Sophia Kim, former comptroller for the Kirov Academy in Washington, D.C., "gambled with funds she was overseeing as the academy’s comptroller. Over nine months in 2018, investigators say, Ms. Kim wrote checks to herself and used her academy bank card 120 times to withdraw cash and pay off losses at the MGM Grand Casino near her home in Temple...
"Art NFTs put me in mind of film auteur Werner Herzog’s distinction between the 'truth of accountants' and 'ecstatic truth.' NFT mavens wax lyrical about the 'authenticity' of these tokens as if they are trading a semi-divine quality, yet the authenticity encoded by an NFT is the same kind encoded by a transaction number on a credit card statement....
When artist Tabitha Soren had her third child, a friend suggested she photograph the experience. "Time can turn photographs into metaphor or allow them to become a symbol instead of a documentary picture; at this particular moment, mothers’ needs are on the minds of the country.  is about what mothers don’t show: the emotions and psychological states that we’ve all...
On the 10K Mount Scorluzzo in Italy, "the Austro-Hungarian soldiers who occupied those barracks were fighting Italian troops in what became known as the White War. There in the Alps — removed from the more famous Western Front, a site of bloody trench warfare between Germany and France — troops climbed to precarious heights in the stinging cold to...
Like the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, NY's City Artist Corps is a relief program that "will pay hundreds of local artists to beautify and activate public spaces across the city with murals, public artworks, performances, and more." - Hyperallergic
Instead of the whiff of noblesse oblige and platitudes about the uplifting nature of classical music, this is about working together. "The key phrases when Bandwagon 2 was announced last month were the desire to 'center the voices of our partners' and 'utilize the Philharmonic’s resources to amplify the work of our collaborators.' In less fancy terms, the orchestra...
When the show premiered, it wasn't the beloved Big Bird and Elmo experience that people think of today. "In 1969, Sesame Street unveils and there is a African American couple who live in the same neighborhood with their white neighbors — yes, with Big Bird and several other Muppets — but it's a very integrated cast. The first time this ...
First there were reports that Noel Clarke, who played Mickey from 2005-2010 on the Doctor Who reboot, was a serial sexual harasser and bully. Now come reports that John Barrowman of Doctor Who and Torchwood repeatedly exposed himself on both sets. - The Guardian (UK)
But nothing can replace the live experience. "Call it immediacy or authenticity, unpredictability or uniqueness, but it’s part of the reason people pay more to attend a single concert than they will to purchase the entire recorded works of the same musician." Live streaming theatre, though, is tricky. - Irish Times
Some of the nation's top (male) artists are unhappy about the lack of drawing classes, bemoaning the lack of compulsory drawing classes at the Royal College of Art, Slade, and other art schools. Apparently, one says, "You now have people who are more interested in conceptual art – which is actually what you do if you can’t draw." -...
Price, inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, had his first big rhythm and blues hit with "Lawdy Miss Clawdy" in 1952. "Nicknamed Mr. Personality after his most recognizable hit, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard singles chart in 1959, Mr. Price found success with Black and white audiences alike. He was a prolific...
Fraud - and 8.5 million (Eight. Point. Five. Million.) bot comments secretly created by ISPs to urge against net neutrality. To be fair, there were millions of other fake comments, but according to the New York Attorney General's report, "the astroturfing effort by the broadband industry stood out because it used real people's names without their consent, with third-party firms...
