Throughout the digital age, Big Tech has promised us products that will make us more efficient and save time, which, it is assumed, is always an obvious good. It’s a cliché that tools shape the things we make. And through most of our history, better tools have helped us create better things. But what if this isn’t always true?
Opera Philadelphia's $11 ticket prices produced what we expect: increased attendance and more diverse audience. But audience perceptions about price aren't fixed.
Michelle Wu was a musician, a pianist, before she was a politician—and she remains a musician today. You might have heard her play George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue across the street at Symphony Hall with the Boston Pops, or music by Mozart with the Boston Symphony.
Plenty of studies, some of them published by the Arts Endowment, have shown how arts participation in early childhood appears to awaken greater social skills and behaviors at a crucial stage of development. It’s no surprise, especially among infants and toddlers, that most arts activities involve a parent or caregiver. It
UPDATE: Mary Anne Carter, whom I identified (in this post, below) as Senior Advisor to the National Endowment for the Arts, has since been nominated by President Trump to resume her previous position as NEA’s chairman (as reported by Zachary Small of the NY Times.). Where’s Elon Musk, the DOGE
Last Thursday’s episode of Call Time with Katie Birenboim, featuring actor and choreographer Aigner Mizzelle, marked the 100th episode of the show — in some form or another. Longtime listeners, friends, or fans might remember that a different version of Call Time, then known as “Theatre Book Club,” started under
In deference to St. Patrick’s Day, I’m reposting an entry from ten years ago. Titled “Yeats and the Economics of Creativity,” it originally ran on the Arts Endowment website on May 7, 2025. Last month, at the invitation of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin, I took part in a conference
When we talk about the arts and DIY, we commonly refer to craft activities or teaching oneself how to play a musical instrument. But what could be more DIY than free-form dancing? The adjective says it all. Free-form, freestyle, or free dance is a series of unstructured, personally directed movements
Call it entrumpy—a “gradual decline into disorder” (riffing on “entropy”), attributable to the unpredictability of our unprecedented President. Exploiting his “new” (more accurately: “renewed”) position on the White House bully-pulpit, Donald Trump has impelled U.S. museum heads to change their acronymic imperatives from DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusion) to DWI—Directing While
This is all I could get from the Getty’s press office when I asked at 2:50 p.m. ET about what I’d been reading elsewhere regarding the approaching fires: Getty is complying with the current evacuation order and is closed with only emergency staff on site. There is no damage to
At a memorial event in Jordan Hall in Boston on September 29, 2024, these were my remarks: This concert hall, this space, the vibrating air in here, the music that’s been heard, those sounds. The piano playing done on this stage… In 1907, Ferruccio Busoni played the piano right about
