Today, the worries of 2008 look almost endearingly naive: Forget about the web making us dumber; let’s talk about how it has transformed us into tribalized rage monsters. – Slate
There Are A Surprising Number Of Copies In Museums. Are Those Museums Being Honest About What They’re Showing?
The role of copies still raises larger questions about the mission of museums and the nature of authenticity. Does it matter if the works of art or historical objects on display are copies? Does it render the experience of visitors less meaningful? And are the institutions that don’t clearly identify the copies in some way shirking their responsibility to the public? – Washington Post
The World’s Greatest Art Thief (And How He Does It)
When it comes to stealing from museums, Stéphane Breitwieser is virtually peerless. He is one of the most prolific and successful art thieves who have ever lived. Done right, his technique—daytime, no violence, performed like a magic trick, sometimes with guards in the room—never involves a dash to a getaway car. – GQ
Study: Here’s How Dr. Seuss Books Are Racist
“[This study reveals] how racism spans across the entire Seuss collection, while debunking myths about how books like Horton Hears a Who! and The Sneetches can be used to promote tolerance, anti-bias, or anti-racism,” Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens write in their February 2019 report, “The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, AntiBlackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss’ s Children’s Books,” as part of St. Catherine University’s Research on Diversity in Youth Literature. – People
Early Hollywood’s Morality Code Was Silly, Self-Righteous And Obsessive. But It Provoked Some Genius Work
It is usually believed that the anti-sex, anti-violence Code was harmful to art, intellectually unsophisticated, imposed from above and un-American in its disregard for First Amendment Rights. This is far from the full picture. Often the Code encouraged greatness, was intellectually nuanced, self-regulated and conformed to American values of Judeo-Christian ethics and free enterprise. For good and bad, it was as American as apple pie. – History Today
Dance Companies Have Started Sharing Programs, Commissions, And Sometimes Even Dancers
“In what seems to be a growing trend, regional companies are coming together to share stages and expand their audiences. These team-ups often go beyond split bills, with companies swapping choreographers and performing at least one joint work. While the logistics of co-presentations can be complicated — with more dancers to schedule, budgets to balance and creative visions to blend — the benefits can range from bigger box-office returns to lasting relationships for the artists.” – Dance Magazine
Marvel Finally Gets A Woman-Led Superhero Movie
What took so long, and is Captain Marvel going to help fix the problem? Maybe. It certainly helps a bit: Captain Marvel stars a woman, of course, but it’s “also the first Marvel movie to have a female director and only the second, after 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy, to credit women as screenwriters.” – The New York Times
Caravaggio Or Not, The Painting Discovered In An Attic Is Going Up For Sale – But Who Would Buy It?
So the Louvre decided not to buy the canvas, found in an attic in Toulouse in 2014, despite the fact that art experts have made a pretty convincing case. – The Guardian (UK)
How Netflix Uses Social Media To Get Its Shows To The Center Of Popular Culture
The company uses its social and brand editorial department as the engine that keeps Netflix shows and movies at the forefront of the pop-culture conversation. By imbuing its social platforms with the personality of a meme-happy fan who lives for TV and movies (rather than being stunt-driven, deadpan, or, worse, mocking the very audience it seeks), Netflix’s approach goes beyond mere promotion and jumps armpit-deep into participation and collaboration. – Fast Company
Andrew Wyeth’s Secret Paintings That Made A Woman Famous
“Over the course of more than 15 years, Andrew Wyeth created 250 secret paintings. He hid them from everyone—including his wife, who was also his business manager—in the loft of a millhouse near his home in rural Pennsylvania. When they were discovered, in 1986, they generated a media frenzy that extended well beyond the art world. The Helga paintings, as they came to be called, all depicted a single subject: Helga Testorf.” – The Atlantic
The New York Times “Does” LA Art (Again)
“As the latest New York Times critic to go spelunking in this city’s museums, galleries, studios and alternative spaces, from Brentwood to Boyle Heights, let me get my verdict out of the way fast. Is Los Angeles, in 2019, the equal of New York as a center for contemporary art? Sure, of course it is.” – The New York Times
Report: London’s Vibrant Creative Sector Has Failed To Diversify
Despite “significant job growth” since 2012, the creative sector has “failed to diversify its work force” and it is still “who you know, not what you know, that counts”, the report states. – The Stage
John O’Neal, Who Brought Theater To Southern Blacks Who Had None, Dead At 78
“Mr. O’Neal was still in his early 20s in 1963 when he, Doris Derby and Gilbert Moses founded the Free Southern Theater, which presented free productions throughout the South. The troupe often performed in small towns to largely black audiences with little access to the theater.” As he told an interviewer, “In the South it has been very hard for a Negro to look at and see anything but a distorted view of himself.” – The New York Times
A 20th Century Book That Foresaw Our Questions About AI
Nearly 70 years later, The Human Use of Human Beings has more to teach us humans than it did the first time around. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the book is that it introduces a large number of topics concerning human/machine interactions that are still of considerable relevance. Dark in tone, the book makes several predictions about disasters to come in the second half of the 20th century, many of which are almost identical to predictions made today about the second half of the 21st. – Slate
The Incredibly Tangled History Of The Verb ‘To Be’
“The most commonly used verb in the English language (and indeed many other languages) has a strange history. The fact that it has so many more forms than other verbs, which are quite unlike each other (be, being, been, is, was, were, am, are) gives us a clue as to its Frankensteinian origins.” (And plenty of languages don’t even use it.) “It’s what some linguists have called ‘a badly mixed up verb.'” – JSTOR Daily
How Do Blind People Interpret Color?
