Yearly Archives: 2023
Please Please: Are We At The End Of Hollywood’s Superhero Obsession?
So far, this year's two superhero releases, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, have underperformed at the box office and received...
How On Earth Did A Spice Cabinet Survive For 500 Years At The Bottom...
It's the cold waters of the Baltic that kept intact the remains of the wrecked Gribshunden, the flagship of King Hans of Denmark and...
Apple’s New Classical Music App: Embracing Idiosyncrasies
Apple has turned classical music’s diversity of metadata into the new app’s raison d’être. And, with so many of what Apple calls “data points”—over 50...
The Gay Cherokee Playwright Who Wrote The Source For Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!”
Lynn Riggs rode a cattle train, worked in New York as an extra in cowboy movies and in Hollywood churning out studio screenplays, wrote...
Riccardo Muti Reflects On America As He Completes Chicago Symphony Tenure
"In my life, thanks to Philadelphia and Chicago, I’ve been to Wichita, Des Moines, Ames, Toledo… For me, to make music, it’s not that...
How Poster Design Helped Reshape Japanese Society After World War II
"Curator Erin Schoneveld breaks down five seminal posters from the exhibition (at New York's Poster House Museum) that reveal how art reflects history —...
How AI Could Actually Improve How Students Write
If and when machines can “write essays” that are more deftly organized, more thoroughly researched, and more persuasive than our student’s efforts, then...
Dispelling Some Myths About Hilma af Klint
Julia Voss, author of the first-ever biography of Europe's first abstract artist, talks about the influence which the 19th-century scientific revolution had on the...
Performance Space New York’s Jenny Schlenzka Steps Down
Her most radical initiative was “02020,” a plan to hand over the programming, the keys to the building and the entire annual production budget to...
“Shucked” On Broadway: Why The Preview Grosses Are Low But The Seats Are Sold...
"Lead producer Mike Bosner … and his team enacted the old-school practice of preview pricing: selling tickets for a show's pre-opening period at a...
There Was Some Backsliding In Diversity Last Year, Finds UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report
"As Hollywood emerged from the pandemic, its biggest film productions dipped in diversity after years of incremental progress. … Opportunities were notably greater for...
The BBC Is About To Cut A Lot Of Programming
"The BBC is set to slash its annual output by 1,000 hours worth of shows to cope with savings requirements that have shot up...
Mark Russell, Piano-Playing Political Satirist And PBS Perennial, Is Dead At 90
"From the waning years of Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration through the presidencies of 10 succeeding chief executives, Mr. Russell poked fun at the foibles...
The Texas Observer Is Saved By An 11th-Hour Crowdfunding Effort
"Three days after voting to cease publication and lay off its journalists, the nonprofit publisher of the Texas Observer said on Wednesday that it...
The “Festival Of Brexit” Actually Met Its Targets — Once Those Targets Were Greatly...
"The final evaluation has found that the Unboxed festival, commissioned by Theresa May in 2018 and named a 'festival of Brexit' by Jacob Rees-Mogg,...
Police Seize 1,800-Year-Old Bronze Statue From Met Museum
New York investigators say that the seven-foot-tall, headless nude statue, believed by scholars to be of Roman emperor Septimius Severus, was looted from the...
Does Gamifying Reading Help?
Reading has always been a very personal thing. Now, however, I have a little percentage tracker on my home page, Goodreads friends applaud my...
London’s West End Has Musical Theatre Problem
The problem is historic: because this area has been underdeveloped for years, the UK doesn’t have a strong path for shows to follow, and...
San Antonio Lost Its Symphony Orchestra. But Its Musicians Have Played On
The Symphony musicians formed the SA Phil almost immediately after their orchestra died, and their entire first season has been a rallying cry for...
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1988 Manifesto For The Musical Theatre
Through Phantom, Lloyd Webber presented an argument for the destiny of musical theater itself. The operatic tradition had always been divided over the relationship between music...
Apple’s Turn To Address Classical Music Meta-data
The problem was the way that classical music is categorized. The structure of classical music is completely different from pop music’s, which makes it...
Dancing Against Pension Reform In The Streets Of Paris
"Mathilde Caillard's energetic dance became a meme for young activists opposing the reform. The slogan chanted in the clip, "Retraites, climat: même combat! Pas...
What Archaeologists Are Learning About Notre Dame After The Fire
Allowed to delve into the structure’s innards as never before during the ensuing reconstruction (which is set to finish in 2024), a team of...
How A Gruesome Caravaggio Inspired One Of Samuel Beckett’s Most Notorious Monologues
On a 1971 visit to Malta, the playwright saw the painter's Beheading of St. John the Baptist, and the horrified face of an elderly...
Publishers Versus Libraries Versus Readers Of Digital Books
After a brutal decline following the Great Recession, print-book sales are up 33 percent in the past 10 years. If the high costs and complexity of...
