"The beloved Samir Mansour Bookshop was destroyed on Tuesday by an Israeli airstrike. The shop, which was established in 2008, had thousands of books, including the largest collection of English literature in Gaza, and was also part of a publishing house that focused on Palestinian writers." Israel claimed the strike's purpose was to destroy Hamas tunnels. - LitHub
Congrats to Italy's Måneskin. But yikes to the UK (which, technically, is no longer in Europe anyway?). "The UK's James Newman came last, getting zero points from both the jury and the public. - BBC
Let the Long Beach Opera show you. "Guests have the choice of watching this production “tailgate-style” or from inside their automobiles. The action occurs throughout a parking structure with multiple screens projected live on big screens." Safe, and very Southern California as well. - Los Angeles Times
U.S. arts organizations are still waiting for that cultural institution money to flow. "Business owners are wary of the promise after weeks of delay and confusion over the initiative, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, which many had cheered as a lifeline. Each day applicants vent their frustrations on an online forum, regularly polling one another on whether any applications have yet been...
The organization Friends of Notre Dame de Paris is letting the public donate directly to sponsor some of the cathedral’s individual artifacts. To date, 10 artworks have been fully funded, all of them sculptures, at around $10,000 each. - Artnet
"The film puts us on remarkably intimate terms with the gargantuan organism that is the Met and the many tasks that keep it running. We wander through back hallways and empty galleries, in and out of conservation labs, privy to recent (unannounced) discoveries beneath the surface of a familiar masterpiece." - The New York Times
If approved by the D.C. Council, Reginald Van Lee will lead an 18-member board that critics describe as dysfunctional, toxic and beset by cronyism and white supremacy, according to internal documents and reports and interviews with 14 people associated with the commission. A partner agency of the National Endowment of the Arts, the commission awarded 1,044 grants worth $29.9...
"As the field’s most famous practitioner, and a dedicated anti-racist and feminist, Mary Beard takes a middle position: she believes neither that classics deserves a pedestal nor that it must be destroyed. Recently, in conversation, Beard defended her stance—and spoke about feminist translations, Internet manners, and the fluid properties of the canon." - The New Yorker
"The technology is related to deepfaking, which uses AI to paste one person's face onto someone else. … It involves capturing the facial expressions and movements of an actor in a scene as well as someone speaking the same lines in another language. This information is then combined to create a 3D model that merges the actor's face and...
"We urbanites, who dwell in the medium of public political discussion, also live in the element of opinion. Leo Strauss loved to intimate that a few of us could instead live in the element of knowledge, as if he were hanging up a shingle that read ‘Secrets, this way!’ The irony of saying such a thing in public is...
Kalamandalam Gopi, who's about to turn 84, has been studying and performing the dance-drama form from the Indian state of Kerala for 70 years, taught generations of performers, and set new standards in the genre's stage makeup, gestures, and use of facial expressions. To celebrate his 80th birthday, he chose to perform one of the most demanding roles in...
"Joseph Epstein once wrote that “Of the seven deadly sins, only envy is no fun at all.” He must have been talking about the telecom chief executives. Envy is the driving force behind their explorations — and the reason their efforts repeatedly fail. They are almost always envious of the success of Internet-based companies. They hated Google for making...
"This project takes formal cues from lensed images. It's styled as an episode of Real Housewives run amok, and the team cites French surrealist film, the photography of Man Ray, and the melodramas of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Douglas Sirk as major inspirations." - The New York Times
With VR evolving at its current rate, movie nights or game nights could eventually turn into cyber nights, a new norm for those under 35. Games would no longer need to be marketed towards one group or identity, and would enable a more casual audience to approach virtual worlds without the traditional complexities. For more experienced audiences, this would...
