Yearly Archives: 2021
At The Ballpark, In The Concert Hall, A Crowd Feeds Off Itself. But At...
“You don’t feel part of a crowd,” said Michael Howell, a season ticket holder for 40 years. “It’s more like a movie theatre where...
Why Workers At The Walters Museum Are Organizing A Union
The goal is to form a wall-to-wall union representing workers in nearly every aspect of museum operations. “We’ve got conservators, we’ve got people working...
It’s A Golden Age For Chinese Archaeology. Why Isn’t The West Paying Attention?
Chinese archaeology has a very different history from Egyptian archaeology. It has largely been done by local, Chinese archaeologists, for one thing; it was...
How The Golden Globes Brought On Its Own Demise
"The association has long been considered corrupt by critics and other members of the press, but that’s not what people are really mad about....
How The Met Opera’s Telemarketing Strategy Backfires On Itself
"Dialing for dollars may be a skill that some sellers of products and services profitably employ. But when it comes to deepening a level...
The Mystery Man Who Now Controls The World’s Largest Classical Music Management Company
After wresting control of IMG Artists in an internal power struggle, Russian-born tycoon Alexander Shustorovich has kept the agency alive through the pandemic to...
The Private Detective Who Has Recovered Half A Billion Dollars Worth Of Art
Christopher Marinello spends his life tracking stolen masterpieces. "I get a huge amount of tips, usually on WhatsApp. ... Sometimes they are from informants...
Lois Lew, The Woman Who Mastered IBM’s 5400-Character Typewriter
"Spinning continuously at a speed of 60 revolutions per minute, or once per second, the drum measured 7 inches in diameter, and 11 inches...
Simon Rattle Asks UK Ministers For Help With Brexit And The London Symphony Orchestra
Brexit regulations are not great for the LSO, which had 99 tour dates booked in Europe before the pandemic canceled them all. "It’s all...
And The Dylan Thomas Prize Goes To
Raven Leilani for Luster, her debut novel (which was also awarded the admiration of former President Barack Obama, but that's a different kind of...
Katherine Barber, Founding Editor Of The Canadian English Dictionary, 61
The woman who entered "jambusters" in the (well, her) dictionary read popular novels and listened to parliamentary debates to find the most Canadian English...
Chicago Had The Most Radical Advice Columnist Of The Roaring ’20s
That is, the '20s that were a century ago. Princess Mysteria's columns in The Defender "presented a stark contrast with other advice writing of...
There’s A Brief Post-Lockdown Window For Britons To See Their Museums Devoid Of Tourist...
And that seems like something to celebrate, and take advantage of, to a lot of museum directors. "We know that all museums’ audiences will...
The Video Game Platform That Spawned Its Own Music Genre
You might this it's Nintendo - the soundtracks to Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong sure can linger in one's brain - but instead...
Emily Blunt Is One Of Vanishingly Few Actors Resisting Superhero Movies
It's rare - incredibly rare - for a Hollywood actor to turn down Marvel or DC. But Blunt said recently, "I don’t know if...
Where Should, Or Could, A Reader Start With Speculative Fiction From Africa?
As speculative fiction from African writers starts to gain mainstream press attention in the U.S. and U.K., readers might wonder where to start. Short...
What Happened To AT&T’s Big Warner Media Plans?
They evaporated in the span of three years. One of those was an extremely weird year, to be sure, but three years. "AT&T found...
The New Joys Of Experiencing Performance Three Different Ways
If you could see a dance performance inside the theatre (with other masked, socially distanced audience members), outside (same, but less distance), or via...
Hollywood Has An Issue With Women Action Heroes
Well, it has issues with women, aging women, of any type, but nevertheless: "40-something actresses rarely lead action films—even though Jolie is 13 years...
WhatsApp’s Weird Privacy Debacle Hints At Deeper Tech Issues
When WhatsApp - for years, owned by Facebook - asked users to agree to a privacy update for something that had been true since...
In Paris, Bookstores Are Essential Landmarks – And Struggling To Survive
Paris has lost 30 percent of its independent bookshops in the last 20 years, despite a lot of government intervention: "Small shops qualify for...
Pervis Staples, Who Moved His Family’s Staple Singers From Gospel To Soul, 85
Staples once compared the Staple Singers' "effect on ecstatic church audiences to 'a miracle or the hand of God.'" Pervis Staples "attended grammar school...
The Shy Performance Poet Who Writes About Everything From Sex To Death
Hollie McNish, who once changed her name to "Hollie Poetry" - what she now calls "a search engine name" - says that sex and...
The Dictatorial Polish Conductor Who Changed The Sound Of American Orchestras
The tale of Artur Rodzinski is not a charming one, and yet, "arguably no man had more of a hand in turning American orchestras...
David Ludwig talks technology in the arts
The Artistic Advisor to the President and Chair of Composition Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, also Artistic Director of Curtis Summerfest, speaks...
