Italy formed its Carabinieri Art Squad back in 1969, but the US didn't create a dedicated equivalent until 2004. Yet since then, the unit has recovered more than 200,000 items worth more than $900,000, investigating everything from museum thefts to forgeries to money laundering to shipwrecks. - Hyperallergic
Jodie Gates —founding director of USC's Kaufman School of Dance, former assistant to William Forsythe as well as admired choreographer in her own right, former principal dancer at the Joffrey, Pennsylvania, and Frankfurt Ballets and Complexions Contemporary Ballet — begins her term on August 1. - The Cincinnati Enquirer
Both Tory ministers and ther Labour counterparts in opposition agree on "a ten-point action plan includ(ing) devolving funding decisions to a regional level from London; encouraging more strategic partnerships and less competition between different areas; and greater investment in next-generation creative talents." - The Guardian
Revered as both performer and teacher, "Maharaj was known for his animated facial expressions and light-footed movements, accompanied by the sound of bells he wore around his ankles. He would often draw inspiration from his own life in his performances and was a skillful storyteller." - AP
The topic of the Nazi role in antiquities looting is increasingly drawing attention, in part through the work of scholars who are peeling back the mysteries of what happened to the objects that were excavated or seized eight decades ago. - The New York Times
Decolonising Shakespeare, with its historic links to English national identity, language and culture is a particularly knotty challenge. Shakespeare was writing in a country that had begun to trade in slaves just two years before his birth. - The Conversation
“A common way of thinking about virtual realities is that they’re somehow fake realities, that what you perceive in VR isn’t real. I think that’s wrong. The virtual worlds we’re interacting with can be as real as our ordinary physical world. Virtual reality is genuine reality.” - The Guardian
In 2011, the Russian state decided to recreate the czar’s private suite — which had been furnished in the Art Nouveau style and was mostly destroyed during World War II and subsequent Soviet reconstructions — and create a museum around it. - The New York Times
No-one thinks in any natural language; not in English, or Italian, or whatever, but in a language of thought, an abstract, unconscious and moreover inaccessible, conceptual representational system of the mind. - 3 Quarks Daily
"She achieved literary celebrity but called herself a 'literary failure,' was supported in a marriage that ultimately collapsed, resisted her family but didn't denounce it, became an icon of the civil-rights movement she relentlessly criticized, and wrote a masterpiece only to watch as it was widely misunderstood." - The New Yorker
Income at the National Theatre dropped by £50 million and the organisation lost just under a quarter of its staff in the first year of the pandemic. - The Stage
"'Cautionary tales are very important,' says Becky Chambers, one of the leading authors associated with the hopepunk movement, who has won a much-coveted Hugo Award for her sci-fi Wayfarer series. 'But if that is all that you have, you risk nihilism.'" - BBC
Over the previous couple of generations, the canon has changed but it has consistently seemed to have been limited in scope and dependent on big names to anchor programs. - Nightingale Sonata
"In her first two years as UCLA's choreographer, Bijoya 'BJ' Das has set the internet aflame with three viral floor routines. … Breaking the internet has become an annual tradition in Westwood, but … Das keeps the focus on something simpler: fun. - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
