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America’s Oldest Working Theater Is Selling Naming Rights

"The Walnut Street Theatre is seeking a single donation of more than $10 million to complete a capital campaign for the long-planned, pandemic-delayed expansion of its Center City home. The benefactor would be offered naming rights to the existing mainstage auditorium or perhaps the entire theater complex." - The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Next Music Director Of London’s Royal Opera House Will Be Jakub Hrůša

"(The Czech conductor), 41, will begin his tenure in September 2025. He succeeds Antonio Pappano, who steps down from the post at the end of the 2023-24 season after 22 years in the role – making him the Royal Opera's longest serving music director." - The Guardian

The Booker Prize For 2022 Goes To “The Seven Moons Of Maali Almeida” By Shehan Karunatilaka

"(This) supernatural satire set amid a murderous Sri Lankan civil war ... is about a photographer who wakes up dead, with a week to ask his friends to find his photos and expose the brutality of war." - BBC

The Confidence To Know Our Own Ignorance

The better approach is to cultivate an appreciation for our ignorance, get comfortable with it and look at it very closely, disentangling it as much as possible from our ego to see what’s really there (or not there). - 3 Quarks Daily

Kennicott: Attacking Paintings To Protest Climate And Social Justice Policies?

All this is misdirected and counterproductive. It makes the urgency of the crisis seem ridiculous to people who are already disinclined to give credence to the science of global warming. And they create a false moral choice for those who love both art and the environment. - Washington Post

Seattle Repertory Theatre Artistic Director Departs For Chicago

Braden Abraham joined Seattle Rep in 2002 as an artistic intern, holding multiple artistic staff positions at the company, including seven years as associate artistic director, before becoming the theater’s artistic leader in 2014. - Seattle Times

This Small Publishing House Keeps Winning Nobels, Bookers…

Jacques Testard said that he would think it “very silly” if people called Fitzcarraldo the home of the Nobel. “It’s not like we have a strategy to try and win,” he said. His taste just happened to align with “a bunch of older bourgeois Swedish people” who decide the Nobel each year, he added. - The New York Times

How Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla Has Changed The Orchestra

She could probably now have any orchestra she wanted. But at the moment she doesn’t want any of them. She comes from a tightly knit musical family in her native Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. She views the orchestra as a family. - Los Angeles Times

Removing Notes From Mendelsohn To Demonstrate Plight Of Whales

Hebrides Redacted successively removes notes from the 10- to 11-minute overture in proportion to the decline in humpback whale populations over many decades. A short film about the project (embedded above) was released today as part of the Cambridge Zero Climate Change Festival. - Ars Technica

The Blatant Propaganda Of Action Movies

For an American, it can be easy to forget how much ideology is packed into the genre — until you watch a film from elsewhere, and are confronted with the cartoonish heroes and villains of other cultures. - The New York Times

For Black Writers: A “Representation” Trap

Our current problem isn’t an insufficient amount of Black representation in literature but a surfeit of it. And in many cases that means simply another marketing opportunity, a way to sell familiar images of Blackness to as broad an audience as possible. - The New York Times

Broadway’s Edgy Revival Of Oklahoma! Has Encountered Fierce Audience Reception Around America

Some performances of the Tony-winning production have continued amid clamorous walkouts or loud booing; one ended with a patron running from their seat and vomiting at a volume clearly audible to the actors. - Los Angeles Times

World’s Architects Are Flocking To Saudi Arabia To Try Their Most Inventive Ideas

For architects, Saudi Arabia has become Shangri-La, a place to test their wildest and wackiest ideas. - The Wall Street Journal

The Joys Of Hunting For Fossils In DC

No, not the human kind. "The District was, all jokes aside, a lush swamp back in the Cretaceous period. Dinosaurs, muck-dwelling mollusks and megalodons patrolled the humid wetland" - and left their mark. - NPR

Earning Disparities Persist For ‘Non-Professional’ Artists

A new study shows that artists who are women and/or BIPOC earn about 23 percent less than white men, even in the non-professional creative economy - that is, the "side hustle" economy of writers, photographers, and social media content producers. - Fast Company

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