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Broadway’s Master Hair Maker Packs It In

From “The Elephant Man” to “Chicago,” “Cats” to “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” Huntley was the designer behind the wigs and often-elaborate locks that helped define the lasting visual impression of some 300 projects, earning him a special Tony Award in 2003. - The New York Times

The Professional Dancer Who Also Runs A Dairy Farm

Jean-Daniel Bouchard said although his twin passions may seem like something of a contradiction — farming can be gruelling physical labour and involves plenty of financial mathematics, versus an art form that depends on imagination and creativity — they help him find balance. - CBC

Amanda Gorman Has Quickly Become A Superstar Poet

Her inaugural poem made her a superstar. And while her rise may seem swift and meteoric, Sharon Marcus, an English and comparative literature professor at Columbia University, says we’re overdue for a poetic mega idol. “There have been celebrity poets for a long time. It’s more unusual to not have a celebrity poet — to have long periods of...

Reimagining “Live” Performance During COVID: Will Any Of It Stick?

By emptying stages and dancefloors, the pandemic has generated an urgent need to reimagine the live music experience - both for artists and the audience stuck at home. So, how is Covid reshaping the creative thinking behind live music performances, and what lasting impact could there be? - BBC

SF School Board Chief Explains Why Lincoln And Washington Names Were Removed From Schools

"There’s this idea that because we’re removing the names we’re somehow removing the stories in what we’re learning, and that in fact is not the case. It’s really just sharing in our schools what is and isn’t uplifted. And that’s part of my work as a school-board member. That’s been my work as a teacher. What are we highlighting...

The Man Who Realized Attention Was A Precious Commodity

His epiphany was this: One of the most finite resources in the world is human attention. To describe its scarcity, he latched onto what was then an obscure term, coined by a psychologist, Herbert A. Simon: “the attention economy.” - The New York Times

How Did Arts And Culture Respond To Trump?

The internet is healing, I would say now, but we should all know better: a garbage vortex of such scale doesn’t just disappear, but drifts on, accumulating more and more trash, slowly choking everything around it. - The Drift

The Purpose Of Playing

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once described play as ‘ecoming and dissolution, building and destruction without moral implication, in eternal innocence’ – as an act to be found ‘in the world only in the play of the artist and child’. - Aeon

Minnesota Orchestra Posts A Record Deficit

On Thursday morning, the orchestra released its operating results for the fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 2020. The big news: a deficit of $11.7 million, the largest in its history. Last year’s deficit was $8.8 million, another record-breaker. No one who follows the orchestra has forgotten that the record-breaker before that, for 2012, was $6 million, enough to help...

Charles McGee, Dean Of Detroit Artists, 96

McGee, the prodigious dean of Detroit’s visual arts scene whose works can be seen everywhere from the Detroit Institute of Arts to the Broadway Station of the People Mover and who made invaluable contributions as an influential teacher, gallery owner and arts advocate dating back to the 1960s, died Thursday afternoon of natural causes at his home in Detroit....

Hachette Pushes Out The Last Of The Mainstream MAGA Publishers

Kate Hartson, a fit 67-year-old who once ran a small press specializing in dogs, had all the trappings of a liberal book editor, including an apartment on the Upper East Side and a place in Hampton Bays. But she also seemed to be that rarest of figures in New York media: a true believer in Donald J. Trump, people...

The Women Who Created The Blues

For popular music fans, "rock created the music publications we read today. R&B created rock. Blues created R&B. And Mamie Smith made the blues a national sensation." - NPR

Elton John Says Brexit Negotiators Screwed Up, And Screwed Over Musicians

Elton John says his tours can absorb the costs and the paperwork, so theoretically Brexit's horribly negotiated touring musician deals (note: what deals?) don't affect him. But, he adds, "I don’t want to live in a world where the only artists who can afford to tour properly are those who have been going for decades and have already sold...

A Group Of D&D Teenagers, With The Help Of The Kennedy Center, Give An Artistic Boost To The Home Of The Simpsons

In Springfield, Oregon, if you see people wandering around with choose your own adventure-style art books in their hands, don't be surprised: "Three writers, an executive editor and an illustrator worked side-by-side with local businesses and organizers at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to create the 51-page illustrated epic journey along Main Street in Springfield." - The Eugene Register-Guard

Often, The Art Was Taken By Force, So This Activist Says He Can Take It Back

Mwazulu Diyabanza is a Congolese activist who would prefer France's museums were open so he could get some attention for taking African objects from their displays "to highlight what he sees as the mass pillaging of the continent by European colonialists. And it’s not just the mighty museums. Diyabanza and his supporters also plan to include smaller galleries, private...

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