Maria Kochitkova left the San Francisco Ballet in 2018 to go freelance. Her career was going well; she had bookings out for many months. Then came March 2020. Everything - everything - was canceled. She and her ballet dancer partner "changed our living room into a studio space and bought a special floor and a ballet barre. I am...
The designer of Black Panther, Selma, Dolemite Is my Name, Malcolm X is the first Black costume designer (and second costume designer ever) to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Eddie Murphy: "I’ve never had a wardrobe designer whose clothes actually influence how you play your character — how you walk, how you stand. She...
It's not easy for any of us. "More information isn’t always a good thing, particularly when it’s an overload of unwanted (even predatory) (mis)information." And the designers of search engines use keywords that, to put it mildly, don't always work for humans who aren't the search engine designers. But new apps may give some hope. - Slate
A young Australian potter thought she'd always be known to other people as "the cancer girl." But her popularity on TikTok has changed that understanding - and her life - dramatically. "Sherritt has gained half a million followers on TikTok by hosting a wildly successful series from her Ballarat art shed, where every week she makes a new piece from a...
As her movie Never Rarely Sometimes Always - a quiet but hair-raising quest movie about two 17-year-olds from Pennsylvania going to New York to obtain an abortion - teeters on the verge of awards nominations, director Eliza Hittman called out at least one Academy voter who refused to watch the movie. She wrote in a (now-deleted) Instagram caption, "This...
How does that work? With a lot of human effort, and at a mind-blowing pace of 3500 books per day. "Clean, dry human hands are the best way to turn pages." - Open Culture
Behind the new movie The United States vs. Billie Holiday stands a lot of history - and playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. Parks: "Jimmy Fletcher is literally, actually an agent for the United States and she falls in love with him. To me, this is all about how we love this country and it dismisses us, and how for Black people,...
Waldman's parents survived WWII and the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and "his career in some ways reflected his multinational upbringing and his sense of music as a lifeline in a turbulent world." - The New York Times
"We can make music online and everything, but it's not the same as being onstage together." But there are benefits - like practicing in Golden Gate Park, having extra time with kids at home, and filming themselves running in from gardening to perform the William Tell Overture, or performing in a gorilla mask, for an online audience. - KTVU...
Nature photography means what - Ansel Adams? The National Geographic's contests and covers? Or ... the nature that's around us all of the time in cities, in parking lots, in the area between apartment buildings, the in-between spaces where plants, bugs, birds, rodents, and some humans thrive? "Working within predominantly Black neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Los Angeles and her home...
The year of no movie theatres meant the year of no blockbusters; most have been pushed off for a year or more, and that's ... just fine? Justin Chang: "If the Oscars should go forward this year — and I think they should — then surely they should reflect that precarious new reality. They should also call for a...
The executive order, which the former president signed "in December after losing his bid for re-election, was titled 'Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,' and it praised Greco-Roman architecture as being 'beautiful” while describing modernist designs as 'ugly and inconsistent.'" - The New York Times
The researchers found that if kept at 30% capacity with everyone wearing a mask and following proper precautions, museums, theaters, and operas are safer than any other activity studied. In museums, the R-value stands at 0.5 compared to 0.6 in hair salons and 0.8 in public transportation. - Hyperallergic
“Consultants are hired to tell museums the truth,” says Adrienne Horn, the president of Museum Management Consultants and a former executive board member for the American Association of Museums. But a series of missteps and hollow promises from institutions that have relied on third-party advice are bringing new scrutiny to the influx of for-profit strategies in a nonprofit world....
