By 20-year-old Aaron Yang's estimate, "he's now contacted around a thousand libraries and acquired untold numbers of pencils, stickers and awards." Is ... is this OK? Librarians are torn. - NPR
Protests have been going on outside the museum for the last three weeks. "These protests, called 'pop-up deoccupations' in the activists’ parlance — have so far been tame, focusing on 'speakouts' and performances while keeping a measured distance from the museum’s entrance. But this might change next Friday, April 30, as the activists plan to escalate their protests and bring them...
Ludwig was most prominently associated with the Vienna State Opera and the Salzburg Festival, but she also sang at the Met. She "rose from straitened origins in a shattered wartime Germany to the height of the singing world, aided by a sense of discipline instilled by her strong-willed mother — her only real teacher and a constant presence throughout...
For a supposedly capitalist industry, what the heck? A study found that "America’s film industry is the country’s least diverse business sector and that its systemic anti-Black biases cost it at least $10 billion in annual revenue. Black content is undervalued, underdistributed and underfunded, the analysis found. It also found that Black talent has been systematically shut out of creator,...
A dubious proposition, but a possible one: "If numbers or data or statistics can provide any ounce of entertainment, there’s no better time than the present." (If you're a betting person, bet on Nomadland to take it all.) - The Hollywood Reporter
Broadcast TV ratings have been declining for years, and this ceremony will be no different - and won't mean anything about the actual movies involved. "I have long thought that the thing the Oscars needs most is one of those old Christmas special sets, with the cool living room sofa, the baby grand and that front door through which...
Ready to read? The shortlist for the international prize, which is for a book translated into English in Britain and Ireland, features a couple of authors who write in French. The list includes science fiction, memoir, and more. Chair of the judges for the shortlist, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, said, "This is a fantastically vigorous and vital aspect of the way...
Embrace the absurdity: "Look, things are going to get weird. There was a small fire within the first 15 minutes of the Emmys. (It started as a bit, but then a slightly panicked Jennifer Aniston could not put out the flames with an extinguisher.) In the closing moments at the MTV Video Music Awards, the Black Eyed Peas wore pants...
A biographer says of Natalie Barney and her wealthy, artistic circle: "They were destined, if you like, to break away. I think of modernism as this break from old ways of writing, old ways of seeing, and old ways of being. Of course, to be lesbian or to be gay, you have to break away because look at the...
Laurie Anderson: "It’s very interesting ... that a lot of that early work in electronics was done by women. Some of them wanted to do nothing less than change the way people listened, which is telling. They wanted to think about how sound could recalibrate our body and mind." - The Guardian (UK)
One says, "It's kind of simpatico with Fern's story . My husband died, and we don't have kids, so I just sold everything and just thought that I would travel for a bit, and fell in love with it." And, just like Fern, she says, "I can't see me living a different way now." - BBC
What the directors say, including clips about how to make a dramatic scene more dramatic with whispers - and how to cast a "good guy" to make a point in a scene about a not very good guy at all. - The New York Times
Charles McNulty on the Bard in 2021: "Shakespeare’s characters keep drawing us back because we want to understand them more fully. They leave us with an impression of unfinished business. Just as no one in our lives can be fully known, so the figures in his plays reveal only so much about what they think, feel and believe." -...
Who dominates in the (hoped-for, perhaps arriving) after-COVID era will affect theatre, music, dance, and other performing arts. Psychology professor Laurie Santos: "The pandemic has taught us that there are negotiable things that we can subtract from our schedules, ... and some of those subtractions feel good." - The Atlantic
