He has an explanation: “People feel trapped. If you go to an art gallery and there is a picture you don’t like, you can just move away, but if you are in a concert and sitting in the middle of a row, people are polite and won’t walk out.” - The Guardian
Nicola Benedetti, a Grammy-winning classical violinist who became the festival’s director in 2022, said in an interview with the Guardian she feared the creative arts that underpinned it were at risk of stagnating because of repeated funding cuts. - The Guardian
She considers the letter as game, as plot device, as plot vehicle (epistolary novels), historical source, moral statement, advice column fodder, greeting card, and medium for a decades-long personal/philosophical quarrel of her own. - Harper's
It concludes that there is simply not enough time until the universe expires for a defined number of hypothetical primates to produce a faithful reproduction of “Curious George,” let alone “King Lear.” - The New York Times
Fan communities coping with a celebrity loss do several things that help their members feel supported and connected to one another, which often also disrupts society’s typical reaction to grief. So, what can we learn from fans grieving celebrity deaths? - The Conversation
After the war, Nietzsche was practically radioactive. In the newfound German Democratic Republic (GDR), where he was officially declared a “pioneer of fascism,” his writings were forbidden, while in West Germany he was shrouded in silence and suspicion. - Commonweal
Certainly the story is operatic: two people with traumatic childhoods meet on a cruise ship, fall in love, develop a successful magic act, and become the biggest act in Las Vegas until one of them is killed by their favorite tiger. Luke Di Somma's opera premieres this week in Sydney. - The Guardian
The unexpectedness of some of Frank’s choices is just what makes the book entertaining. He tackles some 32 novels, in a series of case studies, starting the 20th century not with, say, Joseph Conrad or Henry James, but with HG.Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau and André Gide’s The Immoralist. - New Statesman
The team used pictures of verified Raphael paintings to "train the computer to recognize his style to a very detailed degree, from the brushstrokes, the color palette and the shading and every aspect of the work." - CNET
These are desperate times for art organizations and music venues in Berkeley, pummeled by rising labor and production costs and lower theater attendances. - BerkeleySide
"A dapper, soft-spoken architect who spent much of his career in academia, (he) was in some ways an unlikely architect of the World War II Memorial, a classically inspired plaza home to granite columns, bronze sculptures and a fountain, just east of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool." - The Washington Post (MSN)
The Bristol Old Vic — which counts among its alumni Patrick Stewart, Olivia Colman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jeremy Irons, Miranda Richardson, and Gene Wilder — is continuing its two MFA and four MA programs but says its undergraduate-level training has become "financially unsustainable." - The Guardian
Just in the past year, two of the metro's major companies closed, as did the area's keystone performance space for dance. The dance scene is precarious and the current situation seems grim, but some see signs of hope. - The Minnesota Star Tribune
"The data shows that from 2023 to 2024, overall artistic director appointments decreased. However, female artistic director appointments decreased by 36%, compared to a 7% decrease for male appointments." - Dance Data Project
"Cave’s kinetic sculpture The Air Up There … consists of 2,800 colorful spinners that dangled from the ceiling of the check-in hall at Kansas City International Airport. But it was removed in October after the part of one spinner fell to the floor below." - The Kansas City Star (Yahoo!)
