Philip Kennicott: "The whole drama, the body language, the flags and the onslaught, was borrowed from other dramas — genuine displays of revolutionary fervor against autocrats, authentic acts protesting illegitimate governments. But was a charade. Not civic or selfless, but corrosive, destructive and illegal. … One moment in today's appalling mayhem was telling. As they filed through Statuary...
"Three weeks before trial, Montague used a jailhouse telephone to record a rap verse, which was then uploaded to Instagram. , the State of Maryland introduced the telephone recording of the lyrics as evidence of Montague's guilt, and was convicted and sentenced to a combined fifty years . Maryland's highest court … affirmed conviction, finding that...
"Arts workers in the NHS, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, actor Michael Balogun and theatre company 20 Stories High are among those recognised in this year's The Stage 100 list, which has been reimagined to celebrate the industry's response to the pandemic." - The Stage
"At 84, the billionaire François Pinault will finally realise a 20-year plan to build a private museum for his contemporary art collection in Paris. France's third-richest man is poised to open the Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection just two blocks away from the Musée du Louvre on 23 January — as long as pandemic restrictions allow." - The Art Newspaper
"Commentators on pro-government television chatshows threatened to pull the statue down if it was erected, and compared it to putting up a monument to Adolf Hitler. Others laughed that it was an absurdity given there are few black people in Budapest. … Notably, most pro-government coverage neglected to note that the statue will only be a two-week installation,...
The goal is to assess the country’s landscape of public memory in a time when our shared identity as Americans feels strained, if not broken. Then we can begin to understand where we go from here, says Monument Lab cofounder and director Paul Farber. - Philadelphia Inquirer
"When it comes to the arts program specialists, I and several of my former colleagues found it to be a space that causes fear of retaliation, targeting and silencing, and where leadership lacks accountability." - Hyperallergic
Since being named to the position in 1985, Tomasson, 78, has been hailed for his success at combining excellence in the classical ballet repertoire with a spirit of artistic innovation and the development of new work. Tomasson alone has created more than 50 dances for the company, as well as commissioning work from a wide range of contemporary masters...
A plan piloted by Swedish national innovation body Vinnova and design think tank ArkDes focuses attention on what Dan Hill, Vinnova’s director of strategic design, calls the “one-minute city.” It’s a order of magnitude smaller than other recent think-local planning conceits. While Paris works with a 15-minute radius and Barcelona’s superblocks with nine-block chunks of the city, Sweden’s project operates at the single...
"For some, state governments stepped up and provided support. But the message to artists from the federal government was: you are not important to the national agenda, and therefore we can –and will – ignore you." - ArtsHub
The Emmys and Tonys give their Best Choreography trophies without the TV cameras running; the Oscars don't even have a category for dancemakers, and the credits for music videos these days often don't bother to mention them. With popular TV shows like So You Think You Can Dance making some choreographers famous, it's time for the rest of the...
The pandemic has forced arts institutions on both sides of the Atlantic to swiftly up their online game. The New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet usually hold a big benefit event and a backstage tour for donors after a Christmas Saturday matinee of The Nutcracker. This time Tiler Peck, principal dancer, gave an online tour...
The Peabody- and Pulitzer-winning audio series lost much of its luster (and gave up its awards) when its primary subject was revealed to be a big ol' liar fabulist. Media columnist Nicholas Quah considers how the flawed material got past editors in the first place, what consequences have been suffered by the main people involved, and the complications the...
A cow sporting VR goggles is comedic as much as it is tragic. There’s horror, too, in that it may foretell our own alienated futures. After all, how different is our experience? We submit to emotion trackers. We log into biofeedback machines. We sign up for tracking and tracing. We let advertisers’ eyes watch us constantly and mappers store...
The Sumerians had cuneiform and the Egyptians hieroglyphics, both complex and difficult to master, but who developed the system where each character represents a particular sound and the characters (letters) can be combined to form words the way sounds are? The Phoenicians invented the alphabet from which all the European and Near Eastern scripts (and possibly those of India...
