Janet Rollé, general manager of Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé’s media and management company, will in January assume the role of chief executive and executive director of Ballet Theater, one of the nation’s most prestigious ballet companies. - The New York Times
Felix Klieser, 30, was born without arms. Even so, he graduated from a German conservatory and made a recording at age 22 that won him an ECHO Klassik prize. His fifth CD came out in March, and he's currently the Bournemouth Symphony's artist in residence. - BBC Music Magazine
With the privatization and commercialization of higher education, universities are run like businesses, in which a degree becomes a product, students become customers, and the world’s most populous country becomes the biggest overseas market. - The Atlantic
In the 19th century, prompted by the disapproval of Protestant missionaries who wanted Hindu temple dancing banned, some Tamil reformers campaigned for the performers, called devadāsīs, to become like nuns, as they supposedly were in a purer golden age. Starting in 1911, some devadāsīs argued back. - JSTOR Daily
Telling parents you don’t want their kids to have the best possible public schools is never good politics. A full century ago, the most effective school-ban campaign in American history set the pattern: noise, fury, rancor, and fear, but not much change in what schools actually teach. - The Atlantic
This year was the third full production in modern times of the Ordinalia, a cycle of three 14th-century mystery plays originally written in the Celtic language once native to the far southwest of England. - Atlas Obscura
Louise Toppin is on a mission to recalibrate who, what, and how we program our concert seasons to enable a more equitable representation of music from composers of African descent. She is seeking a sustained and systemic cultural shift. - Classical Voice North America
"These inspired-by-real-life prosthetics are meant to bring authenticity, but they have a perverse way of achieving the opposite. … Playing people as heavily televised as Bakker and Ball seems to make prosthetic tweaks irresistible, yet the result usually lands the actor in the uncanny valley." - New York Magazine
The unit has impounded more than 3,600 antiquities, valued at some $200 million. They’ve raided art fairs on Park Avenue, and Christie’s in Rockefeller Center. They arrested a dealer at the five-star Mark Hotel and seized statues on display at the five-star Pierre. - The Atlantic
A gay silver-fox fantasy come to life? Nope, sorry. In 2006, workers excavating for an underground parking garage found what archaeologists determined was a garden designed for the notorious young emperor, and they've been working there ever since. 60 Minutes sent Cooper to have a look. - CBS News
Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli said in 2013 that he was retiring. Now, aged 80, he's back at work, the film titled How Do You Live? "I am making this movie," he says "because I do not have the answer." - T — The New York Times Style Magazine
P.S. Vinothraj worked in a flower market at age nine and a sweatshop at 14. At 19 he ran to the big city (Chennai) and slept on the streets. Now his first feature is a festival hit and India's official submission to the Oscars. - The Guardian
This was not some scheme dreamed up by Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or even the Cato Institute: this particular intellectual endeavor goes all the way back to the New Deal and FDR's "Four Freedoms" speech. (The Pilgrims, in this view, were proto-socialists mugged by reality.) - Slate
No, not his actual identity, we're afraid. But, if not the definitively correct version of the text of a play or poem, at least the most likely version. This is thanks to software developed by a Canadian startup called Cohere. - The New York Times Book Review
"ITsART … was rolled out across 26 European countries on Tuesday, with plans to expand into the U.S. and China next year. … Prices range from €2.90 ($3.25) for a movie to €9.90 ($11.10) for an exclusive live opera." - Variety
