Yearly Archives: 2023
The English National Opera Does Eurovision
This all feels like ENO letting off some steam. For an hour on a Tuesday afternoon in May, a group of musicians, blissfully under-rehearsed...
From Global Star To… What Happened To Valery Gergiev
Sources close to him report that Gergiev—who, before the war, would drop by the theater three or four times a month—now spends most of...
Survey: Audiences Uncertain About Using AI For Movie/TV Scripts
According to the survey, consumers remain uncertain about how they feel about the use of AI in the entertainment industry, but they’re also open...
Why Buzzfeed And Vice Fail And The NYT Is Thriving
Reversals of fortune are nothing unusual in the news business. But in the last few weeks it’s been gobsmacking to see Vice facing bankruptcy and BuzzFeed shuttering its...
Immersive Theater Meets Mexican Masked Wrestling
Aa a joint project of the La Jolla Playhouse and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, designer David Israel Reynoso and theater company...
Anna Thorvaldsdottir: Understanding Iceland’s Musical DNA
There's a very small population in Iceland, and people tend to do everything. You might be playing in the symphony orchestra in the morning, in...
Culture Is Now Utterly Boring, Argues William Deresiewicz, And It’s Because Of Far More...
"Decent we have, sometimes even good: well-made, professional. But wild, indelible, commanding us without appeal to change our lives? I don't think we even...
LACMA Has Become A Contemporary Art Museum
How lopsided has the program been? Of the 11 shows on view at the museum last year, just two centered on historical art. The...
As The Hollywood Writers’ Strike Continues, Writer-Directors Are In A Bind
Directors Guild members are bound by the customary no-strike clause while their contract term lasts, and they're supposed to make necessary minor script changes...
The Case For Making Art In A World Undergoing Transformation
Making joyful art while the world burns is a necessity, especially when that joy comes through deep questioning. My neighbors don’t care that my...
Sam Zell, The “Grave Dancer” Mogul Who Nearly Destroyed Great Newspapers, Is Dead At...
While he got that nickname for making his fortune by buying distressed real estate cheap, he earned his greatest notoriety for his leveraged buyout...
US Supreme Court Rules Against Warhol In Copyright Case
The case, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith, No. 21-869, concerned the limits of the fair-use defense, which allows copying that...
A Setting Of The Orthodox Liturgy, Kept Hidden For A Century, Is Heard In...
Konstantin Shvedov composed his setting of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in 1913. It was kept secret through the Soviet years until Irina...
After A 15-Month Struggle, The Topless Dancers Of North Hollywood Have Finally Unionized
"Dancers at a North Hollywood topless bar," Star Garden, "will become the only strippers in the United States to gain union recognition after the...
Europol’s Most Recent Operation Pandora Raids Recovered 11,000 Stolen Artworks And Artifacts
"Pandora VII, which resulted in crackdowns across 14 European countries and was led by Spanish authorities, involved checks across airports, ports, border crossings, auction...
Penguin Random House And PEN America Sue Florida Over Book Bans
"PEN America, Penguin Random House, a group of authors, and a group of parents have filed a federal lawsuit against a Florida school district...
Montana Just Passed A Law Banning TikTok. But Can The State Enforce It?
"The law will prohibit downloads of TikTok in the state and fine any 'entity' — an app store or TikTok — $10,000 per day...
British Museum Faces Another Repatriation Request — For Asante Gold From Ghana
The Asante people's traditional monarch, "the Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, who attended the Coronation of King Charles, later met the museum director (to...
World’s Oldest Surviving Hebrew Bible Sells For $33 Million
"The Codex Sassoon, a leather-bound, handwritten (10th-century) parchment volume containing a nearly complete Hebrew Bible, was purchased … on behalf of the American Friends...
As Another Round Of News Organizations Shut Down, What’s To Become Of Our Media...
As the ice floe keeps shrinking, watching the cycle play out feels increasingly grim. Online, writers and editors trade condolences, often in lieu of...
The Ethicist: Is A Colorblind “Fiddler On The Roof” Cultural Appropriation?
As I’ve argued before, the habit of reducing the complexities of identity and culture to a matter of ownership is an artifact of our own...
A Month After It Closed Down, Santa Fe’s Center For Contemporary Art Reopens
It was the shuttering of an art space that served Santa Fe for over four decades. Five weeks later, with a board member-initiated fundraising...
Ghost In The Machine: What Andy Warhol Understood About Computers And Art
He was one of the first who saw machines had something to offer to the artistic process. The artistic technique for which Warhol became...
Saudi Arabia Swings For The Culture Fences — The Complicated Blockbuster Pompidou Deal
The comparison for the Pompidou project is the Louvre Abu Dhabi. In that landmark 2007 deal, the UAE paid France €1 billion for a...
How Musical Hooks Embed Inside Your Brain
Much of modern pop could be described as a hook-delivery device: ‘Bad Romance’ by Lady Gaga or ‘Shake It Off’ by Taylor Swift, for...
