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Record Amount Of Buried Treasure Found In UK (By Amateurs With Metal Detectors)

The vast majority, 96%, were discovered by metal detecting. Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Essex and Hampshire were identified as hotspots for treasure with more than 80 pieces found in each county during 2019. There are approximately 20,000 detectorists in England and Wales, and 348 of their discoveries were acquired by or donated to UK museums in 2019. Of the found treasure,...

Should Prime-Time TV Series Work In COVID Storylines? Or Is That The Last Thing The Audience Wants?

"In rooms all over the internet, hospital dramas, first-responder shows, situation comedies and courtroom procedurals were having similar debates. To ignore the events of the spring and summer — the pandemic, America's belated racial reckoning — meant placing prime-time series outside (well, even more outside) observable reality. But to include them meant potentially exhausting already exhausted viewers and...

Theatre Of Screens (But Is It, Though?)

Whether or not onscreen theater feels like theater may depend on whether it offers a feeling of liveness, with all the potential for error and surprise and invention and anything-could-go-wrong-at-any-moment contingency that liveness affords. - The New York Times

Archaeologists Discover Stone And Bronze Age Burials At Site Of Stonehenge Tunnel

"Bronze age graves, Neolithic pottery and the vestiges of a mysterious C-shaped enclosure that might have been a prehistoric industrial area are among the finds unearthed by archaeologists who have carried out preliminary work on the site of the proposed new road tunnel at Stonehenge." - The Guardian

Despite Pandemic, UK TV And Film Production Only Down 21 Percent In 2020

As per fresh stats from the British Film Institute, film and TV spend on Brit shores was £2.84B for the year, down a surprisingly slim 21% on the year before. Film bore the brunt of that decline – 31% down for the year in comparison with 11% for high-end TV. - Deadline

How Did A Book Of New Poetry Get Passed Off As The Work Of Ancient Buddhist Nuns?

Matty Weingast's The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns was marketed by America's leading Buddhist publisher — and hailed by many readers — as a translation of the Therigatha, a collection of Pali verse attributed to the very first community of Buddhist nuns. But as scholars familiar with the actual Therigatha got a look, they saw...

America Needs A Creative Intervention

With misinformation and disinformation (here’s the difference) flourishing unchecked online, being able to discern fact from fiction is especially crucial. We witnessed the fatal violence and the humiliation on the world stage that ensues when a critical mass of our citizens can’t tell the difference between lies and truth. How can democracy, which relies on an informed citizenry, prevail...

Could We Really Revive The Federal Theatre Project? How Would That Work In 2021?

The short answer is that it couldn't work the way it did in the 1930s: the legal and theatrical landscape then was too different. (For a start, there was no such thing as not-for-profit theatre.) But there are certainly possibilities; here are a few of them. - American Theatre

Libel Lawsuit In Poland Could Derail Holocaust Research, Observers Fear

"Two Polish historians are facing a libel trial over a book examining Poles' behaviour during the Second World War, a case whose outcome is expected to determine the future of independent Holocaust research under Poland's nationalist government. … comes in the wake of a 2018 law that makes it a crime to falsely accuse the Polish nation of...

U.S. Supreme Court Unanimously Rejects Suit Over Guelph Treasure

The collection of ornate medieval reliquaries is now held by Berlin's state museums; the American heirs of German Jewish art dealers, claiming that the objects were sold to the state under duress in 1935, sued in U.S. federal courts to recover them under "the international law of genocide." The SCOTUS ruling declares, "We do not look to the law...

Poetry Magazine Faces Down Furor Over Printing Work By Sex Offender

" has doubled down on its decision to publish a poem by a convicted sex offender as part of a special edition dedicated to incarcerated poets, telling critics that 'it is not our role to further judge or punish as a result of their criminal convictions'." - The Guardian

Was Philadelphia’s Leading Classical Radio Host Just Fired?

Gregg Whiteside, who for 17 years hosted weekday morning programming and the Philadelphia Orchestra concert broadcasts at WRTI, abruptly disappeared from the air last month, with only a brief farewell note about his retirement (as it was termed) several days later on the station's website. The staff had been alerted with a one-sentence memo saying that Whiteside no longer...

Stunning Aztec Eagle Carving Unearthed In Mexico City

The 42"-by'28" bas-relief of a golden eagle, carved from a reddish volcanic rock called tezontle, was found by archaeologists at the Templo Mayor, the Aztecs' main religious site in what was then their capital city, where it was on the floor of an area devoted to the sun god Huitzilopochtli. - Smithsonian Magazine

Kirill Serebrennikov, Russia’s Most Famous Dissident Director, Fired From His Moscow Theatre

On Tuesday, Serebrennikov hosted an event at the Gogol Center — which he has directed since its opening in 2012 and which has become one of the Russian capital's hottest theaters — revealing season plans for 2021. On Wednesday, the city of Moscow's culture department announced that Serebrennikov's contract would not be renewed when it expires in 3½ weeks....

Amazon’s New Washington DC Tower Will Have A Hiking Trail Up The Side

Named The Helix, the glass spiral tower will be part of a complex of three office buildings that will make up Amazon HQ2. - Dezeen

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