In 2024, the 40 best-funded theatre companies that make their own productions - ranging from the National Theatre to the Colchester Mercury - opened 229 original productions, compared with 332 in 2014, a drop of 31%. - BBC
“An archaeologist and curator … in Copenhagen finds that Greco-Roman statues were often perfumed with enticing scents like rose, olive oil and beeswax. These fragrances were ‘not merely decorative but symbolic, enhancing the religious and cultural significance of these sculptures.’” - Smithsonian Magazine
When you studied literature in school or university, I expect that you were taught, implicitly or explicitly, that this plot-focused way of reading was simplistic, and that you were trained to read in new ways where plot was largely irrelevant. The message is: Only amateurs read for the plot. - Public Books
With a full slate of free programming that ranges from workshops and classes to performance, the company is hoping to become a neighbourhood hub. - Ludwig Van
“Several dismissed jurors were open about why they couldn’t serve fairly. (One) told a pool reporter, ‘I don’t like the guy; he is a really bad guy.’ One woman said she was the victim of sexual assault. A restaurant maître’d explained, ‘I don’t see how anyone can be impartial.’” - Vulture (MSN)
The controversy around France’s deal with India may appear more ambiguous to a Western audience. Is it France’s concern if the YYBNM decides to portray a skewed history of India that privileges Hindu culture and a Hindutva ideology, even if its role is limited to “specific areas of technical collaboration." - ARTnews
“The Iliad is the poem of death. Death stalks its lines, blood soaks it. Countless young men appear in the poem only to be cut down. … But at the heart of the Odyssey there is life, and survival. This survival isn’t pretty, or comforting, or dignified.” - The Guardian
“We can read the Odyssey today with a sense of déjà vu: we feel we know these narratives, we have met these characters, we recognize these themes. Yet the epic of Odysseus’s return is, in many ways, as unfathomably strange to us as the one-eyed giant Cyclops was to its hero.” - Literary Hub
“Organizations impacted include Opera Orlando, the Orlando Ballet, and the Orlando Science Center, to name a few. The canceled grants total $200,000 dollars and were earmarked for arts and cultural organizations that provided programming and outreach for patrons with disabilities … (and for) grassroots organizations.” - Central Florida Public Media
“The number of plays and musicals staged by the UK's main subsidised theatres last year was down by almost a third compared with 10 years earlier, BBC research suggests. In 2024, the 40 best-funded theatre companies that make their own productions opened 229 original productions, compared with 332 in 2014.” - BBC
“Russia has stolen more than 1.7 million pieces of Ukrainian cultural heritage since its full-scale invasion began, according to the Ukrainian Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications Mykola Tochytskyi,” and has been selling many of those items on the black market. - ARTnews
“Iain Mackay, artistic director of the school, said studios were focusing on strength-based training for both sexes as ballet moved away from the ‘slim’ female fixture of the classical ballet repertoire. ‘Audiences want dancers they can relate to,’ Mackay said, when asked whether this included plus-sized ballerinas on main stages.” - The Times (UK)
“’Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ he wrote on Truth Social. ‘Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!’” - BBC
“The slow collapse of the postwar avant-garde’s underlying tenets (no figuration! no storytelling! no obvious skill!) has allowed many to admit that Wyeth was onto something specific and powerful …, (and) I find it tends to overwhelm most reservations. What he was onto, in short, was mortality.” - The Washington Post (MSN)
