Yearly Archives: 2021
The Serendipity Of Almanacs
Almanacs are an anomaly in the 2021 literary landscape, a choose-your-own adventure of print culture. So much of reading, especially online, is about seeking:...
The Italians Who Dangle From Ropes To Repair Historic Sites
"EdiliziAcrobatica's team has rock-climbed up and abseiled down some of Italy's most significant historic monuments. … Suspended from ropes, the acrobatic technicians can perform...
Washington’s Signature Theatre Picks A New Leader
Matthew Gardiner takes over the 32-year-old company, which operates two performance spaces in Arlington’s Village at Shirlington, at a tumultuous inflection point. - Washington...
Remember Waacking? It’s Back
The kinetic, flamboyant, arm-waving dance style was born in the Black and Latino gay nightclubs of L.A., spread via the TV show Soul Train,...
Mapping The Reopening: A TRG Report
55% of U.S. organizations plan to host performances before October 2021. U.K. arts and culture organizations are even more optimistic, with 83% planning a...
Donald Pippin, San Francisco’s Pied Piper Of Opera, Dead At 95
For 40 years, he and his resourceful company, Pocket Opera, used young singers, small instrumental groups, and librettos in English to bring unfamiliar works...
How Musical Memories Evolve
Our unreliable memories of musical events are only partly the result of faulty powers of recall. Another contributing factor is the aging process. -...
What Happens If An Archivist Sneezes On A Centuries-Old Manuscript?
First, for God's sake, he shouldn't wipe it off himself. (This lesson was learned the hard way.) Beyond that, there are ways of...
Pornhub Is Now Offering Virtual Museum Tours
The website has launched "Classic Nudes", a curated selection of NSFW art at the Louvre, the Met, the Prado, etc. View the works online...
California Budgets $50 Million In Pandemic Relief For Small Theaters
"The subsidy came after intense lobbying from small theaters concerned about their future after a 15-month shutdown. Compounding the effects was the prospect of...
Court Throws Out Judge Roy Moore’s Lawsuit Against Sacha Baron Cohen
The former Alabama jurist and Senate candidate sued the actor/mockumentarian over the scene in the Netflix series Who Is America? in which Baron Cohen's...
Meet Spoleto Festival USA’s First New General Director In 35 Years
Succeeding longtime chief Nigel Redden in October is Egyptian-American musicologist Mena Mark Hanna, a teacher, composer, Coptic Orthodox cantor (!), and former administrator at...
Can The Metropolitan Opera Start Its Season On Time? It’s Up To The Musicians’...
The company, which was having money troubles even before the pandemic, finally has agreements with the unions for onstage (AGMA) and backstage (IATSE) workers....
Italy Bans Cruise Ships From Venice (And They Mean It This Time!)
An announcement to this effect was made earlier this year, but the mammoth passenger boats turned up anyway. But now the national government, eager...
Security Guards Curate Baltimore Museum Show
“I was struck and moved by the extraordinarily personal, cogent arguments that each officer made for their selection, which was so different from the...
A Music Critic Reconsiders The Star Spangled Banner As A Piece Of Music
What if, after 90 years, we took a diagnostic check on this venerable musical document to see whether it still works as intended? -...
What Jerry Saltz’s Rejection Of Substack Really Means
"Some more enterprising major-media columnists sometimes compare Substack to the broadsheets of journalism’s early decades in the 1800s, though they do this, invariably, as...
How Mathematical Models Gave Us An Advantage With COVID
Enormously useful mathematical tools that have been put to work during the pandemic—from classical differential equations to more recent techniques such as Monte Carlo...
Oklahoma City Ballet Sues Insurance Company Over Denied COVID Claims
“An all risk policy is to cover any loss that you have during the policy period, unless it is specifically excluded.” - KFOR
France Fines Google $593 Million Over News Sharing
It is "one of the first attempts to apply a new copyright directive adopted by the European Union intended to force internet platforms like...
The Man Who Saved The Slovenian Language
Over six centuries in the Habsburg empire and most of another in Yugoslavia, the tongue of this tiny Alpine land might well have faded...
They Said COVID Would Kill Cities. Clearly It Hasn’t
What is so alluring about the perpetually imminent End of Cities? Why won’t that idea itself die? - The New York Times
British TV Has Become A Major Worldwide Export
And it isn't just Downton Abbey and Killing Eve: MasterChef and Naked Attraction air in dozens of countries. In fact, other nations are now...
The Arts Have A Class Problem
Our research found that a complex blend of social inequalities, labour market failures, and outright discrimination are making these jobs so exclusive and keeping...
Robots Are Now Sculpting In Carrara Marble
AI software isn't designing the sculptures in the Italian quarry town (yet), but it is controlling precision machines that do the strenuous grinding and...
