Despite The Symphony’s Death, There’s A Thriving Chamber Orchestra In San Antonio
"Unlike the symphony, it's a young institution. Unlike the symphony, it has diversity and inclusiveness deep in its DNA. ... Its performing artists hail...
Librarians Find A Dürer Just Sitting There In An Old Book On Their Shelves
"During a recent inventory audit, researchers at the Oldenburg State Library (in Germany) found on the title page of the book (the) small drawing....
James Rado, Co-Creator Of The Musical “Hair”, Dead At 90
Contrary to popular lore, Rado and collaborator (and then-lover) Gerome Ragni weren't out-of-work actors writing themselves roles (they played Claude and Berger), they were...
After 47 Books, John Grisham On Writing, Hollywood, And Storytelling
"I can’t get a fraction of that today. You can say, Well, we choked the golden goose, but all those films made money. Then...
Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Algorithm?
We Googled the first line, expecting it to be an existing Philip Larkin poem, but we couldn’t find it on the Internet. It was...
What The Toppling Of Public Monuments Says About Our Time
While the recent destruction of statues in the contemporary West ostensibly relates to a racial reckoning, it nonetheless stands in a long lineage of...
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...
