How does that work? With a lot of human effort, and at a mind-blowing pace of 3500 books per day. “Clean, dry human hands are the best way to turn pages.” – Open Culture
Remember The Concert Companion? (It’s Worth Remembering Why It Didn’t Catch On)
Roland Valliere described the Concert Companion as similar to audio guides in art museums. “I was trying to do for symphony orchestras what audio guides have done for museums: enhance and enrich the experience in real-time,” he was quoted as saying. But audio guides do not have a time sequencing pressure associated with them like music does and they do not distract from other viewers’ experience. – The Nightingale’s Sonata
How To Increase Equity For Blacks In Dance? ‘Ask Different Questions’
Choreographer Robert Moses: “The notion of change is sophomoric. The idea is to give people honest opportunity to be part of whatever they’re intending to be a part of. … Should we have more representation? No, we should have more influence. More actual ability to exercise that influence and power. All those things will be happening for the better of everyone.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
Why Librarians Have Been Unsuccessful At Fighting Misinformation
“This failure has many roots: The low social status of teachers and librarians relative to those in other professions, the lack of consistent instruction about information and media literacy across students’ educational experience, the diminishment of the humanities as a core element of general education, and the difficulty of keeping up with technological change and digital culture have all played a role. So has the fact that information literacy has no specific place in the curriculum.” – The Atlantic
Roberto Bedoya Talks About Place-Making
I was so surprised how “place-keeping” became such a sticky word across the country. I was offering a strong artist’s point of view about place, one in which artists weren’t being instrumentalized by the architect, or even the city planner, who wants a vibrant cultural district so that they can have sales; generate tax dollars. – Open Space
Critics Say The Prado Broke The Law When It Acquired A 20th-Century Painting
“The Prado paid €70,000 (around $85,000) for La Boulonnaise, a 1929 work by the Spanish painter María Blanchard. … But the move has riled some commentators, who point to a 1995 law dictating that any works created after 1881 belong in the collection of the Reina Sofia [Museum].” – Artnet
Slate Suspends Podcast Host Mike Pesca After Internal Slack Chat About N-Word
Pesca, a public radio veteran who has been hosting Slate‘s daily news podcast, The Gist, since 2012, was suspended indefinitely without pay this week in the wake of a debate among staffers on the company’s Slack channel about whether it is ever acceptable for a white journalist to use the n-word itself in a discussion of the slur’s use or history. While Pesca argued that referential or descriptive use should be allowed under certain circumstances, he did not use the word in that chat; he had, however, done so twice in 2019. – Defector
Spotify Is About To Open In 85 More Countries
The move adds a billion more potential customers to the market for the audio streaming giant, which will now be available in 178 countries and will support more than 60 languages. – Variety
After Six Years, Google News May Be Returning To Spain
“Google is negotiating individual licensing deals with a divided Spanish news industry that could allow the U.S. tech giant’s news service to resume in the country. … Google News, which links to third party content, closed in Spain in late 2014 in response to legislation which meant it had to pay a mandatory collective licensing fee to re-publish headlines or snippets of news.” – Reuters
San Diego Cultural Advocate Larry T. Baza, 76, Of COVID
“For more than four decades, Baza used his voice advocating for San Diego’s artistic and cultural community at the local, state and national levels. He served on countless panels, boards and commissions, including the National Endowment for the Arts, California Association of Local Arts Organizations, Chicano Federation of San Diego County, National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, San Diego Community Foundation and Diversionary Theatre.” – San Diego Union-Tribune
How The Smithsonian Is Celebrating Its 150 Years
“The Smithsonian was always about how it could help the country reimagine itself, understand itself,” said Bunch, a historian and founding director of the popular National Museum of African American History and Culture. “The work we did with early aviation, even the way we collect history, which was always trying to ensure future generations understand how we got where we are. The notion is to help people recognize that they create the future.” – Washington Post
Governor: NYC Movie Theatres Can Reopen
Governor Andrew Cuomo said “cinemas in the city will be permitted to operate at 25% capacity, with no more than 50 people. Moreover, other safety measures such as masks, social distancing and heightened sanitizing measures will be required.” – Variety
Charles Hill, Heroic Undercover Art Detective, Dead At 73
“Hill’s willingness to take major risks in order to find some of the world’s greatest stolen artworks” — most famously, Vermeer’s Lady Writing a Letter With Her Maid (in 1993) and Munch’s The Scream (in 1996) — “made him one of the most celebrated art detectives in the world.” – ARTnews
Cuban Artists Demand Removal Of Culture Minister
The Cuban activist group 27N submitted a legal request for Alonso’s removal to the National Assembly of People’s Power on February 3 on behalf of nearly 1,300 artists, intellectuals, and activists. – Artnet
Getting At What Truth Really Is (Not That Simple)
“True seems to be that which is in accordance with the facts or reality, the way things simply are. But it is not as simple as that. For there are not only ‘brute facts’ (eg whether Germany invaded Belgium in 1914), but also more complex phenomena, where interpretation and the weighing of evidence apply (eg, the causes of World War One). How we make sense of things has a great deal to do with what truth means.” – 3 Quarks Daily
Star Soccer Star Touts Ballet Training For Performance
The images shared by the ballet company had soccer fans’ heads turning when they emerged. Such a sports star dabbling in ballet may have seemed unheard of, but it wasn’t a new trend. – Irish Times
How To Design A Memorial For The COVID Pandemic?
