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Writing Mainstream TV Shows About Native American Families

It's normal - but an exciting kind of normal - for Sydney Freeland. When she started film school, "I remember thinking, like, ‘OK, wait. I’m Native American and I’m transgender, but I want to be a film director? That’s insane. That isn’t going to happen.’ But I wanted to see what I could do anyway." - HuffPost

Holbein Left A Clever Clue In A Portrait Of Henry VIII’s Wife

Which wife? Well, for centuries, everyone thought it was Catherine Howard (the second of the beheadeds in the old rhyme). Instead, thanks to Hans Holbein's clue (and an art historian's tenacity), we now think the portrait is of Anne of Cleves (the second of the divorced wives, or in this case, annulled). - The Observer (UK)

Directing Isn’t Easy At The Best Of Times

But for an Asian American director during the pandemic, kicking off Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month via an online platform, it's a whole new (basket)ball game. - Oregon Artswatch

Motherhood Can Be Radical

Just ask Adrienne Rich. "Rich’s predicament, as a mother who was also an artist, remains a predicament today. And what she did with that predicament, what she did with her rage and frustration, remains deeply instructive. Of Woman Born lays bare the cultural and medical and economic practices that define motherhood, and exposes how our everyday experience of mothering is shaped...

MoMA Blocks Demonstrators From Entering Museum

"'We want to take over these institutions; they do not belong to the oligarchs,' Amin Husain, one of the demonstration’s organizers, told a crowd of about 40 activists before marching from Columbus Circle to the museum." The institution, and the NYPD, disagree. - The New York Times

The Grim, Open Secret Of College Bone Collections

In recent weeks, revelations that both Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania used the bones of teenaged victims of the city of Philadelphia's bombing of a house in 1985 have shook the world outside of college forensic anthropology. But inside those worlds? It's not a surprise that the bones of Black children would be used for teaching. "Museums and...

Europe Has A Banksy Of Potholes

The Lyon-based artist Em Emem (a pseudonym, of course) uses mosaics to fill in gaps in street infrastructure, but also to make them gorgeous. "'I'm just a sidewalk poet, a son of bitumen,' he says. His work involves filling potholes and cracked walls on city streets with beautiful mosaic designs, a process he calls 'flacking' – a play on...

Eli Broad, Who Spent Billions To Reshape Los Angeles’ Art, Architecture, And Education, 87

Broad, whose money came from homebuilding and insurance empires, truly changed L.A. "Dogged, determined and often unyielding, he helped push and prod majestic institutions such as Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art into existence, and then, that done, he created his own namesake museum in the heart of Los Angeles." - Los Angeles Times

Olympia Dukakis, 89, Star Of Screen And Stage

Dukakis was well-known as a working actress in the theatre when she took a role as the mom in Moonstruck. Then she won an Oscar for that role, and then she was in Steel Magnolias, Tales of the City (four series over several decades), and so much more. She never gave up theatre, though, and even played the (lightly...

Canada Post Issues Two Commemorative Stamps Honoring Dancers

"Each Permanent domestic stamp, designed by Stéphane Huot, features a dynamic image of its subject in performance. Karen Kain almost breaches the borders of the three-by-four-centimetre stamp as she flies through the air as the Black Swan in a 1977 photograph by Andrew Oxenham. Fernand Nault is equally airborne in a 1947 outdoor photo shoot on Montreal’s Île Sainte-Hélène."...

LA Dance Studios Struggle To Survive

"Some factors that helped the studio persevere? A landlord who is postponing the studio’s $22,000 monthly rent payments, PPP loans totaling more than $110,000, the launch of a subscription-based platform for dance tutorials, and the studio’s nearly 30-year legacy and global brand with franchises in cities including Las Vegas, Nashville and Shanghai." - Los Angeles Times

Amazon Earnings Soar, Streaming Up 70 Percent

Video streaming — sometimes a throwaway in the company’s earnings announcements — was this time a centerpiece. Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who is shifting to executive chairman this summer, noted that streaming has risen 70% compared with the same time a year ago. Prime Video, which has recently marked its 10th anniversary, served film or TV titles to...

The Expert Problem — What We Need To Trust Science

"Complete rejection of expertise not only makes little epistemic sense (for there is no doubt that expertise exists); the complexities of the modern state make trust in others’ expertise indispensable. On the other hand, unqualified deference to those in positions of power and privilege vitiates the basic principles of democracy." - Boston Review

Should Hollywood Abandon Georgia?

"Here we are in 2021 and many still think they can affect change by pulling their business from the very people who helped get the statewide and national results they claim to want. Apparently the way to get people to vote the way you like is to yank them around, threatening their ability to pay their mortgage and feed...

Authenticity Is Overrated

"Everyone else might be taken, but the effort to be ourselves is the surest path to being just like everyone else, especially in the context of a highly commodified and surveilled culture where we always seem to be on stage. If some person or organisation claims to be concerned with authenticity, you can be almost certain that they’re conformist...

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