Although the link between J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy epic and Italy's far-right is not new, it's a phenomenon that has re-surfaced with new vigor since politician Giorgia Meloni was elected as the country's prime minister. - CBC
"In-flight licensing (is) unique in the licensing business in that it raises questions among everyday consumers — like how titles are chosen, why a given film might be censored, or why a show canceled and removed from, say, HBO Max might still be flying around the world." - Vulture
Mali and Burkina Faso are blessed by active art scenes and scores of museums — and afflicted with militias causing murder and misery, and often targeting those museums for looting. Now the International Council of Museums and the Aliph Foundation are training museum staffers to defend their collections. - The Art Newspaper
"We have ranked the Largest 50 U.S. ballet companies based on their equity score. ... Included are DDP's 'Best of' Awards for companies in specific categories, as well as several Honorable Mentions for companies who have created opportunities for full-length premieres by female choreographers." - Dance Data Project
"By the end of the month, 12 Broadway productions in total ended their runs. It may sound bleak, and many have reported these numbers using terms like 'record-breaking.' But ... January closures are part of the typical rhythm of Broadway and the number of closures this year is not record-breaking." - Broadway News
"The theatre is set to be razed and redeveloped into a 76-storey, mixed-use building. ... The smallest of Mirvish's four venues, the 700-seat CAA Theatre has been a bridge between local theatre artists and Mirvish's wider audiences. ... Theatre artists and producers say (its) closure would mark an immense loss." - Toronto Star
"Of the hazards that Westminster Abbey's 700-year-old Coronation Chair has survived – a suffragette bomb, schoolboys with penknives, thick brown paint, the violent theft of the Stone of Scone from inside it, Oliver Cromwell – the one that perhaps came closest to destroying it was an outbreak of white fungus." - MSN (The Telegraph)
"The ancient throne, known as the Coronation Chair, has been at the centerpiece of English coronations for centuries, including those of Henry VIII, Charles I, Queen Victoria and the late Queen Elizabeth II." It is likely the world's oldest piece of furniture still used for its original purpose. - CNN
The proposal comes as a rash of other live performance venues have shuttered across the city in recent years. If the project moves forward, theatre artists and producers say the theatre’s closure would mark an immense loss for the city’s performing arts industry. - Toronto Star
Writers, someone once said, are already writing machines; or at least they are when things are going well. The whole point of the metaphor was to destabilize the notion of authorial agency by suggesting that literature is the product of unconscious processes that are essentially combinatorial. - N+1
I continue to struggle with an imaginative leap into a world that is entirely not my own. I can’t quite seem to achieve the trick of perception, the sinking-in that allows you to half-forget the conscious act of reading. But I’m strangely unmotivated, too, for reasons I can’t fully unravel. - New Statesman
In her view, we are often pushed around, one way or another, by the stuff we come into contact with on any given day. A piece of shiny plastic on the street pulls your eye toward it, turning your body in a different direction—which might make you trip over your own foot and then smash your head. - The New...
A good music technology becomes a new source of creativity; it can be hacked and bent in ways that its own designers may not have foreseen. A drum machine does more than automate a beat. In the right hands, it can change our sense of rhythm. - Aeon
"The steps by playwrights to halt productions of their own work reflects concerns by Black artists frustrated by what they see as a failure of theater administrators to live up to the lofty promises made during and after the spring of 2020." - The New York Times
A ton of journalists on the games beat have suddenly found themselves out of jobs. The field is in the midst of a brutal, paradoxical contraction. The world’s power brokers are investing desperately in the games industry, but games media is another story entirely. - NiemanLab
