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A Bitter New Orleans Graffiti War Over… Dan Marino?

To outsiders, street painters of all sorts might seem to be natural allies. But that’s not always the case. Rivalries and territorialism are always part of the picture. For some, street painting is meant as a gift to society; for others it’s pure rebellion; for most it’s somewhere in between. After two weeks of turf war, the wall at...

What Goodreads Has Done To My Reading, And Why I’m Giving It Up

"Quantifying, dissecting and broadcasting our most-loved hobbies sucks the joy out of them. I find myself glancing towards the corner of the page to see how much I've read. … Even when absorbed in the climax of a story, one eye is always on my proximity to the end, when I'll be able to post it all to Goodreads....

A Multi-Million-Dollar Trade In Fake Native American Art

We’re talking about everything from Navajo turquoise and silver to Zuni inlay. It’s a huge tourist draw and one of New Mexico’s most important industries. But today, con artists are flooding the Indian jewelry marketplace with cleverly disguised counterfeits, cheating consumers out of millions of dollars. - KRQE

Dancer StuartHodes @96 – How To Dance Through Life

"I think anything that you do with every particle of yourself can be wonderful, and it can make you forget the world. It’s magic. How the heck am I supposed to describe it? Something happens. It takes everything you have got. And, for that — for those brief moments that you’re dancing, you’re transported." - The News Hour (PBS)

Chicago’s Goodman Theatre Prepares To Live-Stream From Its Stage

"'The whole process here is to recreate the experience for the audience,' said Falls. 'The audience chooses which performance they want to see, they buy their ticket, they're instructed to get there early to make sure that the technology is working and at 7:30 in the evening, we're all set to go live.'" - Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)

Can Los Angeles Re-Establish Itself As A Cultural Capital Post-Pandemic?

"In many ways the challenges here are more intense and complex, in no small part because the virus hit at a time when so many things were in flux. The next steps — by cultural institutions, wealthy philanthropists, government and audiences — could well determine whether COVID will have derailed, or merely delayed, the city's ascendance as a cultural...

Benin Bronzes Are Still Being Made Today (Who Knew?)

In Benin City, in what was historically the metalworkers' quarter on and around Igun Street, skilled artists continue to make figures with the traditional techniques used to make the famous Benin Bronzes now in museums in other parts of the world (and gradually being repatriated). - Artnet

In Egypt, 250 Ancient Tombs Discovered, Some More Than 4,000 Years Old

The burial places, all cut into rock, were found by accident in one part of a larger necropolis in Upper Egypt. Some date back to the end of the Old Period of ancient Egyptian history, about 4,000 years ago; the most recent are from the late Ptolemaic era, which ended with the defeat of Cleopatra VII by Octavian (who...

Metropolitan Opera Returns To Stage (But Not Its Own) For First Time Since COVID Arrived

"Members of the company's orchestra and chorus, joined by prominent soloists and led by its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, will give two concerts at the Knockdown Center in Queens on Sunday. … The concerts will go on despite continuing labor tensions at the Met, which have threatened the intended reopening of its Lincoln Center home in September." - The...

Phylicia Rashad Named Dean Of Howard University’s New College Of Fine Arts

The award-winning actor, herself a Howard alumna, will be the first dean of the re-established college. The nation's leading historically Black university folded its fine arts school into its College of Arts and Sciences in 1998 as a cost-cutting measure; Rashad's arrival completes the return of Howard's College of Fine Arts as an independent entity. - The Washington Post

Ex-English National Ballet Principal Convicted Of Sexually Assaulting Students

"Yat-Sen Chang attacked girls and women at the English National Ballet and Young Dancers Academy in London between December 2009 and March 2016. The 49-year-old was convicted of 12 counts of sexual assault and one count of assault by penetration. He was cleared of one offence." - BBC

Why Is Contemporary Architecture So Awful?

Perhaps it is that architects speak in a special language, and what looks to me like an arbitrary and ugly assortment of random stark rectangles is, to them, a kind of Morse code saying “Hello! Come inside! Happy to have you here.” But if that is the case, it doesn’t redeem the buildings for architects to have designed them...

Disney+ Isn’t Using Show-runners For Its Shows. A New TV Model?

Effectively, the studio is making its TV shows as if they were roughly six-hour movies, applying the same production methodology it’s used for the 23 unprecedentedly successful interconnected feature films that comprise the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That means empowering directors to lead a lot of creative decision-making, in collaboration with a small cadre of hands-on Marvel creative executives who...

The Long Checkered Career Of The Golden Globes

Hollywood viewed the awards as meaningless at best and corrupt at worst — most notable for their open bar and the industry perks enjoyed by their some 80 voting members. Jack Mathews, who was a film critic for Newsday, once called them “the best-fed freeloaders in the entertainment industry.” - The New York Times

YouTube Will Spend $100 Million On Creators In New “Shorts” Program

YouTube, the world’s biggest video platform, announced the YouTube Shorts Fund, a $100 million pool of money it’s promising to distribute to creators of the most-engaging clips of its new TikTok-style feature. YouTube expects the program to kick off in the fall of 2021 and continue into 2022. - Variety

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