“Many people were likely stunned to read recently the announcement by Microsoft that AI was proving to be better at reading X-rays than trained radiologists. Most newspaper readers don’t realize how much of their daily paper is now written by AI. That wasn’t supposed to happen; robots were supposed to supplant manual labor jobs, not professional brainwork. Yet here we are: AI is quickly gobbling up entire professions—and those jobs will never come back.” – Scientific American
How ‘Sesame Street’ Has Reflected 50 Years Of American Society Back To Itself
Jill Lepore traces the history (and prehistory) of “the most extensively researched television program [ever made]” — from the educational and social ideals of its creators (and the entertaining arguments over the show’s name) to the ways the show has responded to criticism (and how important those critics thought Sesame Street was) to the long slide into commercialism that began in the Reagan years. – The New Yorker
Treasure Trove Of Russian Avant-Garde Art Discovered In Small-Town Museum’s Basement
“A leading Russian avant-garde expert says he has identified dozens of works by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova languishing in [the Yaransk Museum of Local Lore], 800km away from Moscow.” – The Art Newspaper
Violinist Offers Free Lessons Online Culminating In A Big Virtual Concert. 800 Take Her Up On It
Nicola Benedetti already offered online music classes through her own Benedetti Foundation. But the lockdown made her wonder whether they could reach an even wider audience on social media platforms. Although the sessions are free, donations are welcome. Nearly 800 people have signed up so far to teach or play, including fellow musicians The Ayoub Sisters. – BBC
Disney Company’s Massive Size Was Always A Strength — Until The Pandemic Hit
“After a decade of spectacular growth, the entertainment conglomerate has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. Its 14 theme parks (annual attendance: 157 million) delivered record profits in 2019. They’re now padlocked. Its movie studios (there are eight) controlled a staggering 40 percent of the domestic box office last year. Now, they’re sitting at a near standstill.” – The New York Times
Washington Attorney General Is Investigating Brown Paper Tickets
Until recently, BPT had enjoyed a good reputation, sometimes called the David to Ticketmaster’s Goliath. One unpaid client, the Taste of Philadelphia Food Tour, had been doing business with the company for 10 years, but is now waiting on $2,782 in bounced checks from events as far back as December 2019 (the checks weren’t deposited until March 16), plus $207 for March events canceled by coronavirus lockdowns. – Seattle Times
Where (And Why) Science Is Failing Us
The average scientist’s acquaintance with philosophy tends to be of the passing variety. This is a great pity. Deep-rooted, seemingly intractable problems in foundational theoretical physics – the physics of matter and radiation, space, time and the Universe – have now frustrated progress for 50 years or more. We’re living through a period in the history of foundational physics in which ideas about nature are cheap, but gathering the empirical facts needed to show that these ideas have anything at all to do with the real world has become extraordinarily expensive, protracted and time-consuming, and without guarantee of success. – Aeon
How’s Canada’s Arts Sector Holding Up Through The COVID Crisis? Better Than In The States
Things are far from perfect north of the border, but overall Canadian artists and organizations say they feel relatively well taken care of, especially when they look south. Kate Brown reports. – Artnet
Mezzo Rosalind Elias Dead At 90
She made her Metropolitan Opera debut at age 23 and sang 54 roles there over 42 years, becoming one of the most beloved singers within the company. Perhaps most notable among the many operas she sang at other houses was Samuel Barber’s Vanessa: she created the role of Erika in the opera’s premiere, and almost 50 year’s later she sang that character’s grandmother. What’s more, at age 81 she made her Broadway debut. – The Washington Post
Large Hoard Of Fake Antiquities Found And Impounded At Heathrow
“A Border Force officer at Heathrow Airport discovered the hundreds of clay figurines, pots, and tablets covered in cuneiform script in a pair of metal trunks last July. Intercepted en route from Bahrain to a private address in the UK, the objects were sent to the British Museum for inspection. There, they were discovered to be fakes. The striking thing about the discovery, says St John Simpson, a curator at the British Museum, is not the number of counterfeit relics. It’s the type.” – Artnet
‘This American Life’ Wins First-Ever Pulitzer For Audio Journalism
“In partnership with the Los Angeles Times and Vice News, This American Life won for an episode called ‘The Out Crowd’ — which illuminated the personal impact of the Trump Administration’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy. In the episode, listeners hear from asylum seekers in a refugee camp in Mexico just across the border, as well as the officers who sent them there. In fact, many of the U.S. asylum officers felt awful about sending the migrants back to Mexico, as Los Angeles Times reporter Molly O’Toole learned.” – Poynter
