better Than They’d Feared

"As they announce plans for the spring and summer — mostly digital, garnished with a little outdoors and in-person — many New York dance presenters spoke in recent interviews about what they've been up to and how the pandemic has changed their business. … Even without box-office revenue, most have continued paying artists, sometimes with no expectation of any...

Composer Anthony Davis At 70

Awards don’t help us quantify these qualities, but for a composer who burst onto the operatic scene so spectacularly with X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X at the New York City Opera in 1986, it’s an acknowledgement of his eminence in a world, classical music, that has usually struggled to deal honestly with Black musicians and Black...

Last Summer, Museums Made Promises About Diversity. What Are They Actually Doing?

"Many workers regarded it as a positive step this summer when numerous leading institutions released detailed diversity, equity, and inclusion issues (DEI) plans. But more than six months later, employees are still waiting for progress reports. Artnet News surveyed more than a dozen museums across the country, none of which agreed to share the full amount of money they...

The Comedy Industry’s Alt-Right Problem

"The mobs that descended on Washington, D.C., last month have intellectual roots in many places, going back to the bloody beginnings of this country. But they also have roots in specific areas of modern culture, including Facebook, BuzzFeed, and the increasingly online world of comedy. All the forces that incubated the rioters are still there, unchanged, chugging along as...

New National Museum Of African-American Music Open In Nashville

"The museum tells a chronological story of Black music starting in the 1600s through present day and framed around major cultural movements including the music and instruments brought by African slaves, the emergence of blues through the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights movement. … And while there are museums around the country that focus on...

Flory Jagoda, Living Storehouse Of Sephardic Song, Dead At 97

"A Bosnian-born guitarist and accordionist, brought the traditional ballads of her Sephardic ancestors and the melodies of the Ladino language to American audiences through performances and recordings." - The Washington Post

Paramount Battles Truman Capote Estate For Right To Remake ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’

"Paramount has a screenplay for a new movie, according to court papers. But Alan Schwartz, Trustee of the Truman Capote Literary Trust, has been shopping a television series, and has gotten seven-figure offers from multiple interested buyers. Early last year, both sides pursued settlement with the idea that Paramount would be involved in the TV production, but in May,...

New L.A. Arts Recovery Fund Has $38.5 Million For Small And Midsize Nonprofits

"The J. Paul Getty Trust initiated the fund, to be officially announced Tuesday, and the California Community Foundation is administering it. Struggling arts organizations with an annual operating budget of under $10 million prior to the pandemic are eligible to apply for unrestricted funds that can go toward programming or operating expenses such as rent, utilities and staff compensation...

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