Stories

One Of America’s Busiest Audiobook Narrators Fights For Better Pay For Her Colleagues

Julia Whelan: “The only reason I was doing 70 books a year was because that’s how many books you have to do when you’re first starting out to keep your head above water. It would be OK if there were a kickback for success, but narrators don’t get royalties.” - AP

Remembering Peter Sellers At 100: The World’s Greatest Comic Actor?

Christopher Guest: “I can do a voice, but Sellers was embedded in those characters, and that commitment made it very different.” Michael McKean: “I remember reading Being There and then seeing the film and thinking: he gets this character better than Jerzy Kosinski did.” - The Guardian

We’re Seeing More Male-Male Love Depicted In Ballet. Why Not More Female-Female Couples?

Lily Hyde: “They have appeared in contemporary ballets, such as Christopher Wheeldon’s Corybantic Games and Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works, but are by no means at the heart of the narrative. … I have concluded that there is not one problem responsible for this imbalance – there are several.” - Gramilano (Milan)

Ancient Gold Artifacts Stolen From Dutch Museum May Still Be Recoverable

“While the whereabouts of these gold treasures — three Dracian bracelets dating from 50 B.C.E. and the 2,500-year-old Cotofenesti helmet — remain unknown, Dutch prosecutors say that evidence gathered from wiretapped conversations suggests they have not yet been melted down.” - Artnet

A Wave Of Closures And Cutbacks At China’s Private Art Museums

“The current crisis in China is a result of corporate backers tightening their budgets, consumers curtailing their discretionary spending, and rising costs, people working at the museums tell the Post.” - South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

The Art That Homeland Security Is Posting To Instagram? It’s Intended To Piss People Off

Ben Davis: “It’s smug provocation. And there’s no particular love for classic art here; the aesthetic sensibility is totally internet-brained. These specific paintings are picked because they are mildly to very cartoonish, so that holding them up as a sincere image of the past will get people riled up.” - Artnet

What The New Chief of New York City Opera Has Planned For Reviving The Company

Constantine Orbelian, now both Music Director and Executive Director: “The main thing for me at this point is getting a home. ... I believe that without a home, it’s hard to put stuff here and there. And once we find it, one of my big focuses will be doing operas for children.” - OperaWire

How One Arts Group Managed To Get Its Cancelled NEA Grant Restored

“Through a complicated process, Three Bone Theatre received the remaining $13,000 from its three-year, $20,000 grant to help put on a trilogy of plays that retell classic Greek tragedies from a modern Latino and Chicano perspective. The group already had spent approximately $7,000 of the grant when the cuts came down.” - The Charlotte Observer (Yahoo!)

Time For The Annual Cleaning Of The Metropolitan Opera’s Spiky Crystal Chandeliers

“The chandeliers are wood-and-metal spheres that have been called ‘sputniks’ ever since the Met opened in 1966. Legend has it that a prototype was constructed with toothpicks and a potato.” - The New York Times

Awful As It Is, Ad-Supported Streaming Is The Future

But hey, one currently hard-up business might benefit: "If anything sends viewers back to the cineplex, it will be ads for depression meds in the middle of a rom-com or a sophisticated chase scene." - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

Loni Anderson, Star Of WKRP In Cincinnati, Has Died At 79

“Anderson’s seemingly ditsy, bombshell character was anything but, and her performance as Jennifer showed that looks and smarts could go together.” - The New York Times

On The Muppets, And Grief

“After a great loss, some people find themselves communing with nature, at the seaside or deep in a forest. Others turn to spirituality, toward a temple or church. Me? I’d come to grieve with the Muppets.” - The Atlantic

This Theatre In Upstate Wisconsin Survives, And Thrives, On Local Lore, And Cheese

At Northern Sky, “There’s kind of an ownership because you saw shows about people that you know, Midwesterners.” Some of them, like Lumberjacks in Love and Guys on Ice, even translate outside of the state. - The New York Times

The Salt Path Scandal Could Put An End To The Nature Memoir

Or not: “Reading about someone else’s deep dive into forest, field or water furnishes us with the sense that we’re participating in an environment that, for much of the time, is at arm’s length.” - The Guardian (UK)

The Quest To Preserve Marfa

Four years after a fire gutted it, Donald Judd’s “Architecture Office will reopen with new ventilation systems, recycled-denim insulation and an upstairs apartment for researchers and staff. The forlorn windows have been uncovered, inviting fresh consideration of Judd’s architecture.” - The New York Times

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