The great French actress wasn't the first to be famous solely for being famous (that phenomenon came later), but she was the first to consciously use the media to gain worldwide fame and the first to use that fame to get rich from ancillary self-branded business ventures. - Smithsonian Magazine
"Nine months after being stabbed and seriously injured onstage, (he warned) that freedom of expression in the West is under its most severe threat in his lifetime. Rushdie delivered a video message to the British Book Awards, where he was awarded the Freedom to Publish award." - AP
"Pema Tseden rarely depicted Tibet’s Chinese population, which swelled after the Red Army seized Tibet in 1951. To elude Chinese censors, he eschewed references to the Dalai Lama. ... This allowed him to avoid overtly political critiques while still tackling broader themes." - The New York Times
Isaac Butler gives a hearty smackdown to the "anti-Stratfordians" he calls "Shakespeare Truthers," pointing out how they use the same techniques that 9/11 Truthers, Obama Birthers, anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists use to wave away actual evidence and rationalize their own lack of it. - Slate
"To Frédéric Jousset, our most irrational ideas can sometimes be our finest. That thinking has led the 52-year-old thrill-seeker ... to build a giant museum-boat, deploy a fleet of buses to bring 100,000 kids to the British Museum, and tour museum masterpieces around the country in a truck." - Artnet
Paik once said, “It’s an artist’s job to think about the future.” This compelling film underscores why Paik should be considered the progenitor of video art, his work prophesying an “electronic superhighway…where everybody will have his own TV channel” a decade before the internet even existed. - ArtsFuse
A 2017 MacArthur fellow, Sorey is a musical universalist who has little use for categories and labels. He feels they are reductive and irrelevant in a post-genre world and often attaches a wary prefix to them: “so-called jazz,” “so-called classical,” “so-called hip-hop.” Nor does he care for the word “improvisation.” - Columbia Magazine
"(His) outrageous, sometimes shocking and occasionally — by today's standards — cancel-worthy cartoons are considered some of the funniest single-panel gags to ever appear in National Lampoon, The New Yorker and other magazines." - MSN (The Washington Post)
The Beaux Arts Trio would go on to play more than 4,000 concerts throughout the world while recording virtually all the standard trio repertory. - Washington Post
Few audiences had ever heard a Black singer perform in an opera house when Ms. Bumbry was growing up in St. Louis in the 1930s and ’40s, the daughter of a railway clerk and a schoolteacher. - Washington Post
Arreguín "fused the tools of classical oil painting with Mexican folk traditions, compressing fine art and ancient craft into stretched canvases that often stood taller than he did. ... For 60 years he painted with few pauses, channeling explosive energy into methodically composed canvases." - Hyperallergic
Her foundation helped many a theatre in New York and beyond. "There were rules: Productions had to be run by accredited nonprofit theaters; a full script, along with a 500-word statement, had to be submitted; and musicals need not apply." - The New York Times
"Throughout his life, King Charles III has involved himself in British cultural life, not only a maker of art but as an avid spectator and patron. … (His) fascination with the arts and entertainment echoes the concerns of several much earlier holders of the throne." - The New York Times
Writer-composer Richard Thomas (not to be confused with the actor) remembers how he forgot to ask for Springer for rights clearance, how the host came to see the show and wasn't at all a diva about it, and how he asked Thomas for changes in only two lines. - The Guardian
"She crisscrossed continents for those brief glimpses of natural and man-made landscapes, which she often made into watercolors while on board." Sometimes she painted from the high floors of skyscrapers or even the sidewalk, but yes, she would hang out of planes and helicopters — a lot. - ARTnews
