Stories

Garth Drabinsky’s Comeback Will Be Broadway’s First Fully New Musical Since COVID Arrived

The first production on Broadway that hadn't been previously scheduled and postponed will be Paradise Square, a show about the origins of tap dance, set in the 19th-century Manhattan slum called Five Points and featuring songs by the pre-Civil War composer Stephen Foster, directed by Moisés Kaufman and choreographed by Bill T. Jones. Drabinsky, a three-time Tony-winning producer in...

Art Theft Is Way Down In Italy, Thanks To The Carabinieri’s Drones

"Fewer art and cultural heritage works were stolen in Italy in 2020 compared with the previous year, according to the annual report of the Carabinieri TPC, the country's police force dedicated to recovering stolen art." (Well, except for antiquities, it seems.) "The drop was partly caused by the pandemic, which also forced dealers in stolen art online, but is...

As Italy Was Locked Down, Looting Of Ancient Roman Artifacts Went Up

"The looting of ancient art in Italy is … at least as old as the Roman empire, which not only contended with its own tomb raiders — or tombaroli, as they are known in Italy — but also pilfered riches from other nations. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has offered these thieves new opportunities to raid closed archaeological sites, churches...

How Our Technology Can Change Our Character

There is the possibility that technology can come to influence or reflect our values in ways that are beyond our control. For example, wearable technologies (such as fitness trackers or smart watches) provide us with a stream of biometric information. This information changes the way in which we experience ourselves and the world around us. - 3 Quarks Daily

Experiments In Opera: Philip Glass At The Circus

The revelation of “Circus Days and Nights” is existentially simple and direct. Cut through a thin layer of tawdriness and cheap tinsel that may be on its surface, and you discover that a circus can exist only thanks to absolute trust. The life of every acrobat lies in unerring balance. Balance is the religion of circus life. Trust and...

English City Experiments With Design In Public

Set to open in autumn next year, and operate virtually, online until then, the £4.5m Farrell Centre will occupy a former 19th-century department store close to the university’s architecture school, on a prominent corner facing the civic centre. It is planned to host exhibitions, events, office space for startup companies working in the built environment, and, most importantly, a...

Princeton Drops Latin And Greek Requirements For Classics Study

"The policy change at Princeton presumes the existence of various potential contributions that classics students knowing no Latin or Greek could have been making to classroom discussions before now. What are those contributions?" - The Atlantic

Music Stars Demand Streaming Music Regulation

It argues that streaming via services such as Spotify and Apple Music be legislated more like radio. “The law has not kept up with the pace of technological change and, as a result, performers and songwriters do not enjoy the same protections as they do in radio,” the letter states. “Today’s musicians receive very little income from their performances...

New York To Stage A Mega-Concert In August To Signal End Of The Pandemic

Seeking a grand symbol of New York’s revitalization after a brutal pandemic year, Mayor Bill de Blasio is planning a large-scale performance by multiple acts and has called on Clive Davis, the 89-year-old producer and music-industry eminence, to pull it together. - The New York Times

Why Are Non-Profit Endowments Under-performing The Markets?

Today, it’s possible to capture the average growth of the stock market through passive index funds, which if balanced with some government bonds, have realized 10% returns over the last 100 years. It’s hard to fathom why an endowment would spend so much time and money on actively managing its investments to do considerably worse than that. - Hyperallergic

Conceptualizing The Palestinian Museum

"As part of the new programs strategy I developed in 2019, we reconceptualized our mission as providing emancipatory learning experiences about Palestine. A learning experience may be an exhibition, a virtual-reality simulation, a family open day, school visits, a young designer’s summer school, symposia, publications, concerts, a play. Learning experiences can also be aesthetic experiences, inasmuch as they affect...

Why Do We Take The Tyranny Of Time For Granted?

“For most people, the last class they had devoted to clocks and time was early in primary school,” Kevin Birth, a professor of anthropology at the City University of New York who has been studying clocks for more than 30 years, told me recently. “There’s this thing that is central to our entire society, that’s built into all of...

Amsterdam Is Falling Apart

"Sinkholes are appearing in its small streets, and nearly half its 1,700 bridges are rickety and need repairs, frequently requiring trams to cross at a snail’s pace. As a huge project to shore up the canal walls gets underway, the city is beginning to look like one gigantic construction site." The New York Times

Study: The Size Of Your Eyes’ Pupils Correlates With Intelligence

Now work conducted in our laboratory at the Georgia Institute of Technology suggests that baseline pupil size is closely related to individual differences in intelligence. The larger the pupils, the higher the intelligence, as measured by tests of reasoning, attention and memory. - Scientific American

A Keith Haring Mural In Barcelona Is Under Threat

Haring painted the mural inside a nightclub in 1989. The nightclub turned into a billiards hall, and the mural was preserved, but now the building is slated for demolition. What should, what will, happen to the mural? - The Guardian (UK)

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