Cornell West: America’s Essential Philosophy Is Pragmatism
Pragmatism emerged in the US in the late 1800s as a response to the Enlightenment push for absolute truth. Pragmatists — like William James...
The Purpose Of Comedy?
Comedy is a social corrective exposing the gap between what is (injustice, poverty, environmental disaster) and what some think it ought to be (fairness, equal opportunity, gentle breezes)....
The Obamas Move Their Media Company From Spotify To Audible
The agreement between the company, called Higher Ground, and Spotify was not renewed because of disagreements over both content and distribution. The new deal...
How Hollywood Turned Graham Greene’s Novel “The Quiet American” Upside-Down
"Greene usually liked to see his novels adapted, but not this time. What Greene was trying to say about American ignorance and arrogance in...
The Meteoric Rise Of Art Star Anna Weyant
It has been a rocket-fueled rise to the top of the contemporary art world for Ms. Weyant—and far from her unassuming start in Calgary,...
The Long Effort To Decipher Linear A And Linear B, Two Of The World’s...
The scripts come from the Bronze Age civilization on Crete during the 2nd millennium BCE. It was a long and somewhat tricky process to...
Apocalypse Not: The American Mall Cannot Be Killed
Since the 1978 movie Dawn of the Dead, we have been using “the apocalyptic scale, the language and imagery of civilizational collapse” to describe malls....
The Enlightenment Libertine: Making Sense Of Casanova
"Giacomo Casanova practiced many trades — violinist, gambler, spy, Kabbalist, soldier, man of letters — but his main line of work was deceiving fools....
The Cheech Is A Big Step Forward
The Chicano generation of artists and activists that emerged in the late 1960s knew that self-empowerment requires historical knowledge. The same goes for art,...
How A Major Orchestra Goes About Choosing A New Concert Piano
The Pittsburgh Symphony was looking to buy a new Steinway concert grand for its concerto soloists. The price: $198,000. Fortunately, Emanuel Ax was there...
Turns Out The Inability To Dance To A Steady Beat Is Genetic, Say Researchers
"A new study by Vanderbilt Genetics Institute researchers ... found a genetic link to our ability — and inability — to move to musical...
Guaranteed Public School Arts Funding Could Become Law In California
The initiative on this year's general election ballot "would require the state to find a source of revenue to fund K-12 arts education equal,...
US Orchestras Really Are Playing More Music By Women And Minority Composers, Finds Report
"Compositions by women and people of color now make up about 23 percent of the pieces performed by orchestras, up from only about 5...
As Of July, At Broadway Theatres, Masks Will Be Optional
"In a statement, Charlotte St. Martin, president of The Broadway League, said audience members were still encouraged to wear masks, but would not be...
Cut Our Funding In Favor Of The Regions, Says UK’s National Theatre, And We...
"Cutting us back because of where our postcode is will have a direct and negative effect on the nationwide work that this move is...
Another Call, This Time From Sudan, For Britain To Return Looted Art Objects
"Museum officials from Sudan are calling for the repatriation of cultural artifacts and human remains that were stolen by British soldiers and other colonizers...
How BTS Became A Global Phenomenon To Rival Beatlemania
It was unusual for a K-pop group to start from a base of rap and hip-hop. It was even more unusual for a group...
The Strange Case Of Google’s “Sentient” Artificial Intelligence
Where we’ve arrived instead is somewhere more foreign than artificial consciousness. In a strange way, a program like PaLM would be easier to comprehend...
Where Does Responsibility Lie For Things We Do Wrong?
On the one hand, if we are solely responsible for the things we do wrong, some genuinely malevolent parties get off scot-free. On the...
National Gallery Of Canada Names An Interim Director
She’s taking over from Sasha Suda, who has been at the gallery’s helm for three years but is leaving for the Philadelphia Museum of...
What To Do If You’re Being Canceled
So, this is my answer: if I am being canceled I want my friends — and this includes not only my closest associates, but...
Upending Contemporary Native American Art
Cannupa Hanska Luger’s theory is that it has to do with their trauma of becoming American, which meant severing all ties to their own ancestral...
George Lamming, Giant Of Caribbean And Post-Colonial Literature, Dead At 94
Returning to Barbados after university in England, "(he) became a moral, political and intellectual force for a newly independent country seeking to tell its...
Screw Up Your Courage. This Is A Great Time To Read “The Greatest Book...
This would be Ulysses, by James Joyce, which came out 100 years ago, and has been commonly heralded as the Best Novel Ever Written. I...
Vienna Philharmonic Musicians Reveal The Secrets Of Their Orchestra’s Unique Sound
There are plenty of factors, and these people are oh so proud of them all (despite the fact that one of them is subtlety). ...
