“One of the most mysterious aspects of Poe’s legacy is his untimely death at the age of 40 after being found ‘delirious’ and in ‘great distress’ on the streets of Baltimore. The author was incoherent, rambling, and wearing someone else’s clothes when he was discovered, and after a few days spent in a local hospital he passed away. Many believe that the authors death was a deliberate act, but researchers at Lancaster University are challenging the notion that Poe killed himself.” – Study Finds
The Stories In, And Behind, Raphael’s Tapestries For The Sistine Chapel
“By 1515, after Pope Julius II famously commissioned Michelangelo to repaint the chapel’s ceiling (1508–1515), the chapel had become decidedly top-heavy in its decoration. Then-Pope Leo X (born Giovanni de’ Medici) commissioned a series of designs for tapestries from the artist who was already decorating the papal apartment, Raffaello Sanzio, known to many as Raphael. The Medici crest features prominently in the woven frames of the tapestries’ scenes.” – Hyperallergic
Dance Student Sues School For Making Her Lift Too Heavy A Partner
Charlotte Vanweersch alleges that the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds hadn’t taught her how to properly lift a partner as heavy as the one she was assigned for a “throwing and lifting” routine and that she suffered serious shoulder and neck injuries as a result. She is asking the court to award her up to £500,000 in damages. – The Times (UK)
Uffizi’s Entire Scientific Committee Quits Over Rafael Loan
The panel said it had worked for months to draw up a list of works that should never be moved from the Florentine gallery, and the portrait of Pope Leo X was one of them. The famed portrait was specially restored for the show in the capital by the experts at Florence’s restoration works Opificio delle Pietre Dure. – Ansa
The Experience Economy – It’s More Than The “Product”
“The experience of the product is bigger than the product itself,” said Donald Chesnut, who became Mastercard Inc.’s first chief experience officer in 2019. “It’s everything around it. How well does it work? How does the product feel?” Some 89% of companies employed a chief experience officer or an equivalent role in 2019, up from 61% in 2017, according to research and advisory firm Gartner Inc., which surveyed nearly 400 large companies in the U.S., Canada and U.K. about their customer experience management. – Wall Street Journal
Have Fun: Smithsonian Releases 2.8 Million Images To Public
Featuring data and material from all 19 Smithsonian museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives and the National Zoo, the new digital depot encourages the public to not just view its contents, but use, reuse and transform them into just about anything they choose—be it a postcard, a beer koozie or apair of bootie shorts. – Smithsonian
Royal Shakespeare’s Gregory Doran Hits Back At Idea That “Wokeness” Is Threatening Shakespeare
“Dominic Cavendish fears that the woke wolves are beginning to police Shakespeare, and that ultimately they will apply a sort of politically correct censorship which will render the plays unperformable. I can’t agree with that. I think directors, especially some of the freshest and most radical today, many of whom are women, want to reveal what is most urgent, most resonant and sometimes most challenging in his work, and address those issues head on.” – The Stage
How To Make Historical Ballet Relevant
Exploring the context in which the ballets arose offers insight into their complexity, and helps us question contemporary assumptions about the choreography, librettos, and music that have survived. By pairing imagination with historical awareness, we can rediscover the experiential aspects of dance and music and gain insight into these arts as we practice them today. – San Francisco Classical Voice
Yuja Wang Upset Her Audience In Chicago When She Mixed Up The Order Of Her Program (On Purpose)
Because of cultural tradition, each audience brings specific expectations to a performance. Classical listeners, who are steeped in the European performance practices, have been conditioned to want to know as much as possible about the music before a note is sounded. Jazz audiences – who have embraced a more casual, all-American approach to listening – generally sit back and savor the sounds, recognizing standard tunes, enjoying obscure works and realizing that free-flying improvisations may have no title at all. – Chicago Tribune
Shocking: How Easily Humans Are Getting Intimate With AI
We’re witnessing a major shift in traditional social life, but it’s not because we’re always online, or because our tech is becoming conscious, or because we’re getting AI lovers like Samantha in Spike Jonze’s film Her (2013). To the contrary, we’re learning that humans can bond, form attachments and dedicate themselves to non-conscious objects or lifeless things with shocking ease. – Aeon
There’s A Taco Bell Literary Quarterly (Honest To God)
“You can read Volume 1 online and Volume 2 should be dropping any day now.” The publication’s mission? “Taco Bell Quarterly is the literary magazine for the Taco Bell Arts and Letters. We’re a reaction against everything. The gatekeepers. The taste-makers. The hipsters. Health food. Artists Who Wear Cute Scarves. Bitch-ass Wendy’s. We seek to demystify what it means to literary, artistic, important, and elite.” – Literary Hub
Rem Koolhaas Discovers The Countryside (And Comes Off As A City Rube)
