In 2009, a pair of thieves got into the René Magritte Museum in the Brussels suburb of Jette, located in the artist's former home, and stole Olympia, a reclining nude portrait of his wife. The painting was returned two years later, after what amounted to a ransom payment by the museum's insurer. The assumption had been that the robbers...
Here's the story of a set of seven comic strips, called "the Hagemeyer strips" after their main character, set in an office, with protagonists who seem an awful lot like grownup versions of Charlie Brown and Lucy Van Pelt. (Poor Charlie Brown — the Lucy character is his boss.) - The Washington Post
"A huge burial mound holding the corpses of at least 30 warriors in Syria could be the oldest war memorial ever discovered, dating back at least 4,300 years at the now submerged site of Tell Banat, said a team of archaeologists. The memorial is also the first example of a particular type of monument described in ancient inscriptions from...
As a crowd marched in Bogotá against poverty and police violence, three twenty-something queer folks whose dance video had gone viral a couple of weeks earlier were urged by their fellow demonstrators to go right up to the riot police on the stairs at Plaza Bolívar and work it. And they did. - The New York Times
"Hundreds of arts organisations that received grants in the Culture Recovery Fund's second round are still waiting for money to be paid out, causing damaging cashflow problems and delaying projects, … despite the second round of CRF being specifically designed to support companies during April to June." - The Stage
Or else it's something else. But it's no mere city. "Los Angeles fits the city-state frame well, certainly better than it does a lot of other possibilities—if we update the model a bit. In 2010, Forbes suggested that if the criteria for a place to be considered a city-state were modernized for the 21st century, certain global capitals might qualify thanks to...
The first, Mary E. Jones Parrish, was a relative newcomer to Tulsa when the events of May 31, 1921, went down. She was an educator, but "the massacre compelled her to become a journalist and author, writing down her own experiences and collecting the accounts of many others. Her book Events of the Tulsa Disaster, published in 1923, was the first...
The earliest decision-makers were not at all sure this was the direction to go. Ask then-newly installed interim director Shirley Serotsky at the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca - proposing something "completely new, hugely ambitious, and hardly cost-neutral" to the board was a challenge. "It took some convincing ... But I did believe that it was the only way we...
Angelico specializes in trousers (or pants, in the US) roles. He says that one day, he finished a rehearsal at covent Garden and realized that he couldn't play the role of a woman offstage anymore. "The art of opera has always had an appreciation of gender fluidity – and it allowed Adrian to perform as a man onstage before...
On culture wars as a symbol of democracy: "It’s not only democracy, it’s about art as symbols of our existence. You know, whenever we talk about democracy, we’re never talking about a perfect state, but rather continuous questioning and argument. are about us, about those questions, not about any authority." - The Observer (UK)
Turn him to face the wall in shame. That way, those who demand the statue stay get their demand met, but the implication is obvious. - The Guardian (UK)
An investigation reveals psychological abuse, abuse of power, nepotism, and "serious pedagogical dysfunctions" at the Rudra Béjart School, "leading the Board to terminate the contract of the director, Michel Gascard and his wife Valérie Lacaze, manager of the school." (Article in French; translation available using Google Translate.) - FranceInfo
Can a producers' union ever work in the biz? They need it. "More than 100 feature film producers ... recently ratified the constitution for a new union they hope will provide the kind of basic healthcare, pay and protections afforded by most other unionized Hollywood workers." - Los Angeles Times
That is, welcoming to all, free, and more a central part of public life? There's a little problem with this idea, which former Queens Museum president and executive director Laura Raicovich pitches in a new book about politics and museums. "Museums lack 'public spirit' because museums are capitalist institutions," unlike public libraries. - The Nation
Zimbabwe-based photographer Tamary Kudita has her contemporary subjects pose in Victorian outfits - often made with contemporary fabric, by designers - to show links between present and past, to combine the two strands of her family's history, and to immense visual effect. She says, "There are collective identities and there are also individual and incredibly diverse stories. All these together...
