Justin Davidson refuses to relinquish hope. "The MTA, Amtrak, and NJ Transit have jointly released not one but two possible visions for rebuilding the rest of the Dantesque complex. And, lo and behold, they are both aspirational and realistic. The design ... amalgamates the jumble of bureaucratic fiefdoms, decades’ worth of duct-tape fixes, and a thicket of conflicting agendas into...
The director of Moonlight took on a 10-part adaptation of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad partly because it was such a wellspring of fear. "Jenkins was surprised, he says, of the extent to which the retelling of that history affected him. 'There’s no blood, there’s no fire on set,' he says. 'And yet, we were on an actual plantation...
Ahtesham wrote of his native city with care and love. One of his translators said, "He had this almost magnifying glass of an eye. ... If a cinema hall was razed or a new suburb was being built, he would describe these changes with a sensitivity, caring and love as if it were part of his own corporal organism."...
Today, we can see music, theatre, visual art, and new movies all from our chairs, couches, and beds. A year ago, not so much - heck, even the Louvre has put its entire collection online. "Many larger institutions like the Parisian giant had already made significant strides before last year to increase their online presence. But the rest of the cultural sector was forced...
Dickens' 17-year-old sister-in-law collapsed one night as she returned from the theatre, and died in the arms of the writer. "A failure of Hogarth’s heart was blamed, but today an aneurism, or stroke, is suspected as the more likely cause of death. It was a shock that altered Dickens for ever, throwing a shadow over his imaginative life." -...
The pandemic forced Cirque to shutter 44 shows all over the world. Now, performers are getting ready - as ready as they can, within their apartments - to return to Las Vegas this summer and London in January. But: "At a time when the pandemic is still raging and uncertainty remains about people’s willingness to return to large theater...
Instead, it's a way for independent digital artists to make a living. "Beneath the glossy auction houses, breathless headlines and outrage, there is a global ecosystem of crypto artists who entered the once-niche NFT art space motivated by passion and curiosity. Most aren’t raking in millions or leading major sales. But many are making a decent living — ditching...
Dance, publishing, painting, music, and the stage - having an example, an inspiration, and a mentor in the house can both block and encourage young artists as they decide what to do with their lives. - CBC
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 ...