Several places in Italy and Great Britain are considering the question, and a few memorials have already gone up. “[They] are not intended as sweeping monuments to the historical moment, but simple places to grieve and reflect.” – The New York Times
Why Joffrey Ballet Is Only Now Making Work To Stream
Staging a full-length performance digitally “would break the bank,” says artistic director Ashley Wheater, who doesn’t really like streamed dance much. “I’m embracing it because there’s nothing else, but it wouldn’t be my choice. … [Nevertheless,] if it’s the right content, it can be really powerful.” – Chicago Magazine
Will Upright Citizens Brigade Ever Reopen? ‘I Don’t Know’, Says Amy Poehler
In a feature interview for The New York Times Magazine, the co-founder of the famed, and now troubled, improv company and school said, “It’s been brutal for us. We’re basically using the fire of COVID to start some new version. We’re changing our school and our theater to not-for-profit.” (She and her co-founders have said they’ll give up leadership of UCB when that happens.) “Whether or not we’ll be able to get there, I don’t know.” – Vulture
Douglas Turner Ward, Pioneering Black Theater Artist, Dead At 90
A writer and director as well as an actor, he wrote a 1966 New York Times Op-Ed titled “American Theater: For Whites Only?” that inspired the Ford Foundation to fund the creation of the Negro Ensemble Company, with Ward as artistic director. Both he and the troupe amassed nominations and awards, and the NEC counts some of the world’s most admired Black actors as alumni. Ward was also a playwright, and just last year published his magnum opus, a trilogy titled The Haitian Chronicles. – The New York Times
France Is Trying To Raise Millions To Buy De Sade’s Filthiest Manuscript
“The French government is appealing for corporate help to acquire the manuscript of the Marquis de Sade’s notorious The 120 Days of Sodom, valued at €4.5m (£3.9m), for the National Library of France.” – The Guardian
It’s A 17,300-Year-Old Kangaroo: Australia’s Oldest Rock Art Identified
“A nearly-life-size depiction of a kangaroo — realistic genitalia included — is the oldest known rock painting in Australia. Scientists recently pinpointed its age to 17,300 years ago with a technique that had never been used on Australian ancient art before: measuring radioactive carbon in wasp nests from rocks near the artwork.” – Live Science
Long Beach Opera Hires James Darrah As New AD
During the pandemic, Darrah’s affinity for film allowed him to pivot to digital content with ease. Over the last six months, the director has worked with LA Opera, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, Boston Lyric Opera and others to produce visually compelling screen experiences hailed by the New Yorker as “arresting” and by the Boston Globe as “ambitious and spectacular.” – Los Angeles Times
Inside What Makes Tom Stoppard Tick
Anthony Lane: “Many folk, less deserving than Stoppard, and with scarcely a whit of his charm, are greeted with godsends. What marks him out is the unusual thoroughness with which he has probed the mechanism of fate, as if it were his moral duty—shaded, perhaps, with a touch of guilt—to understand why he, of all people, should have got the breaks.” – The New Yorker
The Phillips Turns 100
The museum in Washington, DC, founded by Duncan and Marjorie Phillips, was a sensation when it opened as a museum of modern art, and it’s been a refuge and inspiration since, including, at times, during the pandemic. “Dorothy Kosinski, director of the museum, tells a story: ‘I was standing outside of the Phillips in the fall when we were open for a while. A woman came out, exhaled, and said, ‘Oh! That was such a wonderful vacation!'” – NPR