Competitive Chess Is Wearing Down Its Champions
Life in chess has always been a struggle, never more so than today. During the two-year battle for the 2024 world chess championship, I saw...
The Best Thing About LACMA’s New Building
In a startling and largely gratifying way, LACMA has done what the poet Audre Lorde, alluding to a different but not unrelated aspect of...
The Independent Philanthropist Changing The Future Of Brazilian Filmmaking
The Brazilian film industry has plenty of infrastructure for film production, but there was almost none for the early stages of development. So Olga...
“The Marriage” – Enacting Gustav Mahler’s Demise and Alma’s Indecision
My play The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York was just premiered (as a work-in-progress) at the University of Michigan/Ann Arbor. It’s my good fortune to be working with a terrific actress and director: Esther van Zyl and Jack Tamburri. We next produce the play (this time with lighting design)
Needed: A NATO Alliance For American Universities
“We need a NATO for universities,” said Lee Bollinger, president emeritus of Columbia University. “When one university is attacked, everyone commits to coming to...
What’s Really Wrong With Trump’s Arch: A Symbol Of Autocracy
What’s really wrong with Trump’s arch isn’t something that is always wrong with victory arches but, rather, something that is always wrong with all...
FCC Opens Investigation Into TV Ratings System
The FCC has launched a new inquiry into the TV ratings system, including whether issues of gender identity are being included in children’s programming without flagging...
What, Really, Will Result In The Ticketmaster/LiveNation Verdict?
“I can’t wait for the judge to get hit with a $45 ‘Verdict Convenience Fee,’ a $30 ‘Gavel Processing Fee,’ and an $80 ‘Digital...
“A River Runs Through It” At 50
“In getting to its exalted place, the book had to navigate a tricky set of rapids. Though it sailed through them, a question lingers....
San Diego Proposes To Cut Its Arts Budget. A Big Mistake
While this may be framed as fiscal discipline, cutting arts and culture is not a serious long-term economic strategy. It is a short-term fix...
Book Slop By Any Other Name (Or “Blake Whiting”)
Using AI tools and a pseudonym, unknown culprits are now profiting from my work and that of my colleagues. Worse, they are limiting what...
John Luther Adams On The Sound Of The World
For me, the subject of music is its sound. And in my music, I want to be in touch with sound that I haven't...
A Visit To Africa’s Number-One Dance Training Center
“The main studio of the École des Sables (in) Senegal defies every convention of what a professional dance space should be. It has no...
How Books Reinforced A Colonialist Mindset
The book became a dominant symbol of the age of development through the efforts of the new international institutions, and the United Nations Education...
Grappling With What A Soul Is
This soul of yours has obviously come into existence with your body. Yet equally obviously it’s not made of bodily stuff. It lasts through...
What Does It Mean That Some Respected Creatives In Hollywood Are Okay With AI?
“It may not be realistic to expect lockstep agreement with Guillermo del Toro’s perspective that he would ‘rather die’ than use AI on his films. …...
Turns Out Florence Price Wasn’t The Only Black Female Composer The Vienna Phil Slighted...
The arrangement of Price’s Rainbow Waltz the Vienna Philharmonic played at its New Year’s concert in January has been criticized for bearing almost no...
Cape Cod Is Losing A Professional Theater Company
After 42 years, Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT) is suspending its operations as of June 1. The director cited “steadily rising costs in an...
Nashville Reveals Plans For New Performing Arts Center
Construction on the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, in the redeveloping East Bank neighborhood, begins next year; opening is expected in 2030. The complex, with...
National Gallery Of Art In Washington Gets $116 Million Gift For Loaning Works Nationwide
“(The donor is) Mitchell Rales, the 69-year-old billionaire art collector and co-founder of health care company Danaher. The contribution is the largest programming-related donation...
Desmond Morris, Author Of “The Naked Ape”, Zoologist And TV Host (And Artist), Has...
Over 60 years he wrote or co-wrote more than 50 books and fronted several hundred hours of television, starting in 1956 with the British...
Smithsonian American Art Museum Names New Director
Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, who begins her term after Labor Day and who is currently CEO of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, in...
THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL is coming soon . . . It Probes the Secret Prison...
Colin Asher, author of the critically acclaimed biography of Nelson Algren "Never a Lovely So Real," now focuses on five emblematic figures — Huddle Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur — as he explores the influence of incarceration on blues artists, jazz musicians, country singers, rock'n'rollers,
Vancouver Finally Has A Company Focused On Classical Ballet
Ballet BC is an impressive troupe, but it has long specialized in contemporary work; it’s been more than a decade since there was a...
Japan’s 1,200-Year-Old Record Of Cherry Blossoms Has A New Keeper
Last summer, Prof. Aono, who had meticulously updated the record year after year, died after a battle with cancer. That prompted supporters of his...
