ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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Is The Metaverse Inevitable?

It's said to be a “quasi-successor to the Internet,” with comparable impact and importance, that will give users an individual “presence.” - The Walrus

Now *This* Is How To Design Attractive Affordable Housing

Critic Oliver Wainwright says that the architects of this east London project, called A House for Artists, have found a way to follow local regulations and codes and keeps building costs low while still creating living spaces that are flexible and filled with light. - The Guardian

Research: Why Sustainable Careers In The Arts Are So Difficult

In the interviews taken as part of my research, I repeatedly found financial constraints underpin three problems causing career unsustainability in the arts. - The Conversation

Have We Forgotten The Art Of Listening?

Being able to engage in the practice of mindful, aesthetic and critical listening is as important to democracy as literacy. Yet, in comparison to the time and money put into early childhood reading development or STEM, these three modalities of democratic listening receive scant attention. 3 Quarks Daily

Can Anna Wintour, The Very Avatar Of Old-Style Condé Nast, Remake Its Titles For The 21st Century?

This year she's been focused on turning seven of Condé Nast's biggest publications into global brands, each under one leader. She is also ensuring that there are unlikely to be any more Anna Wintours — imperial editors-in-chief each with their own fiefs. - The New York Times

Genre-Bending Opera Wins $100,000 Grawemeyer Award

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

How “Web3” May Change Value In The Arts

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

The Voices Of Cultural Workers Breaking Up With The Arts

"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

After 25 Years, “Citizen Ruth” Is Relevant Again, And Star Laura Dern Is Very Pleased

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

Has America Lost Its Imagination?

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

A Playwright-Turned-Librettist Considers Opera’s Centuries-Long Penchant For Adapting Pre-Existing Properties

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

After 31 Years, A New Hint In The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft

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)

The Saturday Evening Post Is Now 200 Years Old — And It’s Still Here

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

Israel Says It Has Found Archaeological Evidence Of Hanukkah Story

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)

Met Museum Gets $125 Million To Jumpstart Modern Wing

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

Composer And Lyricist Stephen Sondheim, Master Of Musical Theatre, 91

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

School Protests From A Century Ago Set The Tone For Today’s Controversies

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

How Right-Wingers Tried To Turn Thanksgiving Into A Celebration Of Free Enterprise And Rejection Of Socialism

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

Ballet Dancers Get Injured All The Time. This Company Has Figured Out How To Fix Them.

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)

Writer Robert Bly, 94

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
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