Except that the prize at the festival of Dionysus wasn’t a statuette. It was a live goat.
Almost All Of Us Occasionally Do What Brian Williams Did
Alva Noë: “A lot of folks are trying to make sense of what would drive Brian Williams, a reporter, the face of NBC news, to make up easily fact-checkable stories about his experiences as a reporter … Ego? Self-aggrandizement? Trying to make himself seem better, braver, tougher, more experienced than he really is? I have a slightly different hypothesis: …”
New York Museums Have Started Officially Banning Selfie Sticks
“The reason for the restriction is the threat of accidental damage to museum exhibits and art work, like potentially tearing through a rare Picasso painting at the Met. Stopping to position for a selfie can also lead to congestion in already crowded museums.”
America’s Orchestras And Music Schools Have A Diversity Problem
“Ethnic diversity remains a troublesome question for American orchestras. Just over four percent of their musicians are African-American and Latino, according to the League of American Orchestras, and when it comes to orchestra boards and CEOs, the numbers are even starker: only one percent. Ethnic diversity is also a rare sight among guest soloists and conductors.”
What “Boyhood” Shows Us About Girlhood
“As the title declares, the film is very much a boy’s coming-of-age story, but Boyhood is also about girlhood. Mason has a sister, Samantha, who grows up alongside him over the course of the 12 years it took to make the film.” Her trajectory is, in its way, as telling as his.
The Christmas Gift That Made “To Kill A Mockingbird” Possible
“The book is now so central to our culture that it exudes an air of inevitability. But that wasn’t the case one Christmas Day on the Upper East Side of New York, when the literary existence of Scout and Atticus and Boo depended on a tired but determined Harper Lee. And on an envelope in a tree.” (audio)
Eat Your Heart Out, Rothko Chapel (And Dallas, Too): Austin Is Getting A Chapel By Ellsworth Kelly
The 91-year-old Color Field artist has given the University of Texas’s Blanton Museum of Art “an unrealized design for a chapel first conceived for a private collector in 1986. For the past two years, Kelly’s been working with the museum to finally bring the now-titled Austin chapel to pass.”
Georgia’s ‘Y’allywood’ Is Booming So Hard, There Aren’t Enough Crew Members To Keep Up
“Georgia officials are concerned that the worker shortage will drive filmmakers to other states.”
Religion And Geography Are Destiny For Theatres In Boston
“There are four factors that Boston’s 300-year-long struggle between censorship and commerce in the performing arts has produced. First, when we talk about theatre in Boston as it now exists, we are talking about a way of doing theatre that is only forty or so years old.”
What’s On Author Anne Tyler’s Nightstand?
“I keep only a New Yorker on my night stand, which I do my best to eke out over the space of an entire week. It distresses me that The New Yorker publishes just 47 issues a year, which makes the eking-out process a mathematical challenge.”
Lizabeth Scott, Siren Of Film Noir And Costar To Bogart, Dies At 92
“She had the goods: the luminous eyes and moist lips that belied a heart of stone, the slinky figure, the sculptured cheekbones, the cascading hair and husky voice suitable for torch songs or seductive close-ups.”
Angry Archaeologists Take Over The Louvre Lobby, Allow Hundreds Of People To Enter Without Paying
“The protesters are demanding that preventative archaeology no longer be subject to the 2003 law. They chose the sunken Louvre lobby beneath I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid and the Cour Napoléon because it was the site of a major preventative archaeology project when the museum expanded in the 1980s.”
When Dave Eggers And A Pakistani-American Playwright Decided To Create An HBO Series About A Muslim Cop
“What would happen if, instead of a token, we had a plurality? And they had last names, diverse ethnic communities, personalities, lame jokes, intrusive mothers, annoying but loving families, significant others, hobbies that weren’t inherently criminal, an ability to converse without violent outbursts, and so forth?” (HBO was very clear that it didn’t want “the Muslim Wire.)
You Can Enjoy The Art Just As Well (Or Better) Without Your Dangerous Selfie Stick
“The museums making this audacious stand against our time say the sticks are dangerous to their works of art (imagine trying to take your picture next to Van Gogh’s Starry Night, swinging the stick a bit clumsily and tearing the sky a new comet), and they are surely right.”
She Sang Backing Vocals On ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ And Often Imitated A Theremin
“For the singer Anita Darian, getting to Carnegie Hall not only took practice, it also took a kazoo.”
Pacific Northwest Ballet Loses Super Bowl Bet And Dances To ‘I’m Shipping Up To Boston’
In a video message to the Boston Ballet, Seahawks-clad dancers perform manèges to the Dropkick Murphys’ Celtic punk song (and take the chance to remind the Colorado Ballet that the Denver dancers never delivered on their bet after Seattle’s 2014 Super Bowl win).
Pandora Radio Squares Off Against BMI In (Potentially) Seismic Licensing Case
“The larger debate over music royalties online has galvanized musicians, and the Justice Department is reviewing the regulatory agreements that govern BMI and Ascap, its rival.”
‘Selma’ And David Oyelowo Win Big At The NAACP Image Awards
Spike Lee “told press that the recent Oscar snubs show that up and coming filmmakers should not always look for validation.”
Harper Lee Says She’s ‘Alive And Kicking And Happy As Hell’ About New Novel
“People who have seen Ms. Lee more recently say that she is physically frail but completely lucid.”
Peter Sellars: The Crisis At The English National Opera Emerges From A Wider Cultural Disaster In The Making
“Let me just say really simply that cultural meltdown is the order of the day. There’s not one theatre or opera company that can sell out anything anymore. For one thing that’s because the middle class is being destroyed right in front of our eyes.”
Who Will Replace Alan Gilbert At The NY Phil?
“Speculation is sure to fall immediately on Esa-Pekka Salonen, whose current contract with the Philharmonia ends, with ideal timing, in the 2016–17 season, and who will have a substantial presence with the Philharmonic in the 2015–16 season.”
That Poor-Dancing Left Shark In Katy Perry’s Superbowl Show? It’s Become A Meme (Ergo The Lawsuits Commence)
“First, there is the question of the costume copyrightability at all. It is not clear that anyone owns a copyright in Left Shark. And if no one owns a copyright in Left Shark, no one can demand that a Left Shark model get taken down from Shapeways.”
Alan Gilbert To Step Down As Music Director Of The New York Philharmonic
“Mr. Gilbert, 47, who has brought a spirit of experimentation to the Philharmonic and has been the first native New Yorker to lead it, said in an interview that he had decided to leave then to allow the next music director to build a relationship with concertgoers before construction begins on the hall, which is now expected to start in 2019, moving the orchestra out of its Lincoln Center home for two seasons.”
Gauguin Painting Sells For $300 Million, Highest Price Ever For A Single Work
The seller won’t confirm the identity or nationality of the buyer (yet), but where have they been spending truly massive amounts of money for art lately?