Among the many anecdotes in Christine Smallwood’s profile: “She never dabbled in the drugs and alcohol that were omnipresent on film sets. Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols once pulled her aside while they were shooting Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains and scared her straight. (Dern celebrated her 13th birthday on that set.) ‘I was saying to my mom, Who knew that the best thing to do would be to send your daughter to do a movie with the Sex Pistols for five months?'” – The New York Times Magazine
E.O. Wilson On Creativity In Science And Humanities
“Science tends to advance sometimes in major jumps. Something is discovered, some mystery is solved, some system is for the first time understood and can be duplicated. When that happens, science moves quickly. I started thinking: What moves the creative arts? I thought, maybe a scientist could say something useful to innovators and masters of the humanities. I thought the next big thing could be at the interface of science and the creative arts.” Chronicle of Higher Education
Can A City’s Cultural Vibrancy Be Measured? Here’s An Economist Who’s Trying
“Provided that culture uniquely defines a city, which urban contexts are more culturally vibrant? And in which ones does culture drive creative economies? This study presents a novel and freely accessible dataset – the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor – gathering 29 indicators for 168 European cities. Capitals generally lead on ‘Creative Economy’ but non-capitals do better on ‘Cultural Vibrancy’.” – EconomistsTalkArt.org
Why Alexei Ratmansky Wanted To Choreograph A Shostakovich Triple-Bill
“More than any other composer, his music reflects his life, his situation, his country and his times. … I’ve always felt this very personal connection. It’s hard to explain but when it plays, my brain responds. I have steps in my head, I see images and drama. Even in Shostakovich’s symphonies, which some people consider heavy.” – The Guardian
How Crowdfunding Site Patreon Helps (And Doesn’t) Creators Who Use It
Reporter Mathew Olson: “I interviewed thirteen Patreon users to get a sense how they feel about the platform and the state of crowdfunding more generally. I tried to speak with users across a wide range of creative output and Patreon income levels — though, I’ll admit, folks whose work concerns video games are perhaps overrepresented.” – Digg
Blunt Instrument: The Complexity Of Using Quotas To Drive Equity
“In the future, 50/50 ideologies fade to dust because they are too narrow, too binary and mistake equality for equity or justice. To paraphrase political activist Angela Davis, equality is not to be understood as achieving status or parity with white, able-bodied, cis men because that status is contingent on the oppression of other peoples. In the future, everyone has transformed the meaning of patriarchy so that it no longer operates by domination. This has been done without loss of men or manhood.” – Arts Professional
In Ancient Times, Timekeeping Was Erratic. When We Figured It Out, It Revolutionized The World
“In our own world, filled with ubiquitous date marks, it is easy to underestimate the sheer novelty, and so historical significance, of this mass year-marking. But, in the ancient world, this was without precedent or parallel. In no other state in the ancient Mediterranean or west Asia did rulers and subjects inhabit spaces that were so comprehensively and consistently dated.” – Aeon
Where Does The Original End And The Copy Begin? (And Don’t Even Mention Fakes)
It’s an issue, since the beginning of art. Where does one person’s art end and another’s begin. The lines are quite blurry… – Smithsonian
Nurit Karlin, 80, The New Yorker’s Master Of The Wordless Cartoon
“[She] drew whimsical but thoughtful cartoons: an office worker sitting in what is actually one of his desk’s drawers; a lumberjack peering at a heart pierced by an arrow carved inside the rings of a felled tree; a harpist taking his bows on a concert stage with the strings of his instrument dangling from one hand.” And a favorite: two doves fighting over an olive branch. – The New York Times
Americans Are Finally Reading More Translated Translation — Aren’t They?
