The work — a subversive blurring of genre, time and politics reflecting on how little has changed over the centuries, yet how much change is possible — jolted the generally conservative Vienna State Opera. - The New York Times
The NFT confers public proof of ownership and authenticity of an item, which may or may not include copyright — just as in the physical world an artist may sell a work but retain the intellectual property. - The New York Times
"Artists are taught to see each other as competition ... and to believe that failure to achieve status in their chosen field is solely due to a lack of individual talent." The pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests, and social media changed all that. - Los Angeles Review of Books
In this Q&A, she says that in 1996, Harvey Weinstein and Miramax deliberately buried the movie, but that young people today (including her daughter's friends) have discovered it and love it, especially now that Roe v. Wade is in jeopardy. - Vulture
Americans used to go to movie theaters to watch new characters in new stories. Now they go to movie theaters to re-submerge themselves in familiar story lines. - The Atlantic
Adaptations from well-known sources go right from the beginnings of opera as a distinct genre circa 1600 (Peri's Euridice and Monteverdi's L'Orfeo) to the remarkable flowering of new opera (especially chamber opera) in the US today. And there are good reasons for that. - Van
A retired Boston jeweler says that, shortly after the 1990 heist, an acquaintance brought in a gilded bronze eagle for him to appraise — a piece that he recognized as stolen from the museum. - MSN (The Boston Globe)
Most of us assumed the dear old mag had shut down forever. In fact, it was only closed from 1969-71, before being relaunched as a quarterly; it's now bimonthly and was overhauled in 2013. Here's an overview of the Post's two centuries. - Columbia Journalism Review
Excavations in the Lachish Forest, about 40 miles southwest of Jerusalem, have uncovered the remains of a Hellenistic fortress — a structure which the Israel Antiquities Authority says was destroyed by the Maccabees' army during the rebellion commemorated by Hanukkah. (Other scholars aren't so sure.) - Yahoo! (The Daily Beast)
The gift represents an important leap forward for the Met project, which is now expected to cost about $500 million and calls for creating 80,000 square feet of galleries and public space with an architect to be announced this winter. - The New York Times
Impossible to sum the central figure of American musical theatre up, but: "Sondheim not only bound music, lyrics and book inextricably together, but he explored in far greater depths the human condition in all its anxieties and moral complexities." - Washington Post
Telling parents you don’t want their kids to have the best possible public schools is never good politics. A full century ago, the most effective school-ban campaign in American history set the pattern: noise, fury, rancor, and fear, but not much change in what schools actually teach. - The Atlantic
This was not some scheme dreamed up by Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or even the Cato Institute: this particular intellectual endeavor goes all the way back to the New Deal and FDR's "Four Freedoms" speech. (The Pilgrims, in this view, were proto-socialists mugged by reality.) - Slate
Drawing on its sports-mad nation's expertise in sports medicine, the Australian Ballet has developed physical therapy techniques to help dancers heal without surgery. In more than 15 years, not one of the company's dancers has had to end a career due to injury. - The Age (Melbourne)
He "galvanized protests against the Vietnam War and started a controversial men’s movement with a best seller that called for a restoration of primal male audacity." - The New York Times
The Catherine Project’s commitment, borne out beautifully by our seminars thus far, is that great books are supremely egalitarian: They move and challenge us all alike. Indeed, what proves great books great is that they’ve stood the test of time. - Hedgehog Review
"What we don’t know — about the lives of our neighbors and fellow citizens and why they think the way they do — is almost as important as what we do know." - The New York Times
Christopher Knight: "Lots of smart people write smart things about art but nobody was a better writer than Dave. ... Hickey, a brilliant and cantankerous wit, wrote for the ear. His work needed reading, not scanning, and rewarded effort with pleasure." - Los Angeles Times
In New York, the arts' elitism "stands in stark contrast to the middle decades of the 20th century, when the city was a haven for cash-strapped artists and New Yorkers across the income spectrum could make and enjoy a wide range of art." - New York Daily News
"To their proponents, they're understated and contemporary, with paint jobs that will take a beating without ever looking dirty. To their detractors, they're unimaginative, historically inaccurate aberrations, the kind of thing an affluent biotech CEO who wears a gray Patagonia fleece vest every day might appreciate." - The Guardian
