Stories

In a Strange Broadway Season, Some Big Stars

The play is still the thing for these powerhouse performers, even if drama as good as Arthur Miller’s masterpiece is a rare occurrence in any age. But these actors are after more than a prestige showcase. They’re looking for an artistic lifeline. - Los Angeles Times

What Has Gone Wrong With Architecture

Architecture is a Fox’s discipline. It sits between capital, politics, infrastructure, climate, design, engineering, art, psychology, and economics. Its task is to hold these domains together, manage complexity, and, at its best, make spaces and places in which we can live better together. - Time

The Death Of Art Schools

Rather than treating education as a public good, elected officials shift the burden onto individuals, underfund institutions, and protect a system that redistributes wealth upward. Financialization destroys the relation between education, citizenship, and the public world that the university is supposed to build. - Hyperallergic

The Man Who Discovered The Inside-Job Thefts At The British Museum Has Died At 61

“Dr. Ittai Gradel ... alerted the British Museum and the police after he was able to buy dozens of museum artefacts on eBay over the course of several years. Gradel died of renal cancer days after receiving a rarely-presented medal from the museum in recognition of what its director called his ‘very significant contribution.’” - The Guardian

Old Globe Theatre In San Diego Selects New Managing Director

Trish Santini — who, as executive director, oversaw the construction, opening, and programming of the Barry Diller-funded Little Island just off the shore of Manhattan — will have the title of co-CEO at the Old Globe, working alongside artistic director Barry Edelstein. - Playbill

Opera Philadelphia To Continue $11 Ticket Scheme, Revive Timely Gershwin Show After 93 Years

There's a slight change to the all-tickets-for-$11-or-name-your-price scheme for next year: subscribers get first crack at tickets. And what is this "timely" Gershwin show? It's Let 'Em Eat Cake, about a fictional US President who loses his re-election bid and tries to overturn the result. - WHYY (Philadelphia)

How Do You Put The Venice Biennale’s Central Exhibition Together After Its Curator Died?

Only days after she was diagnosed with liver cancer last year, curator Koyo Kouoh passed away. Nevertheless, the Biennale’s flagship show will open next month under her name and chosen title, “In Minor Keys.”  A five-person team of Kouoh’s assistants and advisers has tried to channel her work. - The New York Times

Compromise: Russia Will Have Show At Venice Biennale, But It Will Be Closed To Public

“According to new reports from Italian news outlets, Russia‘s group exhibition ‘The tree is rooted in the sky’ will only be accessible to members of the press and industry insiders during the Bienniale’s preview May 5-8. When the exhibition opens to the public (May 9-November 22), entry will be prohibited.”  - Artforum

Minnesota Orchestra Musicians And Management Agree To New Contract Months Early

The new two-year agreement, effective Sept. 1, includes a 2.5% salary increase each year as well as what are described as “temporary changes to hiring practices” in order to reduce expenses by $2 million. - Pioneer Press (Minneapolis-St. Paul)

One Of America’s Oldest Period-Instrument Orchestras Names Its Second-Ever Music Director

Boston Baroque was founded back in 1973 by harpsichordist/conductor Martin Pearlman, who stepped down as artistic director last year. His successor, as of this coming season, is Marc Minkowski, who has amassed an estimable discography with Les Musiciens du Louvre, the Baroque orchestra he founded in France in 1982. - Moto Perpetuo

“Ghost Imaging” Recovers Text Of 1,500-Year-Old Biblical Manuscript

The 6th-century Codex H included a Greek-language copy of the New Testament's letters of St. Paul. Sometime in the Middle Ages, though, the monks of Mt. Athos broke the book up and re-used the parchment. Fragments have since been identified, but the original text on them was considered irretrievable — until now. - Artnet

Rise Of The Viral Micro-Drama

While the rest of the world was getting hooked on cat videos and bedroom-dance routines, Chinese creators were tinkering with something more ambitious: serialized shows shot vertically, for phones, and packed with racy plots, absurd twists, and great swells of emotion. - The New Yorker

Nilo Cruz: The Art Of Opera Libretto

A play lives in language. An opera lives in duration. One moment in an opera can expand for five minutes. Maybe you give the composer a full sentence. They might take one word and heighten it, expand it even more. Maybe the whole sentence disappears into music.  - The Paris Review

AI: A Philosophy About Language

The underlying intelligence of a large language model isn’t a function of its architecture, its parameter count, or the volume of compute thrown at its training. It is not even about the training data. It is a function of the social complexity of the civilization whose language it digested. - The Ideas Newsletter

The Obsessive Who’s Rescuing And Preserving Indian Cinema’s Early History

“Seventy per cent of India’s films made before 1950 are gone forever. Film Heritage Foundation founder Shivendra Singh Dungarpur is trying to save the rest.” - Variety

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