National Book Award finalist and MacArthur "genius" grant winner Hanif Abdurraqib keeps to himself most of the time, far from the madding crowds. "I’m not trying to be aloof," he says. "My superpower is that I mind my own business." - The New York Times
One librarian explains, "There's an interesting sort of equity piece to DVDs. ... They're popular with people who can't necessarily afford the paid subscription services or don't necessarily have the equipment at home or the internet connection to be able to stream." - CBC
Oh: "Cliché comes from the printing process when a metal plate was used to physically transfer ink to paper. The term echoes the imitative sound of the plate coming off the page and was a way to represent an image again and again in nearly identical form." - Salon
There's the popularity of K-dramas, for one, but also, "originally intended to help those with hearing problems, subtitles have become an essential aid for following a show for many people - especially if other distractions and devices are competing for their attention." - BBC
Charles McNulty: "A musical must establish its own aesthetic logic without apology to rational etiquette. We may think we’re living in a purely realistic drama but our inner lives are belting à la Ethel Merman." - Los Angeles Times
It's likely you find the French artist a bit, well, staid. Boring, even. But: "Quite a bit of wildness hides beneath the cloak of scholarship and respectability." - Hyperallergic
A longtime director fired, a bequest altered, plans for the sculpture garden to become a museum - there's a lot going on at LongHouse Reserve. (Some board members say there's not, and it's a "what do they call it, the 'noisy minority.'") - The New York Times
"The musicians, all connected to the country’s network of youth orchestras, performed a roughly 10-minute Tchaikovsky piece outdoors under the watchful eyes of independent supervisors with the job of verifying that more than 8,097 instruments were playing simultaneously." - Washington Post (AP)
While some on this list are obvious, others may inspire an artistic pilgrimage - though Milan "is a chaotic hotchpotch of buttresses, pinnacles and a reputed 2,245 statues, part gothic, part classical. Like an overdressed model on a Milan catwalk." - The Guardian (UK)
From Google Doodle. Hensel "composed more than 450 pieces of music, most of which show a deep reverence for Johann Sebastian Bach. But she struggled with the societal constraints on the roles of women at the time and was overshadowed by her more famous brother." - CNET
Grossman "was unusual even by the standards of the Chelsea, the storied haven for quirky artists." Her apartment "had become so crowded with her accumulated artwork — largely abstract, highly conceptual drawings, sculptures and photographs — that ... she slept in her hallway on a lawn chair." - The New York Times
The targeted books are often by Black authors or other authors of color, and/or have queer content. Of course, the wannabe burners are calling the books "pornographic." - NPR
That two-year stint on The Crown wasn't the easiest for the multiple award-winning Colman, but "it wasn’t the actual Queen she found the hardest act to follow – it was Claire Foy, who had played the same character at a younger age in the earlier series."- The Guardian (UK)
"Slipcovers are what you put over a tired sofa or tatty armchair to refresh and resuscitate the worn-out object’s useful life. After the quarter-ton steel Die, Isermann’s light textile cube performs a resurrection ... avowedly secular and unequivocally domestic in form." - Los Angeles Times
Ahead of talks with Boris Johnson, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said, "Our position is very clear. The marbles were stolen in the 19th century; they belong in the Acropolis Museum and we need to discuss this issue in earnest." - The Guardian (UK)