‘The Central Park Five’ By Anthony Davis Wins Pulitzer Prize For Music
“[The work,] which debuted last June at Long Beach Opera, … chronicles the racially and politically charged New York trial and conviction of one Latino teenager and four black teens — who were later all exonerated and freed — in the 1989 rape [and beating] of a young white female investment banker in Central Park.” – The San Diego Union-Tribune
‘A Strange Loop’ By Michael R. Jackson Wins Pulitzer Prize For Drama
“Jackson’s win marks the first time the committee has awarded a black writer for a musical. … That’s particularly poignant given the material itself: a discursive meta-tale about a young, gay, black musical theater writer, who’s writing a musical about a young, gay, black musical theater writer, and so on down the rabbit hole.” – Forbes
Colson Whitehead, Jericho Brown, Benjamin Moser, W. Caleb McDaniel, Anne Boyer, Greg Grandin Win Literary Pulitzers
Whitehead received his second fiction Pulitzer for The Nickel Boys; Brown’s The Tradition took poetry honors; the biography prize went to Moser’s Sontag: Her Life and Work; McDaniel’s Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America took the history category; the general nonfiction prize was shared by Boyer for The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care and Grandin for The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America. – Los Angeles Times
L.A. Times Art Critic Christopher Knight Wins Pulitzer Prize
“The jury said Knight’s work demonstrated ‘extraordinary community service by a critic’ through the application of ‘his expertise and enterprise to critique a proposed overhaul of the L.A. County Museum of Art and its effect on the institution’s mission.’ … [The other finalists were] Justin Davidson of New York magazine, nominated in part for his writing on the Hudson Yards development in New York, and Soraya Nadia McDonald of The Undefeated, honored for her work exploring the intersection of film, theater, and race.” (Davidson has already won the criticism Pulitzer, in 2002 for classical music writing at Newsday.) – Artnet
How Production Studios Are Adapting To Stay-At-Home Productions
“There are systems we had before that are good and coming in handy, but there are new systems that are popping up all the time, too. I think it’s going to change us for the better in the long term. There’s no way we go back to the studio and produce the show the same way we did before. We’ve learned too much.” – Washington Post
Is The Future Of Music Festivals Drive-In Theatre?
The Danish city of Aarhus allowed popular singer Mads Langer to perform a drive-thru event at a newly constructed venue just outside the city. With six days’ notice, the event sold 500 tickets and, according to locals, went off without a hitch. – Los Angeles Times
Sotheby’s Reports $71.2m Loss & “Substantial Doubt” About Continuing; Major June Sales Planned
Sotheby’s new leaders, who took the publicly traded company private, are understandably eager to reopen their New York saleroom for post-pandemic business. Having disclosed a $71.2-million net loss in its 2019 Annual Report (compared to net income of $108.6 million the previous year), the company could use a life-sustaining income infusion. – Lee Rosenbaum
Stunt Performers Still Have Few Protections Against Accidents And Little Recourse
Olivia Jackson was gravely injured on a Resident Evil set in South Africa in 2015. But who should pay?. “Jackson’s ordeal highlights the vulnerabilities of performers on sets, especially on international productions, where it can be challenging to recover damages for injuries. Although film and TV-related fatalities have declined since the 1980s and 1990s, the number of catastrophic injuries has increased in recent years as production has expanded globally.” – Los Angeles Times
The Writers Van Gogh Liked To Read Included Charles Dickens And Harriet Beecher Stowe
In the category of things some of us hadn’t thought enough about before this moment: “Vincent was an avid and multilingual reader, a man who could not do without books. In his brief life he devoured hundreds of them in four languages, spanning centuries of art and literature. Throughout his life, his reading habits reflected his various personae—art dealer, preacher, painter—and were informed by his desire to learn, discuss, and find his own way to be of service to humanity.” – LitHub
Frank Ramsey – The Genius Who Always Got There First
Ramsey not only died young but lived too early, or so it can seem. He did little to advertise the importance of his ideas, and his modesty did not help. He was not particularly impressed with himself—he thought he was rather lazy. At the same time, the speed with which his mind worked sometimes left a blur on the page. The prominent American philosopher Donald Davidson was one of several thinkers to experience what he dubbed “the Ramsey effect.” You’d make a thrilling breakthrough only to find that Ramsey had got there first. – The New Yorker