Yearly Archives: 2021
John Killacky: Arts As A Safe Space For Unsafe Ideas
It is a series of meditations on the social role of art, the sometimes dysfunctional structures of the cultural sector, and the effect that...
It’s Taken Decades, But The Yurok Language Of California Is Coming Back
This indigenous tongue of northern California was severely endangered by the early 1900s, and efforts to revive it didn't begin until the 1970s (and...
The Unprecedented Life Of Paul McCartney
He has navigated a life with little precedent, one in which a few home-town friends played a pivotal role in the rise of rock...
She Has MS. She’s Continuing Her Career As A Ballet Dancer
Abby Phillips Maginity of Ballet Arizona was diagnosed while she was rehearsing for her first principal role — and just as the pandemic was...
James Bond’s Jazz Roots
Ian Fleming, who introduced the Bond character in his novel Casino Royale, back in 1953, was a devoted jazz fan. His tastes were a bit...
Here’s The First Woman To Be Named Music Director Of A Major Italian Opera...
Oksana Lyniv, the 43-year-old Ukrainian who this summer became the first female conductor at Bayreuth and who last year finished a term leading the...
The Difference Between Random And Chaos
Randomness, like cards or dice, is unpredictable because we just don’t have the right information. Chaos is somewhere between random and predictable. A hallmark...
Hans Ulrich Obrist’s Utopian Ideal For A 21st-Century Museum
"I keep returning to an unrealized project of the late philosopher, public intellectual, and curator Édouard Glissant, who consistently told me that what matters...
The Horrific Contest In “Squid Game” Reflects A Real-Life Crisis In South Korea
"The wildly popular dystopian drama pits the heavily indebted against each other … for an unimaginably large cash prize. But (the) desperate situation is...
One Of The World’s Most Notorious Art Forgers Is Releasing His Own NFT Collection
"Fittingly, the artist (Wolfgang Beltracchi) — infamous for his uncanny ability to mimic the work of others — is making 4,608 versions of Leonardo...
Hollywood Has A New Champion Boss-From-Hell: Sharon Waxman Of TheWrap
Move over, Scott Rudin. As one former staffer put it, "I don't say this lightly. Sharon Waxman is one of the most awful people...
Is Releasing A Movie Only In Theaters Elitist And Unfair?
"How is it that a quintessentially democratic cultural activity — buying a ticket and some popcorn and finding a seat in the dark —...
More Than Half Of British Theatres Have Gone Back To In-Person-Only Performances
"Research has found that 56% of publicly subsidised theatres that had at least one online performance during the first 18 months of the pandemic...
Progress: Italy’s Arts Venues Allowed To Open At Full Capacity
"After months of struggling with an income from 50% houses the Council of Ministers has decided that theatres, cinemas, and cultural venues in the...
The Real Problem Of Instagram
The platform’s erasure of certain kinds of work has the net effect of discouraging the making and exhibiting of that work. It erases art...
What Are The Rules For Politicians Using Music In Their Campaigns?
The campaigns can buy licensing packages from music rights organisations like BMI and ASCAP, that give them legal access to millions of songs. Some,...
One Billion Users: Time To Take TikTok Seriously
It’s not that social-media platforms aren’t newsworthy—Facebook consistently dominates headlines. But TikTok is all too often regarded as an unserious thing to write or read about. That’s...
Our Complicated Ideas About Work And Identity
Why do we continue to cling so hard to our work-based identities, in spite of an inner nature that tells us not to work...
How COVID Killed Criticism
Pauline Kael would be appalled at the spectacle of film writing nowadays. Journalists meet actors and gasp in awe. The wise editor has given...
Researchers: Hit Pop Music Increasingly Relies On Harmonic Surprise
The researchers found that the most popular songs had a high level of harmonic surprise, including the use of relatively rare chords in verses,...
Why We’re Fascinated By Low-Stakes Literary Disputes
It happens every few months, somewhere or other, with a reliability approaching a new genre. Someone, usually working for a large media company, devotes...
Justifying Why Princeton Should Exist
This is the puzzle of Princeton: How can an institution designed to serve the aspirations of an elite few authentically wrestle with issues of...
How To Explain Trump’s Love Of The Musical “Cats”?
What Trump is soothed by, perhaps, is not the sentimentality of the song alone but a tensile line of steel to which, Betty Buckley...
Why Big Movies Don’t Shoot In Washington State
“For better or for worse, film is an incentivized industry. Around 38 states have programs to incentivize film production. We are always at the...
When Facebook Went Down Last Week, News Searches And Traffic Went Way Up
Sure, some of that was people searching for news about Facebook's outage. However: "For a whopping five-hours-plus, people read news, according to data Chartbeat...
