The state legislature voted to scrap the state's official song. Why? "The pro-Confederate Civil War-era tune features lyrics that denigrate Abraham Lincoln as a 'tyrant' and call on Maryland to join the South in fighting 'the Northern scum.' Penned in 1861 and set to the melody of 'O Tannenbaum,' it has been blasted by critics as racist and an embarrassment to...
The greatest imaginative challenge seems to be foreseeing which changes will arrive sooner than expected (computers outplaying chess grandmasters), and which will be surprisingly slow (flying cars). The tech-world saying is that people chronically overestimate what technology can do in a year, and underestimate what it can do in a decade and beyond. - The New York Times
The effort, dubbed the Hollywood Skyway, would have cost the studio an estimated $100 million. The tramway would have taken visitors on a six-minute ride more than 1 mile up the back of Mt. Lee to a new visitors center near the sign, with pathways to a viewing area. - Los Angeles Times
Across Canada, indie opera companies are making the art form cool again; daring and provocative again. Pre-pandemic, the collective mass of these companies was on the verge of something truly special: making opera mainstream, something to be wafted over a crowded pub, or poured out freely in church basements and makeshift venues coast to coast. - CBC
The debate has grown heated in recent weeks, pitting museum against museum, and forcing the association — which serves as the industry’s referee and moral watchdog — to postpone talks about extending the change indefinitely. - The New York Times
"In one camp, translators argue that the issue is representation in the field, not whether a white translator is incapable of translating an author of a different background. Another contingent believes the incident signals a threatening policing of who is eligible to translate, a step closer to a world where the validity of one’s experience and ideas is contingent...
The act and the art of translation requires the permission to transcend borders, the permission to make mistakes, and the permission to be repeated, by anyone who feels the tempestuous tug, and the clarion call, of the unfamiliar. To rein in such liberty through categories and compartments that imprison our creativity is a disservice to the human imagination. -...
Being that the South has been open to the rest of the world while the North has been sealed off for seven decades, the Korean spoken on the two sides of the DMZ is rather different. South Korea's Unification Ministry has been hoping that an "inter-Korean dictionary" — launched in 2005 and currently getting a new push from Seoul...
For the first time ever, subscriptions to streaming services surpassed one billion, reaching 1.1 billion globally. At the same time, box office receipts plummeted because movie theaters across the world were closed for a significant part of 2020. Global ticket sales tapped out at $12 billion, with North America accounting for $2.2 billion of that haul. (2019 saw $42...
"In 1960 Peter Hall created a theatrical revolution. He turned a summer Shakespeare festival in Stratford-on-Avon into a year-round enterprise based on a permanent ensemble, a second home in London and a mix of classical and contemporary work. But it wasn't until 20 March 1961 that the whole enterprise was given the name we know today. … Sixty years...
"We are treating the event as an active movie set, with specially designed testing cadences to ensure up-to-the-minute results, including an on-site COVID safety team with PCR testing capability. There will be specific instructions for those of you traveling in from outside of Los Angeles, and other instructions for those of you who are already based in Los Angeles."...
"When IKEA canceled its beloved print catalog last year, it hinted at plans to venture into new formats to better reach an increasingly internet-dependent customer base." And so it did: "Published on Spotify, Audible, and YouTube, the IKEA Audio Catalog is essentially a quippy version of its 288-page product book." But can you really use it to shop without...
A new report looks at the balance sheets of the country's arts organizations. Community and theatre organizations fared the best, while museums and symphony orchestras had negative bottom lines. - SMU Data Arts
"In the first two articles in the series, we looked at the streaming industry's revenues, how they're shared out between the music we listen to and how we choose that music. This week, we're going to look at who ultimately receives the money — and at how the industry could or should change." - Bachtrack
Until his death, Levine was perhaps the music world’s most staggering living testament to the dangers of genius-worship culture. That culture nourished his ascent and enabled his alleged serial sexual abuse of young men, whom he had the power to make or break. - Boston Globe
