"The Edo people in the Kingdom of Benin, modern Nigeria, created their extraordinary sculptures with melted down brass manilla bracelets. … A team of German researchers compared their metal with metallic ores and mines across Europe before tracing them to the Rhineland in western Germany." - The Guardian
A number of organizations, especially larger ones such as Miami's Arsht Center, are confident that shows like Mrs. Doubtfire and Hairspray are sufficiently distant from "adult entertainment" to be okay under new laws. (Kinky Boots? Well …) Smaller companies and school groups are more nervous. - WLRN (The Miami Herald)
"'Florida encourages instruction on the classics and classical art, and would not prohibit its use in instruction,' Alex Lanfranconi, communications director for the Florida Department of Education, said in a statement." - ARTnews
"NPR said it was disturbed to see the description added to all of the tweets that it sends out, with John Lansing, its president and CEO, calling it 'unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way.' … Asked for comment, Twitter's press office responded with an automated poop emoji." - AP
"The Information Commissioner’s Office said it issued a fine of £12.7 million pounds ($15.9 million) … (and that) TikTok allowed as many as 1.4 million children in the U.K. under 13 to use the app in 2020, despite the platform's own rules prohibiting children that young from setting up accounts." - AP
A dancer’s mind is just as important as her body; the one guides the other. To dance fully without hesitation, without self-consciousness, sets the stage for dancing of power and flow — to witness such unforced abandon is one of ballet’s greatest gifts. - The New York Times
The New York Times bestseller lists (there are more than a dozen of them) are the product of a lot of math, but also a good deal of art. Contrary to what many people seem to think, there is no practical way to count all the copies of any book that have sold in a given week. - Slate
AI poses a threat to work opportunities across the board by giving producers the tools to recreate their favourite voices on demand, without the performer’s knowledge or consent and without additional compensation. - The Walrus
As part of their gift, the Shirleys will give SAM 48 works by Calder, spanning the artist’s career, with mobiles at various sizes from the large-scale to the intimately small, as well as works on paper. (The approximate value of the 48-work donation is $200 million.) - ARTnews
There were stretches when I made so little money writing or editing that I couldn’t blame my parents for assuming they were hobbies. They used to wonder how I could spend weeks revising work I had already done, months on an idea or project that might never sell. - Esquire
"How about this woman we create isn't me, but she had that same stuff happen to her in the past and she took a different path to me as an adult, so we get to do whatever we want." - The Guardian
The $25 million sculpture dates to 225 C.E., and is believed to have been looted in the 1960s from a shine at Bubon, an archaeological site in southwest Turkey. It had been on loan from a collection in Switzerland since 2011. - Artnet
Hirst did the originals, back in the 1990s, by dripping paint onto a rotating canvas. Now he and his partners have set up an AI generator with which you can designate colors and spin styles — and then get the resulting work as either a hard copy or an NFT. - Artnet
