Paul McCartney invented the details of her life as recounted in the famous Beatles song, but he found her name on a gravestone in a village church cemetery on the outskirts of Liverpool that he and John Lennon used to take shortcuts through. Yes, the grave is still there, and we do know a bit of her actual biography. – Atlas Obscura
Study Science, Fine. But Arts And Humanities Are The Future Of Work
With the rise of artificial intelligence, machine programming, and the ever more rapid automation of technical skills, many companies are seeking just the creative and humanist thinking that emerges from a study of the liberal arts. – Forbes
Canada’s New Opera Champion Bob McPhee, 65
As head of Calgary Opera he was one of the most innovative champions of the art form. “I think he truly changed opera in Canada. I think there was Before Bob and there is After Bob.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
How American Theatre Marginalizes Asians
“Just as Asian shows are seen as exotic oddities rather than universal, Asian American theatres aren’t considered national theatres by funders, even though it is companies like Ma-Yi, Theater Mu, and East West Players that have historically nurtured Asian American artists when white theatres would not work with them, and told Asian American stories before there was a financial imperative.” – American Theatre
George W. Bush, Painter (What Does His Art Say About Him? About Us?)
“Bush’s painting style is inelegant: his subjects’ eyes are often misaligned, his colors are sometimes muddied, and even though he attempts to create depth and shadow, the facial features ultimately fail to convey anything resembling human warmth. The book, providing an honorific framing, bestows a dignity upon his subjects that his presidential policies did not.” – ARTnews
Science: Turns Out Musical Taste Corresponds To Personality
It turns out that there is more to the question than appears on the surface, and multiple psychological studies have supported the idea that musical preferences are actually linked to our cognitive styles, or the way we think about, and react to, the world around us. – The Hill
Choreography With Water And Fire (This Is Not A Metaphor, This Is Actual Fluids And Flames)
Billy Bell, who is a visual spectacle designer and computer engineer as well as a dancer and choreographer, combines movement, architecture and computer code to create fire-and-fountain displays for the likes of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. “”When you’re choreographing on a fountain, the equipment itself is your dancer,” he says. “However, that dancer, that equipment, is fixed in space. It’s not going to move. It’s hundreds and hundreds of pounds and bolted to cement underneath eight feet of water.” – Dance Magazine
Prices For NFTs Swoon (Collapse?)
Perhaps, according to recent figures published by Nonfungible.com, which show that the average price of NFTs plummeted almost 70% from a peak of around $4,000 in mid-February to around $1,400 earlier this week. Since Bloomberg first reported the price crash on 3 April, sales have continued to decline. – The Art Newspaper
Arkansas’s Crystal Bridges Anounces A Fifty Percent Expansion
The expansion would add nearly 100,000 sq. ft to the museum’s current 200,000 sq. ft pavilion complex, which features concrete walls, bands of red cedar and copper roofs that all react to light and moisture in a forested Ozark setting. – The Art Newspaper
It’s 2021, And Italy Is Finally Abolishing Film Censorship
“It will now no longer be possible to block the release of a new film or demand edits for moral or religious reasons. Filmmakers will instead classify their own movies based on the age of the audience. Their decisions will be verified by a new commission made up of 49 members chosen from the film industry, but will be experts in education and animal rights.” – Yahoo! (AFP)
Survey: How Students Attitudes About Arts Education Are Changing In The COVID Era
Student responses show that their biggest concerns are the high cost of tuition for remote classes and the changes to their social lives on campus. But students interested in the arts say they have embraced the difficulties of virtual arts learning by pivoting to digital showcases, as well as platforms like Instagram and TikTok. – American Theatre
Kennedy Center Turns 50 (And Unveils Celebrations)
The 50th anniversary celebration is part of 1,110 dance, theater, jazz, comedy and musical concerts and events in the 2021-2022 season. The total represents a 25 percent cut from pre-pandemic averages, Rutter said, and many of the special performances have been scheduled for 2022 as a hedge that vaccines would by then be widely available. – Washington Post
Behold The World’s Largest Collection Of Magazines
“[James] Hyman’s collection now stands at around 150,000 editions of roughly 5,000 titles. They form the bulk of HYMAG, a dedicated magazine library housed in a former factory in Woolwich, south-east London. It’s an overwhelming sight. … It is not just the words that are important, Mr. Hyman stresses, but what surrounds them: the advertisements, the page layouts, the typography and all the other marginalia that have been lost as text has transitioned to the internet.” – The Economist
‘What If Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare, But Someone Else Wrote Him First?’
That’s how one scholar summarizes the theory that the plays of William Shakespeare were written, yes, by the glover’s son from Stratford-upon-Avon — but adapted from scripts and prose works by the courtier and Latin translator Sir Thomas North. Here’s a look at the evidence. – Smithsonian Magazine
Right-Wing Populists In Europe Are Going After Public Broadcasters
“In some countries, such as Hungary and Poland, illiberal governments are turning them into mouthpieces for the ruling party. In others, such as Germany and Sweden, populist movements accuse them of bias in favour of the establishment and the left. Modelled on Britain’s BBC (now facing political pressures of its own), Europe’s public media were set up to anchor democracy by providing citizens with objective reporting. But in an age of polarisation and disinformation, that is getting harder to do.” – The Economist
Bayeux Tapestry May Be Too Damaged To Travel To UK
There was quite some excitement in January of 2018 when President Emmanuel Macron announced that the 950-year-old, 2,300-foot-long needlework depicting the Norman Conquest would be lent to Great Britain in 2023, when its home museum would be closed for renovation. But a report following examination of the Tapestry finds that (as curators warned when the loan was announced) the artwork is in worse condition than anticipated and should probably not be moved except for conservation. – Museums Journal (UK)
California’s Arts Institutions Will Reopen June 15 (Won’t They?)
“California officials shocked the performing arts community Tuesday when they announced plans to fully reopen the economy June 15 if certain vaccination and hospitalization benchmarks are met, leaving leaders of theaters, music groups and more scrambling to revisit plans for spring and answer a long list of questions.” – Los Angeles Times
Suspect Arrested For Theft Of Van Gogh And Hals Paintings In Netherlands
“The police announced on Tuesday morning that they had arrested a 58-year-old man on suspicion of stealing both Vincent Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring (1884) and Frans Hals’s Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer from two museums in the Netherlands.” The thefts occurred last year in March and August, respectively, from museums that were closed due to the pandemic. The paintings have not yet been located. – Artnet
“Godzilla” Is A Hit — And It Could Change How Movies Are Distributed
It’s the kind of hybrid release that would have seemed impossible to pull off prior to the pandemic. Today, it’s the clearest indication yet that COVID-19 has forever changed how movies will be distributed. And the results have left Hollywood questioning what the film’s success means for the future of moviegoing. – Baltimore Sun
Venice Passes New Rules Restricting Biennale Business — Will They Help Or Hurt?
It may be a hasty measure in which practical consequences have not been thought through, or it may, as some suggest, be an indirect boost to the Biennale, which looks with some suspicion upon those who want to ride its jet stream by setting up ancillary exhibitions in the city. – The Art Newspaper