Any given work—1984, say, or Bonnie and Clyde—isn’t much of anything until it becomes a counter in other people’s games. How much pure hucksterism is involved on the part of the cultural arbiters, as opposed to astute positioning of worthy work so that it will thrive in the market, can be hard to tell. - The Atlantic
“Some glitches are mild, like an Alexa that randomly giggles (or wakes you in the middle of the night, as happened to one of us), or an iPhone that auto-corrects what was meant as ‘Happy Birthday, dear Theodore’ into ‘Happy Birthday, dead Theodore. But others—like algorithms that promote fake news or bias against job applicants—can be serious problems.” -...
Like his forebears under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, David Kipen rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He started writing letters to lawmakers calling for a revamped program for the COVID-19 era, and last May he wrote a piece for The Times examining that possibility. The article, headlined “85 years ago, FDR saved American writers. Could...
Russell Janzen: "This is the longest I have danced with someone else in quite some time, and after running it in this first rehearsal I am winded. … happy we're back but disappointed by how impersonal it feels to dance masked. I had been anticipating that the return to this work would be emotional, precious, but with...
This aspect of theater hygiene has turned out to be little more than — well — hygiene theater. Experts have been saying since last year that the risk of surface transmission was tiny, and in April the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pegged the risk at just 1 in 10,000. - Variety
"'Wait a minute, let me tell you about this first,” says Bruce Dern, embarking on what I think is his fifth discursive anecdote in six sentences. 'Did you ever see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? Do you remember when Brad Pitt comes in and tries to wake me up?' he asks. … 'So I wake up eventually and...
The U.K. Home Office revealed on Wednesday that people who have won any of these awards will be able to skip the endorsements previously required as part of the Global Talent visa category — available to anyone in the fields of academia or research, arts and culture or digital technology — from Wednesday, May 5. - Variety
"As strangely ho-hum as Hooked on Phonics feels now, it was once a juggernaut in the educational space, selling hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of units each year. It promised something that seemed a little stunning to parents — the idea that, with a home program, students could learn how to read basically on their own by following...
The city had most all of its nonprofit arts constituencies in line like eager petitioners: as soon as the mayor spoke, they hit “send” on their summer news releases. And let’s not forget the suburbs. Ravinia is returning, too! If you run an arts organization, you’re now worried about being lost in the shuffle. - Chicago Tribune (Yahoo!)
"For 20 years now, … Harvey Weinstein was still feared, Kanye West was still about the music, and museums exhibited portfolios of amoral behavior with impunity, Favorite has toiled in the cancel culture. … Since 2001, Chicago-based novelist and literature professor has taught a class at titled 'Love the Art, Hate the Artist.' The university...
A study identifies a negative personality trait they call TIV or Tendency toward Interpersonal Victimhood. People who score high on a TIV test have an “enduring feeling that the self is a victim in different kinds of interpersonal relationships,” they write. - Nautilus
"Libeskind, who designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin and the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa, has experience responding to traumatic events through architecture. He also served as masterplan architect at New York's World Trade Center site as the city looked to rebuild following 9/11." - Artnet
The letters were between the French author of The Little Prince and his wife, a Salvadoran artist of whom his family sternly disapproved. The lengthy lawsuits were between his relatives and her heirs over rights to previous books about the couple's courtship and marriage. - The Guardian
According to a newly filed lawsuit, in 2016, U.S. Customs seized a fragment of an ancient Roman statue that it believed had been stolen from Italy and illegally sold. The seller was a Brussels gallery; the buyer, "Kim Kardashian dba Noel Roberts Trust." - ARTnews
"With as many as eight shows a week to fill, and the tourists who make up an important part of their customer base yet to return, producers need time to advertise and market. They need to reassemble and rehearse casts who have been out of work for more than a year. And they need to sort out and negotiate...
