At Berlin's Komische Oper, stage director Kirill Serebrennikov has replaced the opera’s moralizing final sextet with an epilogue: a solo dancer represents the dead lothario's soul as it struggles against, and then accepts, its fate — this as the soloists and chorus perform last rites using Mozart's final work. - The New York Times
A fellow painter, Benjamin Robert Haydon, thought that “Turner’s pictures always look as if painted by a man who was born without hands” who had “contrived to tie a brush to the hook at the end of his wooden stump.” - New Statesman
"I think it's an empowering situation when participants are able to not just immersive themselves in a world but actually affect that world and, in today's current situation, just having a little bit of power to make a significant change to a person, a character or a story is extremely enriching." - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
Trump has depicted the Kennedy Center as a crumbling building that he will return to its former glory. Never mind that he has offered few ideas for doing so and has spoken about his plans with his trademark blend of grandiloquence and vagueness. - The New Republic
“Hosts of video artists … owe a debt to Birnbaum, who found clever ways of upending the one-way stream of information that pours forth in the media, and in particular on television. During the late ’70s and ’80s, she began harvesting images from pirated tapes of TV programs, then reediting their images.” - ARTnews
“The role of science in today’s world is questioned. The investment in fundamental, free and open research is questioned. What a gigantic miscalculation,” von der Leyen said. “Science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity or political party.” - Politico
Management began reviewing all store materials after receiving a complaint from a customer against profanity on a greeting card. What began as a purge of purportedly profane materials, including greeting cards, stickers and book titles with swear words, quickly escalated into the quiet removal of more than 60 books from the store. - NBCNews
“Melissa Toogood, a Bessie Award-winning dancer who was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in its final years, succeeds Alicia Graf Mack, who is to become the artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Toogood, who is Australian and lives in Sydney, will begin on July 1.” - The New York Times
Paradoxical though it may seem, studies have found that many creative people had difficult childhoods. Indeed, many well-known artists owe their genius to tough childhood events, from which they escaped by creating mental worlds where they were free to develop their talents. - PsyPost
"In the copyrightability analysis, distinguishing between using AI as a tool to assist in the creation of works and using AI to stand in for human creativity is important. The difference is whether AI is enhancing human expression or is the source of the expressive choices." - PC Magazine
“The discussion offered a glimpse into the animated debate that the museum’s 45 curators have been engaged in over the last five years, reimagining how the institution should present art in its curvaceous, Peter Zumthor-designed building crossing Wilshire Boulevard.” - The New York Times
According to a recent YouGov poll, Americans rate the 2020s as the worst decade in a century for music, movies, fashion, TV, and sports. A 2023 story in The New York Times Magazine declared that we’re in the “least innovative, least transformative, least pioneering century for culture since the invention of the printing press.” - The Atlantic
The National Park Service report, 2023 National Park Visitor Spending Effects, finds that 325.5 million visitors spent $26.4 billion in communities near national parks. This spending supported 415,400 jobs, provided $19.4 billion in labor income, and $55.6 billion in economic output to the U.S. economy. - NPS
Can the traditional talk show format — with an opening monologue, celebrity guests, live musical performances, a sidekick — survive in the streaming era? Or is the future of talk shows something quite different, and much more like … podcasts? - The New York Times
“Performers and stage managers at Chicago’s venerable comedy venue The Second City are threatening to strike if they are unable to reach an agreement with management over wage increases. … Negotiations between Actors Equity and leadership at The Second City have been ongoing since February; … the current contract expired April 13.” - WBEZ (Chicago)
