"I required a reminder that there were quick and even wise people in the world with ideas, quips, even lectures that would force me to learn something. ... The connection I sought would need to be bracing, nonintimate, and entirely unmaternal." - The Atlantic
Wow, OK: "Disney can hold on to power of this land for possibly the next 100 years, if one of King Charles III’s grandchildren lives to be 80. Oh, and the agreement also bans DeSantis’ new board from using Disney’s name or any of its characters." - Slate
The sale hasn't closed, so why all of the PR? To get Britain to pay up. "It’s Britain, after all, not the Getty that hasn’t been able to muster the necessary funds. U.K. fundraising stalled at under $30 million — less than half the asking price." - Los Angeles Times
Ravensburger was brought to court by the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice, where the real Vitruvian Man lives. The museum claimed that it was owed financial compensation from the puzzle manufacturer, even though the 500-year-old artwork in question belongs to the public domain. - Artnet
Where Quantitative Aesthetics is really newly intense across society—in art and everywhere—is in how social-media numbers (clicks, likes, shares, retweets, etc.) seep into everything as a shorthand for understanding status. - Artnet
Like Jerome Robbins and Bob Fosse before her, Susan Stroman is a director-choreographer who should really be called a choreographer-director. In this show, “we make New York City definitely a character in the show,” says Stroman. - Dance Magazine
According to the letter, “coupling lower than average attendance with the fact that arts funding is the smallest fraction of philanthropic giving means that there are simply not enough resources available for the short term health and long term viability of the Metro Atlanta cultural arts community.” - ArtsATL
"I remain optimistic that the theatre has been around for a long time, and it’s going to continue. I just feel that way. There’s no doubt that our younger audiences brains’ have been rewired by the speed of the culture. But honestly, I sit with young audiences looking at an O’Neill play..." - American Theatre
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 grudging reviews (47% and 51% on Rotten Tomatoes). Nor did this decline and fall start with them. - BBC
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 Norway which sank in 1485. Archaeologists have discovered saffron threads, peppercorns, almond shells, ginger, clove, and black mustard. - Atlas Obscura
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 million bits of information drawn from their database of recordings—it suddenly makes complete sense. - Van
Lynn Riggs rode a cattle train, worked in New York as an extra in cowboy movies and in Hollywood churning out studio screenplays, wrote Green Grow the Lilacs in France and was in the Army when Oklahoma! debuted on Broadway. Yet he never left behind his difficult prairie childhood. - Smithsonian Magazine
"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 I conduct in Salzburg and I try my best. Because every time you try your best, it’s a disaster. Everything becomes mannered, exaggerated, chettera, chettera." - Van
"Curator Erin Schoneveld breaks down five seminal posters from the exhibition (at New York's Poster House Museum) that reveal how art reflects history — and how history influences art." - Fast Company
If and when machines can “write essays” that are more deftly organized, more thoroughly researched, and more persuasive than our student’s efforts, then writing’s purpose will cease to reside solely in the finished text. It has never solely resided there, of course, but we too often act and teach as if it does. - The Millions
