"The explosive claim was made in an open letter to Hermitage boss Mikhail Piotrovsky by Andre Ruzhnikov, who has been buying and selling Fabergé for 40 years. In it, he accuses Piotrovsky of 'insulting the good name of Fabergé, betraying your visitors' trust, operating under false pretences, and destroying the authority of the museum you have been appointed to...
"The idea that the festivals can't go ahead and be socially-distanced is inaccurate," one festival director told the House of Commons Culture Select Committee, which is examining the live music sector. - BBC
When the staff at All Classical Portland was looking at how to add more diversity to its playlists, they found that the biggest limitation was how little recorded music by composers from historically marginalized communities is actually available. The station's "Recording Inclusivity Initiative" aims to start fixing that. - Current
Dan-el Padilla Peralta came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic at age 4 and grew up extremely poor; it was his childhood fascination with ancient Greece and Rome, combined with his academic talents, that got him school scholarships and pulled him out of poverty and into a professorship at Princeton. Today he argues that his discipline, as it...
Actress Seyi Omooba had been engaged to play Celie in the musical adaptation of Alice Walker's novel in Leicester, England in 2019 — but she was let go when a 2014 Facebook post of hers containing anti-gay comments became public. She's suing for breach of contract. But testimony before a tribunal revealed that Omooba had previously told her agents...
In fact, he recorded his new album of duets with Lady Gaga in sessions spanning 2018 to 2020, and he was first diagnosed with the condition in 2016. And though he is quiet most of the time these days and frequently disoriented, he still sings through his 90-minute set twice a week and was even performing right up until...
In a long career spanning stage, film, and television, he was known for roles ranging from John Adams to Abraham Lincoln to Deep Throat to Willy Loman to the Stage Manager in Our Town. But he was most famous for his one-man show portraying Mark Twain — a role he played for more than 60 years, considerably longer than...
The Spanish government has concluded what is, in effect, a 15-year rental agreement with Baroness Carmen Cervera, the widow of Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza: in exchange for an annual payment of €6.5 million, she will allow her collection of 400 artworks — which range from Rembrandt and Caravaggio through van Gogh and Monet to Roy Lichtenstein, and estimated...
"India began allowing 100 percent occupancy in cinemas on Monday, lifting a 50 percent cap on seating capacity that had been in place since October 2020. … Various COVID-19 prevention measures remain mandatory for both cinema staff and patrons, including staggered show times and bookings, mandatory social distancing, and the use of face masks and hand sanitizers." - The...
"The most important promise underlying much of the canon inaugurated by Future Shock is that with the right foresight, readers can not only prepare for what’s coming, but also profit from it. This whiff of insider trading presents the future as a commodity, an exercise in temporal arbitrage in which knowledge of new developments yields a financial edge." -...
It has been educating future artists and entertainers for 47 years. It also ranks in the top 7 percent of U.S. schools in challenging its students academically. Few campuses nationally have students as enthusiastic about their school. Yet Ellington officials say the people who run D.C. public schools have failed to honor promises they made in 2017 to put the...
Derek Thompson: "Last year, I wrote about how even a modest remote-work revolution—no more than 10 percent of Americans working remotely full time after the pandemic is over—could affect the U.S. labor force (e.g.: fewer hotel workers) and party politics (e.g.: more southern Democrats). But the more I researched remote work and spoke with experts, the more I realized...
"Over the course of the coming week, it will hold screenings in two urban venues for just one festival attendee. And it has also sent a single viewer to a tiny, barren island in the North Atlantic to watch the 70 films in competition — alone." - The New York Times
There are early signs that new president Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, "could provide a much-needed boost for cultural scene hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and focus attention on the District of Columbia’s (DC’s) long campaign for statehood." - The Guardian
