Yearly Archives: 2021
Russian Artist In Obscenity Trial For Her Female Nudes
"Feminist artist and LGBTQ+ activist Yulia Tsvetkova … was detained in November 2019 and remained under house arrest in Komsomolsk-on-Amur until March 16,...
Baltimore City Council Objects To Proposal That Would Expand Live Music
Pushed by County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr., a Democrat, the New Opportunities for Tourism and Entertainment — or NOTE — Act would enable restaurants,...
Make It Stop! Top French Publisher Pleads With Writers To Stop Sending Manuscripts
Successive Covid-19 lockdowns in France have given budding writers the time to finally work on that idea for a novel or to polish up...
Spotify Turns 15 — It Revolutionized The Music Business
How completely has streaming transformed the music world? The platform rose from 7% of the U.S. market in 2010 to a whopping 83% by...
Most People Think In Images. I Think In Sound
One of the distinctive features of my cognition is that not only do I think with sound and music; I also don’t think in...
Revealed: The Masterful Sophistication Of The Aztec Language
New research by a British linguistic anthropologist, Gordon Whittaker, is revealing for the first time that the Aztecs' hieroglyphic writing system was one of...
How A Gentle Little Movie By One Of Pakistan’s Favorite Directors Got Banned For...
Novelist Mohammed Hanif (A Case of Exploding Mangoes) writes about the strange case of Sarmad Khoosat's film Zindagi Tamasha ("Circus of Life"), which has...
How Beethoven (And The Philadelphia Orchestra) Brought The US And China Together
The idea that the world’s two most powerful countries can simply “decouple” as their strategic competition grows fiercer — a concept promoted by China...
On Zoom, Using Ancient Greek Theater To Process Modern Traumas
"Ancient stories, and texts that have stood the test of time, can be portals to honest and dignified grappling with present wounds and longings...
South African Arts Collapse During COVID
"Just as an example, when I put a post on Facebook that I was looking for someone to help clean my house, I got...
Two Years After The Notre-Dame Fire, What’s The State Of The Cathedral’s Organs?
In something of a miracle, the huge fire that ravaged the Paris landmark on April 15, 2019 did almost no serious damage to the...
Scientists Map Spider Webs For Their Music
Markus Buehler’s team used laser imaging to create a 3D map of webs made by tropical tent-web spiders (Cyrtophora citricola). They identified each thread’s...
Does Esperanto Have Any Hope Of Ever Catching On As A World Language? Not...
There are two fundamental problems with Esperanto as a genuinely global lingua franca. One is that, while it was intended to be have grammar...
How Endorsements Took Over Celebrity Culture
"The celebrity endorsement is a three-way relationship connecting the star, the product and us, and the internet has worked to draw all of its...
Why Would Any Self-Respecting Woman Sing Schumann’s ‘Frauenliebe Und -Leben?’ In 2021? Let This...
Soprano Carolyn Sampson summarizes the texts of the eight songs in the cycle thus: "1. I can't think of anything but him; 2. He's...
‘The First Great Balanchine Dancer’, Mary Ellen Moylan, Dead At 95
"Still in her teens, Ms. Moylan began to perform principal roles with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, where Balanchine, ever more enthusiastic about...
France Is Allowing Auction Houses To Keep Operating During Lockdown, But Not Galleries. Galleries...
"Late last month the president of the Conseil des Ventes, the regulatory authority for auction houses, gave notice that the government would in fact...
Video Now/Live Later — How Pacific Northwest Ballet Approached Its Commissions After COVID Shut...
"PNB opted for an all-digital 2020-21 season, honoring its commissions from Lang, Donald Byrd, Alejandro Cerrudo, Edwaard Liang and Christopher Wheeldon by filming premieres...
Univision And Televisa Sign Merger To Create Spanish-Language Media Giant
Univision, the largest producer of Spanish-language in the United States, and Televisa, Mexico's largest media conglomerate (and one of the world's biggest single producers...
Edinburgh International Festival Will Go On This Summer — Outdoors (Yes, In Scotland)
Last summer, COVID forced the cancellation of the flagship of the Festival City's summer events; this year, with new cases falling in Scotland and...
One Of Australia’s Most Popular Soap Operas Roiled By Accusations Of On-Set Racism
Neighbours, which has been running in Australia since 1985 and is one of the country's most successful TV shows internationally, has had two indigenous...
Firsts: Chicago Art Institute Appoints New Board Chair
A 15-year trustee of the museum, Denise Gardner will be the first African-American and first woman leader of the governing body for the museum...
How Big Tech Has “Weaponized” Design Patents
Introduced in 1842, the US design patent law saw just 14 designs registered in its first year, including a typeface, a bathtub and a...
What The Closing Of The Arclight Theatres Means For Movie Theatres
The truth is, the cinema experience as we know it, is likely doomed. While it isn’t going to disappear entirely, it will become a...
Awards Shows Used To Be Ratings Gold. Now They Struggle
The Emmy Awards — already in a ratings tailspin in recent years as it no longer celebrates mass-appeal hits — showed how far audience...
