Yearly Archives: 2021
The Rare Fabric That Was Coveted 200 Years Ago That No One Now Knows...
Made via an elaborate, 16-step process with a rare cotton that only grew along the banks of the holy Meghna river, the cloth was...
Latin American Telenovelas Are Old Hat. The New Hotness Is Turkish Dizis
In many countries these days, including Spanish-speaking ones, the Turkish serial dramas are replacing telenovelas on TV schedules. The popularity of dizis has now...
How Orchestras Are Trying To Diversify Audiences
Orchestras are approaching these audiences through multilingual websites, artist and repertoire choices, and outreach activities, connecting more firmly with the communities they touch. - Strings
Creating Choreography For Animated Characters
Sherrie Silver, who usually works with film stars and models, talks with a reporter about how she created, and then communicated to animators, the...
How Merce Cunningham Upended Concert Dance’s Conventions: Technology, Philosophy And Randomness
"This video from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis explores six aspects to Cunningham's 70-year career, from dance maker, collaborator and chance taker, to...
Once Threatened, This One-Million-Pound Artwork Is Being Rehomed
Elyn Zimmerman's rock-and-water installation Marabar was erected in 1984 in the courtyard of the National Geographic Society — which now has other plans for...
When Someone Hears Music That Isn’t There
Here's an explainer about Musical Ear Syndrome — which isn't a form of tinnitus or of audio hallucinations caused by a psychiatric condition. In...
99 Finds: The Most Exciting Art And Artifact Discoveries Of 2021
Sorted into categories such as "Missing masterpieces", "Ancient art", "Prehistoric peoples", African-American and indigenous North American history, and "Royal treasures", here are nearly a...
Saudi Government Wants To Make Its Country The Arab World’s New Filmmaking Capital
With Egypt's once-dominant industry stagnating under the Sisi dictatorship, the government led by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman is dropping lots of money...
Belgium’s High Court Overrules Government’s Shutdown Of Cultural Venues
The Council of State, the country's top administrative court, found insufficient justification for prime minister Alexander De Croo's COVID-related order closing theaters, concert halls,...
Let’s Look At The Toxic Damage Of Bullshit
The mass production of warm sounding words with minimal interest in real material outcomes is signifying bullshit (SB). It is nearly ubiquitous. - 3 Quarks Daily
TV Newsrooms Are Jumping To Streaming In 2022
As the nation’s big media companies look to woo new viewers trying to pick their way through a dizzying number of streaming outlets, news divisions...
We’re Addicted To Stories With Trauma. But Are We Lazy?
The prevalence of the trauma plot cannot come as a surprise at a time when the notion of trauma has proved all-engulfing. Its customary...
Recontextualizing Messiahs In Confronting Racism
How these two Canadian companies chose to respond to our contemporary context of anti-racist calls when interpreting Messiah provides an opportunity to have a conversation about...
Perspective: Seeing The Real Chuck Close
Seeing Chuck’s image reduced to the accusations against him in recent years has inspired me to tell my story, not as a defense or...
Maria Rosario Jackson Confirmed as New NEA Chair
Jackson, 56, earned a doctorate in urban planning from the University of California at Los Angeles, and she’s a professor at Arizona State University...
While Paris Wants To Be A “Fifteen-Minute City,” Sweden Experiments With A “One-Minute City”
While Paris works with a 15-minute radius and Barcelona’s superblocks with nine-block chunks of the city, Sweden’s project operates at the single street level, paying attention to...
The Original Novel “Bambi” Was No Cloying Tale For The Kiddies
"Far from being a children's story, Bambi was actually a parable about the inhumane treatment and dangerous precariousness of Jews and other minorities in...
Meditating On The Art Of Giving Up
The way the idea of giving up figures in our lives, as a perpetual lure and an insistent fear. The giving up that involves...
Too Many Words! (The New York Times Dance Critic Has A Problem With Spielberg’s...
Gia Kourlas: "With so much emphasis on dialogue and character development, the tension — the very glue of West Side Story — seeps away....
Kennicott: Remembering Wayne Thiebaud
There’s a Warhol, there’s a Lichtenstein, there’s a Thiebaud. His work was routinely grouped with that of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and thus...
“Junk Turned Into Art”: L.A.’S Watts Towers At 100
"Are those towers the most powerful act of recycling that California has ever seen? Maybe." Christopher Reynolds recounts the history of their building, including...
Is The Met Museum Well-Served By Showcasing Disney?
The self-consciousness isn’t necessary; Disney transcended the high-low debate a long time ago. A better question is whether a major art institution dedicating programming...
A Choreographer Designs Movement For Robots So That Humans Will Trust Them (And Maybe...
Folks may love R2-D2 and WALL-E up on the screen, but they tend to be suspicious of robots in real life, especially when they...
How Disgust Drives Behavior
Once you are attuned to disgust, it is everywhere. On your morning commute, you may observe a tragic smear of roadkill on the highway...