In recent years, Abu Dhabi has been the United Arab Emirate to build and open high-profile museums in eye-catching new buildings. Now Dubai has joined in with a museum in a building shaped like an ovoid ring, covered with windows and skylights in the shape of Arabic calligraphy. - AP
Last month, the school board in Wentzville, a suburb of St. Louis, voted 4-3 to have the book removed from all district libraries because (said members) of its themes of incest and child abuse. Faced with widespread criticism and an ACLU lawsuit, the board reconsidered. - The Guardian
The Historical and Local History Museum in the city of Ivankiv, about 50 miles north of Kyiv, was destroyed on Sunday. It housed 25 works by folk artist Maria Prymachenko, one of the country's most beloved painters. - ARTnews
The 34-year-old Ayrshire native will be the first woman and the first Scot to head the country's flagship arts event in its 75-year history. - The Scotsman
The Bavarian capital's mayor followed through on his warning that the Russian maestro would be dismissed if he didn't denounce Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Gergiev lost several other gigs over the weekend as well, including honorary chair of the Edinburgh International Festival. - BBC
The 28th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards pulled off the first in-person awards ceremony of 2022, moving ahead as if things were normal after other gatherings canceled or went entirely virtual due to the omicron variant. - Variety
They include an effort to convert a World War II British destroyer into a ship with sails (blocked by price and preservation issues), an application to hang a fishing boat on the side of the Seattle Art Museum (met with “vehement objections” from the building’s architect, according to Burden) and a plan to put a Sputnik satellite replica into...
To tackle the climate and biodiversity crisis effectively, we urgently need to address cultural values relating to consumption. An important aspect of this is the role models presented on our screens and in books. - The Conversation
Mr. Ratmansky, who grew up in Kyiv and danced there early in his career, immediately decided to leave Moscow, and with the help of the Bolshoi, made arrangements to travel home to New York via Warsaw, along with the rest of his international creative team. - The New York Times
This phenomenon, where the sound of a word triggers an emotion or a meaning, is referred to as “sound symbolism”. Yet the idea that there might be a link between the sound of words and their meaning flies against accepted linguistic thinking. - The Conversation
As its capabilities advance, the idea is that AI could start to generate entire online worlds, along with all the stuff that inhabits them — not to mention all the online material that’s currently mostly made by humans. - The Byte
Deborah Borda, president of the New York Philharmonic, gave me a virtual tour on Zoom the other day. What I saw leads me to believe that Geffen Hall will leave the rest of the world playing catch-up. - The Critic
"I never expected Russian artists to publicly take a stand, to venture, to risk, but when they did, I am struck (mostly) by the humanity, and the specificity of language in conveying that humanity." - The Opera Queen
