"Two people were arrested on Sunday morning at the entrance of the Musée d’Orsay for being suspected of attempting to damage classified property. … When they were arrested, they were 'in possession of a white liquid – glue and a viscous whitish mixture – and were wearing" t-shirts of an environmental activist group. - ARTnews
He loved cinema all his life and wrote some genuinely great film criticism. Yet, says one Baldwin scholar, he "craved an Oscar almost as much as he did a Pulitzer" and pitched a number of ideas to directors. Some filmmakers approached Baldwin themselves; Fassbinder suggested filming Giovanni's Room. - The Guardian
"On average, organizations retained their full-time staff through pandemic shutdowns. Average staff size has grown over the last two years (2022 to 2023) through the addition of permanent part-time positions. Payroll has also increased over the period analyzed, outpacing inflation by 11%." - SMU DataArts
"Called the 'dean of American post-modernists' and 'the most meta of American meta-fictional writers,' Auster blended history, politics, genre experiments, existential quests and self-conscious references to writers and writing. ... Starting in the 1970s, Auster completed more than 30 books, translated into dozens of languages." - AP
"The Art Gallery of Ontario, which closed to the public on March 26 as more than 400 unionized workers went on strike, (reopened) on April 30. The employees, whose ranks included curators, archivists, designers, researchers, technicians, and front desk staff, … had sought wage increases and protection for part-time workers." - Artforum
Last year, 125 grassroots music venues closed permanently and 1,293 pubs shut their doors across Britain. According to the Night Time Industries Association, more than 3,000 pubs, clubs and venues have closed down in London alone since the pandemic began in March 2020. - The Guardian
I don’t know whether the Sphere is the future of live music—it’s very expensive, both to build and attend, and the venue’s path to profitability isn’t clear at all. But I do know this: The Sphere is a mountain. - The Atlantic
Here on my screen was the distillation of a peculiar American illness: namely, that we have a profound and dangerous inclination to confuse art with moral instruction, and vice versa. - The New York Times
With a season packed to the brim with late openers vying for awards attention, the 2024 Tony nominations were full of unexpected twists and turns. Here are the 10 biggest snubs and surprises. - Variety
Back in the day, a TV was a TV, a commercial was a commercial, and a computer was a computer. They have now been mixed into an unholy brew by the internet and by opportunistic corporations, which have developed “automatic content recognition” systems. - The Atlantic
"Inspired by the existing Albatross Books, (Allen) Lane’s nascent company wanted an animal for (a) mascot. Many years (later), designer Edward Young explained that after a couple hours of fruitless brainstorming, 'we were in despair. Then suddenly the secretary’s voice piped up from behind the partition. ‘What about penguins?''" - JSTOR Daily
At the new gateway to the campus of the Rochester Institute of Technology the 180,000-square-foot Student Hall for Exploration and Development offers views into two nearly transparent cubes. In one, actors rehearse a theater performance; students are practicing their moves in a dance studio in the other. - Bloomberg
Architect Seun Oduwole: "This museum pops with colour and sound." Curator Will Rea: "It is very different to a European museum, you walk in a soundscape and it’s noisy, it’s performative, you have to move your body the whole time." (It also has a public swimming pool.) - The Guardian
According to Talker Research (formerly OnePoll US), an online survey conducted in April with 2,000 Americans concluded that respondents opted for 92 minutes as their preferred running time. - The Guardian
