Yearly Archives: 2021
Smithsonian Kicks Off Multi-Year Project To Reckon With America’s Racial History
“Giving people the reality — here’s the information, here’s a way to contextualize the moment we are in — you can’t build optimism unless you face the...
Desperate Venezuelans Turn To An Old Video Game To Earn Hard Currency
A large community has grown up around a now-outdated version of the online game RuneScape — and many players in rich countries don't want...
The Psychology Of Movie Trailer Music
“It’s called ‘trailerizing’ a song. That means changing every aspect of the song but leaving the lyrics. People know the lyrics. The goal is...
Emerson String Quartet Announces Retirement
The group, which for decades has been one of the world's most admired of its kind, said in a statement that it will close...
Who That Album Cover’s Naked Baby Is Today, And The Real Reason He’s Suing...
Spencer Elden claims that the band exploited him with what he now calls child pornography — but he's been exploiting that image of his...
L.A. Opera Builds All Scenery For New Production In Ten Days
The company's return to live performance, Verdi's Il trovatore, was to use sets from the Opéra de Monte-Carlo — but they're on a container...
Dealer Charged With Larceny And Fraud For Manufacturing Fake Antiquities
"Prosecutors say Mehrdad Sadigh, a New York antiquities dealer whose Sadigh Gallery has operated for decades in the shadow of the Empire State Building,...
Bramwell Tovey Named Music Director Of Sarasota Orchestra
The 68-year-old chief conductor of the BBC Concert Orchestra, formerly music director of the Vancouver and Winnipeg Symphonies and Calgary Opera, begins a five-year...
Australian Rock Art May Be 43,000 Years Old
Archaeologists using new measuring techniques have analyzed layers of a mineral glaze covering ancient figures in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, and the...
If Edinburgh Is Overtouristed, Don’t Blame The Festivals, Blame UNESCO: City’s Ex-Culture Chief
"Lynne Halfpenny … insisted the Old Town and the Royal Mile had become overwhelmed with visitors and was seen as a 'bucket list' destination...
Canada’s National Ballet Outside (And It’s So Much More Complicated Than That)
Given such limited capacity and the pent-up eagerness of ballet fans, all four performances were fully booked almost as soon as they were announced....
Luis Alfaro’s Plan To Make LA A Theatre Dynamo
“A theater is best expressed by the work it initiates. I think it’s really important that we not just bring in the great work...
Is Our Digital World Squeezing Out Our Ability To Wander?
The idea of the urban rambler—the flâneur—as a half-belonging creature took hold in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and adopted a variety...
Sotheby’s Hires A Gallery Wrangler. What Does This Signal About The Art World?
What’s changed is not that art fairs have been diminished but that the auction houses built broader sales and marketing platforms in the years...
Why Charlie Watts Was The Engine Behind The Stones
Watts’s drumming was unique. He differed from his peers in the rock drumming pantheon, partly due to being a jazz aficionado, a sensibility that...
Oops! Landmark Study On Honesty Used Fake Data
The data were collected by an insurance company, Dan Ariely says, but he no longer has records of interactions with it that could reveal...
Because Multiple Immersive Van Gogh Experiences Are Not Enough, Here Come The Immersive Monets
"Not one, not two, but three separate traveling immersive exhibitions based on the famed Impressionist's paintings are currently gearing up — and one could...
The Fascinating New Science Exploring Consciousness
Consciousness has long been the preserve of philosophers and priests, poets and artists; now neuroscientists are investigating the mysterious quality and trying to answer...
Many People Don’t Realize That John Cage Wrote Some Quiet, Very Beautiful Music
Aficionados may love Suite for Toy Piano or Sonatas and Interludes, but mostly folks know only the conceptual piece 4'33" or raucous chance-based works...
AI Cloned Val Kilmer’s Voice So He Could Speak After Cancer Surgery
The generated voices have gotten more realistic in the age of deepfakes, a technology that uses AI to manipulate content to look and sound...
Manufacturer Alan Heller, Dead At 81, Manufactured Plastic Housewares That Were Colorful And Even...
“Plastic in those days was ugly, and it was cheap. But Alan and (designers) the Vignellis had made something that was beautiful, and it...
That Naked Baby On The Cover Of A Nirvana Album 30 Years Ago? He’s...
He's now 30, and on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in a Los Angeles federal court against a host of defendants tied to the album,...
A New Tool To Try To Decode The Voynich Manuscript?
The 15th-century volume is written in a neat, careful script that bears little resemblance to any natural language, and no one has yet cracked...
Why Movie Theatres Need Vaccine Mandates
In an uncertain time, vaccine mandates for eligible moviegoers might be the only way to salvage the long-term future of the cinema experience. -...
Kuwait Freaks Out Over One Women-Only Belly Dancing Class
"The Kuwaiti Ministry of Commerce and Industry rushed to close down a sports club and suspended all its activists for the foreseeable future, in...
