TikTok’s website was visited last year more often than Google. No app has grown faster past a billion users, and more than 100 million of them are in the United States. The average American viewer watches TikTok for 80 minutes a day — more than the time spent on Facebook and Instagram, combined. - Washington Post
Occupying the last remaining building of the Jane Addams Homes in Chicago, the National Public Housing Museum will record and preserve the personal stories of residents of public housing throughout the United States as well as recreated apartments from projects. - Chicago Sun-Times
When I started working on it, I thought about a show that would be about metamorphosis and transformation. But the fact that the pandemic then exploded in front of our eyes made those reflections extremely concrete and real. - Los Angeles Times
"After 12 years and 261 million euros (more than $256 million) of renovations, the country's national library in the heart of Paris has reopened and is showing off more than 900 of its treasures." - The New York Times
"The Palafoxiana Library ... owes its existence to one of Puebla's early Catholic bishops, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, who in 1646 donated his private library of 5,000 volumes to a local religious college — with the hope that anyone who knew how to read would have access to them." - AP
"Displaced families in Syrian camps are begging for donations on TikTok while the company takes up to 70% of the proceeds, a BBC investigation found. Children are livestreaming on the social media app for hours, pleading for digital gifts with a cash value." - BBC
It turns out that Cecily Chaumpaigne, believed to have been the victim of Chaucer's alleged attack, was on the same side as Chaucer in the legal case at hand: they were both defendants in a lawsuit by Chaumpaigne's former employer, whom she left to work for Chaucer. - The New York Times
"Selected from a pool of shortlisted projects, the outstanding new building replaces a library gifted to Magdalene by Samuel Pepys 300 years ago and provides the students of the University of Cambridge with a new space that includes an archive and an art gallery." - ArchDaily
Zachary Woolfe: "Any judgment on a hall's acoustics is highly provisional after just a few visits. ... But a mighty improvement is already obvious. ... (And) a theater in which it once felt like miles from the back row to the timpanis now verges on intimacy." - The New York Times
Not that they've stopped gluing themselves to art, mind you. A pair from the group Just Stop Oil went to London's National Gallery and threw tomato soup at van Gogh's Sunflowers, then glued themselves to the wall beneath the painting (which, thank heaven, is covered by protective glass). - The Guardian
To begin with, you have to recognize how great a role Russian classical music plays in Putin’s foreign propaganda program. Most people don’t see that. There are official documents that substantiate this. - Van
“If you talk about neuroscience and how the brain works, there’s a lot of unknowns. It’s the wild west.” Ultrafast ultrasound could trace brain signaling with great precision, documenting how circuits and groups of cells interact as the brain performs functions from perception to decision-making. - Nautilus
The value of auction sales of contemporary and modern African art surged by 44% to a record high of $72.4m (£65.6m) last year, according to consultants ArtTactic. - BBC
A hotel room lease is still a service with or without a guest. “Art, however, does not exist until it occurs in an audience, so it is neither product nor service. It is a participatory process which requires the consumer of the process, and without whom the art becomes simply a rehearsal or paint on a canvas.” - American Theatre
The artist told buyers who bought pieces from his latest collection to choose either the physical artwork or the NFT representing it. Those who chose the NFTs were told their corresponding physical piece would be destroyed. - BBC
