Yearly Archives: 2023
Grand Ambitions: When Encyclopedias Thought To Collect Up All The Knowledge In The World
Encyclopedias have always been a hard sell. Moving a hefty set of books at a big ticket price—toward its last days Britannica sold for...
Our Digital World Raises Fundamental Questions About Our Concepts Of Freedom
“Digital dualism” is finally on life support, replaced by a dawning recognition that the distinction between offline and online has collapsed. Instead, we face...
The Enduringness Of Jeff Koons
Love it all or hate it all or fall somewhere in between (Koons! has played all these years to decidedly mixed reviews), he has maintained...
So You Want To Transform Your Consciousness. Be Careful
Sometimes, the euphoria that accompanies epiphany gives way to disorientation, and self-transcendence can turn into self-deception. It took me years of wrong turns to...
The Essential Concern For AI: What’s The Business Model? (And How Will It Hurt...
We are talking so much about the technology of A.I. that we are largely ignoring the business models that will power it. That’s been...
College Humanities Enrollment Is In Steep Decline. Why?
During the past decade, the study of English and history at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third. Humanities enrollment in the...
The Epic Historical Series That Has Transfixed Half Of Belgium
The Flemish half, that is. The Story of Flanders features lavish, unsparing reconstructions of historical scenes interspersed with commentary from scholars. It was funded...
How The Shiny New “Future Of Media” News Sites Lost Their Way
The fundamental bet of Vice and its internet-born brethren, that new forms of distribution and content production enabled by the internet would transform media...
How Two Curators Solved The Mystery Of A Most Unusual Dalí Painting
Preparing for the Dalí exhibition currently at the Art Institute of Chicago, Caitlin Haskell and Jennifer Cohen were stumped by Visions of Eternity, a...
Your Daily Music Prescription: How Much You Need For Therapeutic Benefit
We set out to find out whether there was a common dosage for music and how long one needed to listen for a therapeutic...
Rare Embroidered Medieval Icon Unearthed In Russia
The item, found in the tomb of a young woman uncovered during construction on the highway between Moscow and Kazan, shows a deisis, a...
NYC’s Rattlestick Theatre Hires A New Artistic Director
Davis, who is particularly interested in developing new plays, previously served as artistic director of the American Theater Company in Chicago. He programmed experimental...
Roxane Gay Has Some Thoughts About “Cancel Culture”
"(It) is the bogeyman that people have come up with to explain away bad behaviour. ... As long as we continue to, for example,...
Booksellers React To Library Book Bans
“I have seen a rise of book sales, but I think most of those sales are to adults and people who listen to NPR....
Belarus Free Theatre: “Nobody Can Go Back — We All Face Jail”
"In October 2021 (the company's) actors, directors and audience were all arrested. Released pending a trial, most were facing a prison sentence of up...
How War-Torn Ukraine, With The World’s Help, Is Trying To Protect Its Heritage
Ukrainian institutions and individuals, with support from UNESCO, the Getty Trust, World Monuments Fund, and others, are cataloguing damage, digitizing archives, and "winterizing" monuments...
Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Artistic Director Announces His Departure
"André Lewis, 68, has been (at the company) for nearly 50 years, first as student, then as company dancer, then as artistic director and...
School Book Bans Are A Losing Political Issue: Poll
A recent YouGov survey found that a majority of Republicans favors such restrictions, but Democrats and independents are very much against them. And when...
Warner Bros. Sues Paramount For $500 Million Dollars Over “South Park”
"Warner Bros. Discovery filed a lawsuit against Paramount Friday, claiming the rival media company breached its half-billion-dollar exclusivity contract with HBO Max by airing...
“A Different-Shaped Company”: English National Opera CEO Outlines A Hoped-For Transformation
Stuart Murphy says that the plans currently taking shape in talks with Arts Council England call for large-scale proscenium opera remaining at the Coliseum...
Pittsburgh Symphony Is Starting A New Series of Casual Concerts
At the PSO Disrupt series, ... the concerts will last only about an hour and a half or less. A host will guide listeners...
Rise Of The Online “Event”
The word event was once reserved for more special occasions. But now Zoom is doing to the word event what Facebook did to the word friend; Just as most...
US Plan To Raise Visa Fees For Artists To $1,615 Will Stop Most Artists...
The US immigration service wants to raise visa costs from $460 (£385) to $1,615 (£1,352) alongside other changes that artists and their managers say...
How Linguistic Diversity Plays Out In English
Polyglot texts (texts using multiple languages) have become increasingly common; they are salvos fired against arrogant monolingualism. Monolingual English speakers would do best to...
Is It Time To Take The Metaverse Seriously?
It’s easy to imagine many productive uses of the metaverse, from educational to virtual meetings to entertainment. And most of these are already underway in some...
