When Artworld Value Is About Economic Value, We All Lose
Converting "qualities to quantities”, replacing “critical evaluation with economic, technical evaluation”, making “the price system” the ultimate judge, turning institutions into markets and individuals...
How Did Zombie Figurative Art Become So Popular?
Such quirky, esoteric mash-ups feel less like stylistic innovations and more like branding exercises, reflecting a present in which one’s ability to market oneself...
Key Lesson For Theatres In The Pandemic? Adapting Is Key
“Are we going to come out of this moment with a new model or new models? No. But what if we were in a...
Dante’s Descendant Wants Poet’s Conviction On Corruption Charges Reversed
In 1302, caught on the wrong side in one of Florence's perpetual factional struggles, Dante Alighieri was fined and banished on a probably trumped-up...
Journalists Are Coming To Terms With Their Relationships With Tech Companies. How About Academics?
Just as journalistic embargoes aren’t universally bad or unprofessional, academic embargoes might not be either. But conversations about the ethics of “access scholarship” are...
Taking Ballet Class Outdoors In The Middle Of A New York Winter
"Across the city, amateur and professional dancers are donning sneakers, masks and lots of layers to carry on with a familiar ritual that, for...
We Live In A Dystopian Time. Is That Why Dystopian Novels Have Gone Away?
"We inhabit a dystopian reality, which may account for the dearth of dystopian fiction. Yet the novels of Zamyatin, Huxley and Orwell continue to...
The Times’s ‘Five Minutes That Will Make You Love {Piano/Sopranos/String Quartets}’ Series? It’s...
Says classical music editor Zachary Woolfe (who came up with the idea in the shower), "It has doubled our audience for classical music. It's...
Scientists Are Trying To Determine The Basis Of Beauty
There is no shortage of theories about what makes an object aesthetically pleasing. Ideas about proportion, harmony, symmetry, order, complexity and balance have all...
Staging Theatre In A Row Of Empty Miami Beach Storefront Windows
"The pandemic closed the city on March 13, the eve of the opening of Miami New Drama's first musical. To keep the 5-year-old company...
A Leading Classics Scholar Condemns Classics As A Field
Dan-el Padilla Peralta's "vision of classics’ complicity in systemic injustice is uncompromising, even by the standards of some of his allies. He has condemned...
Why Men Should Spend Less Time Watching Porn And More Time Reading Erotica
"Finding your thrills in erotic literature, rather than in video scenes, might take a little longer, but it means caring more about the characters...
AI Robot Recommends ‘The 67 Best Books To Give A Woman’
"On its face this list is a little concerning — in a few years, robots might render humans' book-recommending jobs obsolete. I, a human...
Golden Globe Nominations 2021: ‘Mank’, ‘The Crown’, ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’, ‘Nomadland’
Streaming services thoroughly dominate the roster: Hulu took 9 nominations, Amazon Studios 10, and Netflix a whopping 42. Among notable details: Tom Hanks and...
Mexico Makes Legal Claim To Collection Of Pre-Columbian Art About To Be Sold At...
"The National Institute of Anthropology and History, a division of the Mexico government dedicated to the preservation of cultural artifacts, has filed a legal...
Arts Donations Down By 13% In North America And A Third In Britain —...
Yes, 2020 was a no-good-very-bad year for the arts (and most everything else), but a new study from TRG Arts and Purple Seven has...
South Africa’s Most Versatile, Most Beloved Singer, Sibongile Khumalo, Dead At 63
" a virtuoso vocalist whose ease of motion between opera, jazz and South African popular music made her a symbol of the country’s new...
UK’s Art Dealers Don’t Like New Anti-Money-Laundering Rules, But They’re Practicing Acceptance
"The new regulations … mandate that dealers must conduct specific checks on clients and report suspicious transactions that may suggest money laundering to the...
Why Write Books That No One Will Read?
"Books are now published in numbers so vast that the writing of one can no longer be presumed to be an act of communication...
An Analysis Of How Colorado Arts Organizations Have Survived During COVID
“I’d say that size, discipline, history of percentage split of earned/contributed revenue, and dependency on partnerships and fee-for-service have all played a role in...
How Theatre Works As A Political Force
"In my research, it became clear how the techniques used in theatre are used in politics, which further cemented my opinion that theatre artists...
Twitter Doesn’t Work – As A Network Or A Business. But It Could Be...
Trafficking in misinformation is wrong. Trafficking in misinformation with a structurally unsound business model is wrong and futile. But there’s an upside here: Twitter’s...
Is Art Created By AI Copywritable?
For an artwork to be copyrightable, it must possess some “minimal degree of creativity” and be original to the “author.” This leads us to...
Dynamic Groundbreaking TV Exec Jamie Tarses, 56
By age 32, Tarses was the first woman to head a network entertainment division — and one of the youngest execs ever to lead...
Why Telling The Truth Inside Organizations Is Difficult
"Think of something... mundane: ‘How are you?’ Virtually no one expects to hear anything but: ‘Good, thanks. And you?’ Withholding information has become the...
