If history musicals don't succeed this season, it won't be for sheer effort, or numbers. The doubt is always there: Hamilton made it, but can anything else? - The New York Times
The actor died suddenly at 67 last week, and many people are remembering him for Goodfellas. But the true breakout was Something Wild, wherein he shone off the screen. "By all accounts, Liotta was a lovely man in person. On-screen, there was no one scarier." - Washington Post
The CEO who has made Condé Nast profitable again: "We have about 70 million people who read our magazines, but we have 300 something million that interact with our websites every month and 450 million that interact with us on social media." - Nieman Lab
The winner was Triangle of Sadness, a Swedish comedy (because class war is hilarious) by Ruben Ostlund, who also won in 2017 for the art-world sendup The Square. - NPR
The FBI's Art Crime Team is really quite interested "the authenticity of 25 paintings that the Orlando Museum of Art says were created by Basquiat and are on exhibit there." - The New York Times
Jeff VanderMeer investigates Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness, and our devastating realities. "Just as the inhabitants of Winter have dozens of words for snow and ice, we need as many words for ecocide. If fiction can be useful here, it is rendering the crime more visible." - Orion
Translators "advocate for untranslated authors, bringing them to the attention of agents and editors. They act as de facto ambassadors for their authors, helping them navigate the press and social media — none of which, by the way, is compensated." So share their names, publishers. - The New York Times
The best thing at the Portland Art Museum isn't the Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera show that's been traveling the country since 2018. It's the huge, collaborative murals in the museum's sculpture court. - Oregon ArtsWatch
If so, despite massively climbing COVID-19 numbers, which one is going to dominate the summer? (Probably dinos, but what about the little French-ish shell?) - Vulture
"The whole room just lost it. ... To see her coming full circle, from a little girl watching him serve, and he had worked this luncheon for years, to having his daughter be a nominee was just one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments." - The New York Times
A nonbinary composer gets their debut with a piece called "Ode to Liberty." Subtle? No (nor were Tchaikovsky or Beethoven in their day). "That a piece written by a young, Black, queer composer debuted in Florida could be taken as a political statement in itself." - Tampa Bay Times
Good question. The boring answer - "A production designer works with the director and the producer (or showrunner) to build a story’s world." - can lead to an exciting chase for the right designs all over town, the internet, and the world. - Los Angeles Times
Yeah, this is not great for domestic violence survivors. "We're seeing this proliferation of misinformation about a domestic violence trial. We're seeing people see entertainment in it." - CBC
As a royalties group in Britain slashes its charitable giving arm by 60 percent, new young musicians say they'd never have kept playing without the funders' support. Industry professionals and artists foresee "potentially disastrous consequences for the British music industry." - The Guardian (UK)
"For her 10th birthday, Dervla Murphy received a secondhand bicycle and an atlas. As she rode up a hill near her home that day in Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland, she thought that if she pedaled long enough, she could get to India." - The New York Times