How does a congenitally blind person’s knowledge of a rainbow—or even something as seemingly simple as the color red—differ from that of the sighted? – MedicalXpress
Tyler Perry Writes His Farewell Letter To Madea
“I understood very early on that this mostly blue-collar African-American audience was feeling inspired. They were getting answers to a lot of what was going on in our community that no one was talking about. … I could lift them with humor and use that laughter as an anesthetic and talk about really deep, sensitive issues that were destroying so many of us. – The New York Times
A Brief History Of Jesus On The Big Screen
Cinematic depictions of Christ go all the way back to Edison and the Lumière brothers. And they stretch forward from the silents through Cecil B. DeMille to Mel Gibson — and that’s just from Hollywood. And it’s only in Hollywood where Jesus looks like a white movie star. – The Conversation
Philadelphia’s Academy Of Music Is Shedding
Well, it’s really called “spalling” — chipping and splintering by the brick, concrete or other materials on the exterior of the handsome theater, the US’s oldest opera house, now owned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the venue (these days) for touring musicals, the Pennsylvania Ballet, and Opera Philadelphia. Peter Dobrin explains why it’s happening and what’s being done. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Astounding Life Of André Previn
“[He] was not only among the most charismatic performers of his day, but also enjoyed one of the greatest classical-music lives since Berlioz and Liszt.” David Patrick Stearns surveys an amazing lifetime: Not only were there film scores and Broadway shows, Oscars and Grammys, classical compositions galore, music-director posts at major orchestras and prestigious guest conducting gigs — there were comedy shows, TV appearances, five marriages to glamorous women (including a movie star and a world-famous violinist), and what he called “the divorce that didn’t work.” – The Guardian
Broadway Producer And Harper Lee’s Estate Are Shutting Down Local ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ Productions All Over America
“The theaters were planning to stage an adaptation of the novel by the playwright Christopher Sergel, which has been widely staged by adults and students for decades. Lawyers for the producer Scott Rudin, backed by the Lee estate, are telling the theaters that their productions are no longer permissible because there is a new adaptation, by the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, which opened on Broadway in December.” – The New York Times
Former Balanchine Dancer Sues Balanchine Trust And Its Founder (And She’s A Board Member)
“Susan Gluck, a trustee of the George Balanchine Trust, which administers the rights to perform Balanchine’s ballets, filed a petition Thursday … seeking a full accounting of the financial management of the trust. She danced [under Mr. B. at New York City Ballet] from 1978 to 1986.” Gluck petition charges that Barbara Horgan, for many years Balanchine’s secretary, “has leveraged the trust to consolidate her power … and maximize her income to the detriment of other trust beneficiaries.” – The Washington Post
American Repertory Theater To Move Across River From Cambridge To Boston
Greater Boston’s leading resident theater company has been on Harvard Square for decades, but it’s just been given $100 million by hedge funder David E. Goel and his wife as the lead gift for a “research and performance center” in the Boston neighborhood of Allston. (No timeline has been announced.) – The New York Times
WOMAD Is Having Trouble Booking Artists, Who Are Spooked By Brexit
Last year, the headache for this world music festival was that performers were either denied UK visas or found the process of trying to get them too tortuous to deal with. This year, organizers say, in addition to that problem, artists are afraid they’ll get to the EU but won’t be allowed to cross the Channel. – The Guardian
An Author Reflects On The Agony Of Second-Book Syndrome
Hannah Beckerman: “Six years and many thousands of unpublished words later, my second novel is finally about to hit bookshops. Except that it’s not really my second novel. It is, in truth, my fifth. Because for the past six years, I’ve suffered from that widespread and yet rarely acknowledged creative affliction: second novel syndrome.” – Irish Times