Yes, there are some literary stars here whose books come to U.S. readers in translation — Karl Ove Knausgaard, Stieg Larsson, Elena Ferrante — but the number of books published in English that were originally written in another language has held steady at around 3% of the total for many years. Chad Post, founder of the publishing house Open Letter, which specializes in translated lit, writes about the interlocking issues behind “the 3 percent problem.” – Vulture
What’s The Deal With America’s Fondness For Endless Adolescence? Blame Mark Twain
Tom Carson: “Most of the Americans entranced by the fib that everything after high school is a fall from grace undoubtedly have no idea where it originated, but the Clearasil staining Mark Twain’s hands can never be wholly scrubbed away.” – The Baffler
Video Game Players Have An Endless Thirst For Updates, And The Pressure Is Driving Developers To The Breaking Point
For years it’s been known that the makers of top video games would make employees work 90-hour weeks or more, with no extra pay, at the crunch time before a title’s release. But now crunch time never ends. – PC Gamer
She Had Vertebrae Fused At Age 3. Now She’s A Lead Dancer At Atlanta Ballet
Emily Carrico was diagnosed with slippage of the vertebrae when she was still a toddler; she had two lower vertebrae fused with the sacrum. Then she spent months in a cast, a year in rehab, and then, amazingly, started ballet classes. Here’s a look at how she keeps dancing and what her artistic director, Gennadi Nedvigin, has to say about her. – Dance Magazine
Polish Woman Arrested For Adding Rainbow Halo To Icon Of Virgin And Child
“Polish police say Elżbieta Podlesna put up posters of the revered Black Madonna that showed the Virgin Mary and Jesus with rainbows from the LGBT flag as the halos. Now she could face two years in prison for [the crime of] offending religious feelings.” – CNN
Ballet Memphis Finds Its New Artistic Director In-House
“Steven McMahon, 34, was named Artistic Director on Tuesday, taking over half the role occupied by company founder Dorothy Gunther Pugh since 1986. While Pugh will stay on as C.E.O., McMahon will take charge of the artistic and programming decisions and continue to choreograph new works.” He has been with the company as dancer and choreographer for 15 years. – KUAF (Memphis)
Activists Conduct A Tour Of “Stolen Goods” At The British Museum
The unofficial tour featured talks by Palestinian, Iraqi, Greek, and Indigenous Australian activists. Around 300 people attended the tour, including those who came especially for the event and museum visitors who decided to listen in. – Hyperallergic
Dressing Up: Miami Beach Is Getting A Major Public Art Makeover
Like the city around it, the public-art program aspires to be both local and global. According to curator Brandi Reddick, the projects, by six internationally-renowned artists chosen from over 500 who applied. – CityLab
‘Treachery’ Is What Killed Woodstock 50, Says Founder (That And Theft, Too)
The attorneys for Woodstock 50 co-founder Michael Lang have shared a furious letter he has written to Dentsu, the Japan-based international ad agency that had been lead investor for this summer’s festival, only to abruptly pull its funding and announce the festival’s cancellation last week. – Vulture
How Can We Prepare Arts Students From *All* Backgrounds For The Arts Workforce?
“Many programs focus exclusively on craft and artistry, but rarely — if ever — address the nitty-gritty topics such as finding work, money management, or entrepreneurship, although these are all critical to finding success in many areas of the arts.” Camille Schenkkan writes about how she’s worked on these issues as Next Generation Initiatives Director at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. – Americans for the Arts
The Rise Of Book Clubs In Afghanistan
“Books clubs are an indicator of a young generation that has come of age after 9/11. Many have liberal leanings and seek a space where they can talk openly. During the Taliban, Kabul University’s library was destroyed, but it has come back to life.” – The Guardian
Study: Country Music Is Getting More White, More Specifically Male
“Contemporary country celebrates heterosexual men in blue-collar occupations just like the genre did in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. But the ideal rural man is now depicted as a particular type of heterosexual provider, while white women have increasingly been represented as the ideal sexual objects to complement this masculinity.” – Pacific Standard
Putting Saul Bellow’s ‘Adventures Of Augie March’ Onstage — Can It Work In 2019?
In Chicago, where Bellow spent his life, playwright David Auburn (who won the Pulitzer for Proof) has reshaped the hefty novel into a single-evening play with 13 actors portraying 40 characters. But will today’s audiences relate to a story by an author who, as one of his biographers puts it, is “lucky he did not live to see the #MeToo movement”? – The New York Times
Starbucks Got About $2.3 Billion In Free Advertising From The “Game Of Thrones” Coffee Gaffe
“The label is muddled in shadow, but many fans speculated that it was the iconic green siren from Starbucks — and most of the jokes and discussion called out the Seattle coffee chain by name. Turns out, it was just a craft services cup.” – CNBC
Writing Now Pays So Badly That You Have To Marry Well Or Inherit Just To Afford To Do It: Report
“The full findings from the annual Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society report into author earnings … [reveal that,] while the average professional writer earns £10,000 a year, the mean earnings for a writer’s household were more than £81,000 a year, and median household earnings were at £50,000 per annum.” – The Guardian
Prehistoric Rock Art Discovered In India By Two Regular Guys
Over the past seven years, a pair of amateur archaeologists has discovered hundreds of large petroglyphs, estimated to be 10,000 to 40,000 years old, etched into rock in a rural area roughly halfway between Mumbai and Goa. – The New York Times