Pretty much, yes. "Downtown Christchurch isn’t empty because of COVID. It’s empty because of twin catastrophes: Ten years ago an earthquake leveled much of the city—and then the local and national government botched the rebuild, squandering a golden opportunity to transform Christchurch." Here's what happened. - Slate
Juliet Ames couldn't resist decorating her first salt box, back in December. Then she got permission from the city. "In the past two months, more than 100 of the decorated salt boxes have appeared around Baltimore, including more than 25 adorned by Ames herself. The boxes celebrate such iconic Baltimore figures as the filmmaker John Waters, the Natty Boh...
Small arts organizations got caught up in the massive trawler net of Facebook's rush to react to a new Australian law meant to generate funding for news organizations. "By the close of business on Thursday, over 300 arts organizations were impacted by the snap ban. While Facebook worked over the ensuing 24-hours to reinstate a number of pages, irreparable...
Some of the change is due to a worldwide audience. Netflix and other streaming services "have a certain sensibility that they want to see in the kind of narratives that they are promoting on their platform. That has been a great boon for women filmmakers, women writers, women behind the camera and in front of the camera." - The...
The Marsh family of Faversham are dealing with Britain's lockdowns by performing parodies. "This six-voice choir, with its sweet harmonies and the occasional wobbly note, is creating songs that dramatize the mundane moments of lockdown life, from too much screen time to the horrors of remote learning." - The New York Times
There's no Indigenous Artist of the Year award in Saskatchewan this year, and when a committee was discussing why not, well: "Somebody made a comment about 'why should we give them an award when they're just going to pawn it off anyway?'" That's led to a reckoning about anti-Indigenous and other racist (and homophobic as well) attitudes in Canada's...
A researcher comes up against French bureaucracy: "To learn more about the day-to-day life of Parisians during the war, I turned to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF). This modern library is made up of four buildings in a configuration that resembles four open books; however, the public resources are less accessible than this design would suggest, with the tomes for...
Before she burst onto the art scene with performance art with an edge, O'Grady "had worked for the Labor and State Departments, including as an intelligence analyst in the period leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis; attempted a novel in Europe; dropped out of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; run a translation agency in Chicago; been a New York...
York was enslaved by William Clark and remained enslaved after the expedition returned. The memorial bust, which is on a pedestal where a statue of a conservative newspaper editor used to stand until it was torn down last summer, was a surprised to Portland's Parks & Recreation Department. The city's Parks Commissioner, Carmen Rubio: "We should regard this installation...
In the wake of George Floyd's killing and the Black Lives Matter protests that swept the country, Ballet West's Black dancers were asked by their artistic director what needed to change. They weren't shy about the list. "When performances resume after the coronavirus shutdown of live events, Ballet West will no longer use makeup to lighten dancers’ skin or make them...
You'd think the director of Precious, The Butler, and more could get funding. But ... "'Studios will give you about $10 to make a black movie. I’m exaggerating, but you get the point,' he says." - The Guardian (UK)
It's an honorary, spokesperson role during a year when Fringe Fest may be online or may be in-person, or both, depending. Fleabag got its start at Fringe in 2013. Waller-Bridge: "From leaking caves to cobbled streets to the glamour of the Traverse Theatre up to Arthur's Seat, this festival is a beating heart of an industry that has been...
The register of Jewish burials in the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca between 1836 and 1899, is one of very few documents left after more than 18,000 Hungarian-speaking Jews were deported from the city and murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Their homes and synagogues were ransacked, leaving almost no record of their lives and existence; the presence of this book on the...
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has some issues, with members describing monthly meetings as battle zones. The HFPA includes zero Black members. It's "an embattled organization still struggling to shake its reputation as a group whose awards or nominations can be influenced with expensive junkets and publicity swag." And it may be running afoul of tax law. - Los...
A new emphasis has also changed how design firms feel about commissions. "For the new guard of playground design, the boundary between play equipment and public sculpture is blurring. ... Playgrounds are increasingly seen as 'some of the top projects to get' – public projects which are on full display and allow landscape architects and designers to test their...
