"A former Los Angeles auctioneer," Michael Barzan, "has agreed to plead guilty in a scheme where he created fake artwork and falsely attributed the paintings to artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. … The paintings ultimately wound up at the Orlando Museum of Art before they were seized by federal agents last year." - AP
"After a federal judge ordered the return of more than a dozen books improperly pulled from the Llano County Public Library shelves for their content, the county's commissioners have called a special meeting for April 13 to discuss shutting the library down altogether." - Publishers Weekly
"I know the BBC for example's not thrilled about being labelled state-affiliated media. If we use the same words that the BBC uses to describe itself, that presumably would be OK. … That seems to pass a reasonable test." - BBC
A rowdy singalong by audience members has halted a performance of The Bodyguard. Singer Melody Thornton was unable to complete her rendition of I Will Always Love You during the musical's finale at Manchester's Palace Theatre on Friday. - BBC
Attendance for the week ending April 9 was 280,760, up 4%. The more modest jump in attendance left ticket prices to do some heavy lifting: Average paid admission was $137.46, up 8% from the previous week. - Deadline
Leah Broad paints vivid, at times over-imagined, pictures of all four women and the worlds in which they lived and worked. She deftly interweaves their stories in a chronological tapestry. - The Conversation
A press release announcing the closure and local media coverage cited pandemic mandates and protocols, changing models of film distribution and consumption, and long-standing fundraising issues as prime movers of this cultural institution’s demise. - Hyperallergic
To suggest the Classical inheritance is monocultural, or “pale, male and stale”, is to do a disservice to the patchwork of cultures, backgrounds, outlooks and beliefs that fed into what we now receive as the Classics. - The Critic
In fairness, Schoenberg never pretended that he was out to smash the system — maintaining, to the end of his life, that art was a question of evolution, not revolution, and that he wrote from an inner creative impulse as heartfelt as that of Brahms or Schumann. - The Critic
"Within a long sentence — clause upon clause, the commas and semicolons, em-dashes and colons, parentheticals and appositions piling up — there can be a veritable maze of imagery, … simultaneously an archive of consciousness at its most caffeinated and a dream of new worlds from words alone." - Literary Hub
The real project of humanity – of understanding ourselves as human beings, making a good world to live in, and striving together toward mutual flourishing – depends paradoxically upon the continued pursuit of what Hitz calls ‘splendid uselessness’. - Psyche
"The wealth from (agriculture provided) plentiful funds to carve the most beautiful Buddhist temples, craft the finest musical instruments and produce high-quality motion pictures. As a result, Cambodia's greatest singers, painters, dancers and musicians all came from Battambang" — until the Khmer Rouge. - BBC
Something critical is getting overlooked amid the fervor with which classical music claims its new sense of conscience: the artistic value of the works being unearthed. - Philadelphia Inquirer
"The (16th-century) textile was found in the 1980s in Glen Affric, a region in the Scottish Highlands about 19 miles west of Loch Ness. Measuring about 21 by 17 inches, the wool fabric is woven with multiple horizontal and vertical bands of variating colors." - Artnet
The reason for the absence of theater amounts to what is essentially a public atonement for how the festival treated interns, apprentices and other staff for decades and a commitment to finding a new model for producing a season of world-class summer theater. - Albany Times-Union
