Researchers using an array of high-tech methods have found traces of alum, potash, lime, borax, and plain old salt in the wooden fronts of these old instruments — and the cellulose molecules in the spruce were rearranged by those treatments. – The Strad
The New Hotness In Exotic Dance? Lesbian Doms Performing For Straight Women
“[They] are pioneering a new style: masculinized lesbian stripping that appeals both to the LGBTQ community and to a straight female crowd — the type who generally show up to more mainstream and much whiter male strip shows like those by the Chippendales.” – Slate
This Flight Attendant Wrote A Hair-Raising Novel By Jotting It On Cocktail Napkins
Author T.J. Newman: “I said [to a pilot friend], ‘What would you do if your family was kidnapped and you were told that if you didn’t crash the plane, they’d be killed?’ I knew by the look on his face that I’d struck a nerve. He was terrified. He didn’t have an answer. And I knew I had a story.” – The New York Times
Martha Nussbaum And The Striving In Structures
For her entire career, Nussbaum, now seventy-four, has blazed a trail for women in philosophy, a field that historically has not welcomed female thinkers. – New York Review of Books
Chicago Tribune Puts Theater Critic Chris Jones In Charge Of Editorial Page
The move follows the paper’s loss of 40 journalists since Alden Global Capital bought the Tribune earlier this year. Jones says he’ll continue to review “the major shows” in town. – Robert Feder
How The Pandemic Has/Is Changing The Ways We Look At Art
What I did not expect was how these installations would speak to one another, and to me, about the pandemic. – Artnet
Why We Need Distrust In Our Civic Discourse
Sometimes distrust is not only appropriate but is also a way to initiate the conversation that’s needed for civic friendship. Distrust, in a democracy, can actually be a good thing. – Psyche
No Surprise: European Movie Box Office Down 70 Percent Last Year
The European box office plunged 70.4 percent last year, down $6.04 billion (5.1 billion euro) from $8.5 billion (7.2 billion euro) in 2019 to $2.5 billion (2.1 billion euro). – The Hollywood Reporter
Florida Man Says He’s The One Who Invented Invisible Sculpture, May Sue Artist Who Just Sold One
In early June in Milan, conceptual artist Salvatore Garau auctioned off an “immaterial sculpture” for €15,000. Now performance artist Tom Miller points out that he (with a crew of workers!) installed a similar work, titled Nothing, in a Gainesville park in 2016. He and his attorney have written Garau to seek a settlement. – Artnet
Lucinda Childs At ’81 On Paper’
“She’s most associated with the Judson Dance Theater and New York’s downtown arts scene of the ’60s and ’70s, a hub of radical musicians, artists, performers, cheap loft studios and experimental happenings. But Childs has worked steadily since, particularly in Europe, and latterly as an opera director, too.” – The Guardian
How Ancient Humans Adapted To Be Smart
One of the things we’re learning from new fossil discoveries is there appears to be these different species of early human, or hominin, coexisting on the landscape with different anatomies or adaptations in their feet and legs. – Nautilus
Let’s Give Mae West Credit As The Auteur She Was
She doesn’t get the respect for her pioneering role that, for instance, Ida Lupino does — because her characters and stories were comic, and because she didn’t direct her films. But she did write them, and she often adapted them from stage plays she did direct as well as write and star in. – The New York Times
Banksy “Adjustment” Of Mount Rainier Painting Sells For $6 Million
Banksy added an asterisk and a tiny bit of corporate-speak to the painting’s bottom right-hand corner: “*Subject to availability for a limited period only.” – Seattle Times
‘La Madre De La Telenovela’, Delia Fiallo, Dead At 96
She started out writing radio serials in 1940s Cuba, switched to TV, fled the Castro regime in 1966 and started over completely in Miami — going on to write the scripts for 40 of the massively popular Spanish-language prime-time soap operas and becoming the genre’s first superstar author. – MSN (Washington Post)
New York’s First Queer History Museum Will Be Hosted By New York’s First Museum Of Any Kind
As part of a major renovation and expansion of its Central Park West headquarters, the New-York Historical Society (founded 1804) will devote an entire floor to the new American L.G.B.T.Q.+ Museum, expected to open in 2024. – The New York Times
Steady And Strong: The State Of Public Media Over The Past Decade
That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Pew Research Center. Results for last year in particular were that terrestrial public radio listenership was down a bit, public TV audience was up quite a bit, and podcasts keep growing. – Inside Radio
Co-Founder Of Philly’s Wilma Theater To Depart After 40 Years
Blanka Zizka, who with then-husband Jiri turned a small, experimental company into a major regional theater, is stepping down just 17 months after she instituted a new rotating artistic directorship structure at the Wilma. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
What To Do With All Those Empty NYC Storefronts? Put Art In Them
Last June Barbara Anderson founded Art on the Ave, which creates free exhibits in New York City neighborhoods by using empty storefronts as gallery space. – Christian Science Monitor
Meddling With Medici at the Met: Provocations & Proclamations
The Medici: Portraits and Politics, at the Metropolitan Museum to Oct. 11, is a curatorial tour de force that only a scholar like Keith Christiansen could pull off. With his retirement today today after 43 years at the Met, this show is his swansong at the museum. – Lee Rosenbaum
David Frum: Why Are States Turning Against Academic Testing?
Across the U.S., blue-state educational authorities have turned hostile to academic testing in almost all of its forms. – The Atlantic
David Geffen Gives $150 Million To Make Yale Drama School Tuition Free
The school said that, starting in August, it would eliminate tuition for all returning and future students in its masters, doctoral and certificate programs. Tuition at the school had been $32,800 per year. – The New York Times