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American Theatre Still Lives in Joe Papp’s World

For among the many things this feisty, indomitable leader recognized was that New York City’s five boroughs were as under-served by the arts of his time as any rural community, and that his city’s diverse populations needed and deserved theatre as much as its moneyed elites. - American Theatre

What “MJ” The Musical Tells Us About What Dance Says About You

Often a dancing body reveals a certain truth about a person, but in Jackson’s case dancing might have been one more thing to hide behind, like another costume; it was a place he could control his body. - The New York Times

Republic Of Georgia Fires Dozens Of Curators, Historians, Scientists

Up to 40 employees, including archaeologists, art historians, public relations officers, and scientists, were let go in May, according to the newly formed Georgian Trade Union of Science, Education, and Culture Workers. They were fired as a part of an investigation into the “competence” of staff members. - Artnet

Arts Organizations Back Away From Global Aspirations

Arts administrators are starting to try to measure things like mental and even physical wellbeing as a gauge of how successful their programs are, and are using terms like "impact framework." The idea, at heart, is that the arts are a means to an end, rather than being an end in themselves. - Axios

A Meditation On Originality And Plagiarism

Writers are indeed an incestuous little bunch eternally doomed to borrow, copy, steal, plagiarize, allude to, accidentally repeat, consciously imitate, alternately praise and denigrate each other’s work. Originality held aloft by its own purity in some Platonic realm . . . no, it doesn’t exist. - The Smart Set

The Shiny New Laguardia Airport: Haunted By The Old

Can any terminal relieve the misery and anxiety around flying these days? Let us peer into the future envisioned by the $8 billion reboot of New York’s cramped and dilapidated LaGuardia Airport. - Bloomberg

Why Won’t The Boomers Let Go?

Our model of social change is still rooted in midcentury clichés. Younger Americans imagine that starting a family and owning a home was much easier for previous generations than it really was. They buy the broad outlines of the boomers’ nostalgia and take it to mean they are inheriting a desiccated society. - The New York Times

Composer Ingram Marshall, 80

He was sometimes called a post-minimalist, but he disliked the term, suggesting postmodernist as an alternative. But his music also embraced a time-expanding element — a sense of slowly unfolding — born of his fascination with the Indonesian gamelan. - Washington Post

Inside The American Modern Opera Company

“There was a very particular profile that we were looking for in the artists, which is people who are virtuosos in their area and therefore are appreciated by institutions, but sometimes chafe at the limitations.” - The New York Times

People In Ukraine Are Struggling With The Place Of Russian Culture

On the streets and on social media, at family gatherings and at work, in interviews and in political journals, people across Ukraine are having a tense conversation over the place of Russian language and culture in Ukraine's social fabric.  - NPR

Dahlia Lithwick: On Hopefulness In A Broken World

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives." - Slate

Report: Harvard University Holds Remains Of Enslaved People and Thousands Of Native Americans

Harvard University holds the human remains of at least 19 individuals who were likely enslaved and almost 7,000 Native Americans — collections that represent “the University’s engagement and complicity” with slavery and colonialism, according to a draft University report obtained by The Crimson. - Harvard Crimson

Study Of Thousands Of Newspapers: Stories About Humanities Reported Differently Than Stories About Humanities

When we examined articles about the humanities more closely and compared them to articles about science, we were surprised to find that humanities scholarship, when it does appear in newspapers, is often communicated in different ways than the results of scientific research. - Journal of Cultural Analytics

What The Hollywood Bowl Means To LA

The Hollywood Bowl represents L.A. in all its naked splendor, idealism, commercialism, diversity, communal aspirations toward equality, social division, tackiness and even sordidness. It has been, for its full 101 years, the best of us and, if maybe not the worst, the not-so-hot of us. - Los Angeles Times

Is Social Media Really Making Us Worse?

There’s so much focus on sweeping claims that aren’t actionable, or unfounded claims we can contradict with data, that are crowding out the harms we can demonstrate, and the things we can test, that could make social media better. - The New Yorker

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