Having spent 50 years theorizing about cities, he grew annoyed by how much time his fellow urbanists spend theorizing about cities. So he pulled on his wellies and went tromping out into the sticks with a mixture of wistfulness and obstinate naïvete. The countryside “is largely off (our) radar,” he writes, making that parenthetical our do a lot of heavy lifting. You’d have to be a pretty serious indoorsman to be startled by some of the changes he chronicles, or to believe that the world beyond cities was ever an “ignored realm,” as he calls it. – New York Magazine
Just In Time For Coronavirus? Video Conferencing Is Getting A Makeover
From virtual backgrounds to hide the dirty dished in your sink to AI-powered smoothing of video over iffy connections, video-conferencing services are trying to make the experience more vivid and reliable. – Wired
Director Says Apple Won’t Let Its Products Be used By Bad Guys In Movies
Knives Out and The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has said that Apple won’t let the bad guys in movies use iPhones. “Apple… they let you use iPhones in movies but — and this is very pivotal if you’re ever watching a mystery movie — bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera.” – The Verge
Anne Midgette: The Placido Domingo Case
“Domingo is, indeed, irreplaceable — because the world no longer has a place for this particular kind of artist, who has done so much to help the field and so much to harm it. And it may well be that without him, the field loses some of its patrons, and some of its funding. It may be, indeed, that the institution of opera fundamentally changes — which is something we should all aspire to if we want this intoxicating, bizarre, glorious art form to continue to be vital, now and in the future.” – The New Beat
After 23 Years, The Team That Created ‘How I Learned To Drive’ Brings It To Broadway
Laura Collins-Hughes talks to playwright Paula Vogel, director Mark Brokaw, and actors Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse talk about the original 1997 Off-Broadway production and why they’ve always wanted to reunite and return to the play. – The New York Times
‘Simpsons’ Actor Hank Azaria Explains Why He Won’t Do The Voice Of Apu Anymore
“Once I realized that that was the way this character was thought of, I just didn’t want to participate in it anymore. … The character of Apu was done with love and pride and the best of intentions. My message is, things can be done with really good intentions and have negative consequences.” – The New York Times
We Will Buy No More Art For LACMA, Says Foundation That Funded Acquisitions For 60 Years
“The Ahmanson’s gift program, which has paid for 114 paintings and 15 sculptures, is the backbone of the museum’s widely admired European art collection.” And why is that program being ended? Because director Michael Govan’s plans (including the new building) mean that “Ahmanson gifts acquired over decades at LACMA curators’ specific request will end up in storage for unknown periods of time — even though they were bought for permanent display.” – Los Angeles Times
AGMA Was Going To Keep Its Report On Plácido Domingo Quiet, And Domingo Was Going To Pay AGMA $500K. Now The Deal’s Off
“The deal they were working on — which called for the union, the American Guild of Musical Artists, to limit its public statements about the inquiry and for Mr. Domingo to pay the union $500,000 — fell apart on Tuesday after details of the investigation were leaked overnight.” – The New York Times
Louvre’s Leonardo 500 Show Demolishes Attendance Record
“[The exhibition] brought in 1,071,840 visitors over the four months it was on view. This figure easily smashed its previous attendance record of 540,000 visitors, which was held by a 2018 Eugène Delacroix retrospective.” – ARTnews
Hollywood Celebrates Harvey Weinstein Verdict
Actresses and activists celebrated Monday when a New York jury found the producer guilty on two counts, in a decision that could send him to jail for up to 25 years. – The Daily Beast
Furtwängler in Wartime
Books continue to be written about what it was like to live in Germany under Hitler. I wonder if any of the authors have auditioned Wilhelm Furtwängler’s wartime broadcasts with the Berlin Philharmonic. They should. – Joseph Horowitz
New Right Wing Director Of Warsaw’s Contemporary Art Center Cancels Shows, Cuts Funding
The Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art is now seen by many in Poland’s contemporary art community as a new front in the country’s culture wars, as the ruling Law and Justice party attempts to exert greater control over state-sponsored institutions and promote artists aligned with its patriotic, pro-family views. – The Art Newspaper
Steve Bannon Wants To Set Up National Bootcamp In Ancient Italian Monastery. The Ministry Of Culture Is Trying To Block Him
The Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI), a Catholic lobby group run by the British conservative Benjamin Harnwell, was granted a 19-year lease on the building by the ministry of culture two years ago as part of an initiative to involve the private sector in the management of abandoned or dilapidated cultural sites in Italy. But after Bannon and Harnwell announced plans to use the medieval monastery to establish an Academy for the Judeo-Christian West to teach budding nationalists subjects such as politics, theology, philosophy and history, the culture ministry changed its mind. – The Art Newspaper
Plácido Domingo Sexually Harassed And Abused Power For More Than 20 Years, Inquiry Finds
“The investigation, conducted by lawyers hired by the American Guild of Musical Artists, concluded that the accounts from 27 people showed a clear pattern of sexual misconduct and abuse of power by Domingo spanning at least two decades … when he held senior management positions at Washington National Opera and Los Angeles Opera.” (Domingo has now issued a statement saying “I am truly sorry for the hurt that I caused them.”) – Yahoo! (AP)