The proposed expansion includes 46 art museums, adding to the country’s current total of 451 art institutions. Altogether, the increase will mean one museum for every 39,000 people, an improvement on the current ratio of one per 45,000 residents. – Artnet
How “Game Of Thrones” Is Like Chaucer
The fate of Chaucer’s unfinished works suggests there may be something to be appreciated in the peculiarly suspended state in which fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones currently find themselves. Should Martin be compelled to abandon his saga for one reason or another, he can console himself with the knowledge that the unfinished state of Chaucer’s texts did nothing to prevent John Dryden from declaring Chaucer to be the “Father of English poetry”. – Times Literary-Supplement
Non-Verbal Communication: A Dictionary Of What Our Gestures Mean
Francois Caradec’s Dictionary, newly translated into English by Chris Clarke, lists some 850 gestures that “successively address each part of the body, from top to bottom, from scalp to toe by way of the upper limbs”, and may be used as well as or instead of speech. They are numbered and ordered in a taxonomy running from 1.01 (“to nod one’s head vertically up and down, back to front, one or several times: acquiescence”) to 37.12 (“to kick an adversary in the rear end: aggression”). – Times Literary Supplement
End Of Anonymity? AI Can Match Anonymous Writing With Its Author
An artificial intelligence, or AI, successfully “recognizes” an author not as a person, but instead as the likeness of features that characterize a body of work. In order to find patterns across texts, the algorithmic “reader” uses a collection of textual traits—like frequently used words or punctuation—to draw conclusions about who wrote what.
Court Gives Trump-Connected Oligarch Who Used To Own ‘Salvator Mundi’ Go-Ahead To Sue Sotheby’s
“A federal judge in New York rejected Sotheby’s bid to dismiss a $380 million lawsuit where Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev accused the auction house of helping his longtime art dealer’s scheme to overcharge him on dozens of masterworks.” – Reuters
When Mexico Became The World’s Hotbed Of Surrealism
It wasn’t just Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. In the 1930s and ’40s, André Breton, Leonora Carrington, José and Kati Horna, Gordon Onslow-Ford, Wolfgang Paalen, and others flocked to Mexico City. As Kahlo once put it, “I never knew I was a Surrealist until André Breton came to Mexico and told me I was one.” – Artsy
Sculptor Charles Ginnever, Known For Large Outdoor Works, Dead At 87
“Working largely in steel, made massive geometric forms that often seemed to defy gravity — giant squares or slabs appearing to float in the air or balance precariously on a point. His works were deliberately made to be walked around; viewing them from multiple angles gave dramatically different experiences.” – The New York Times
Mariss Jansons Cancels All Summer Performances
On doctors’ orders, the 76-year-old chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, formerly music director of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony, has withdrawn from concerts with the BRSO in Munich as well as appearances at (among others) the Salzburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and Riga Jurmala Festivals and the BBC Proms. – OperaWire
YouTube Stars’ New Big Thing? Excessive Over-The-Top Consumerism
After over 200 studies, we know that the more people endorse materialism, the worse their wellbeing. They’re less empathic, less prosocial, more competitive. They’re less likely to support environmental sustainability. They’re more likely to endorse prejudicial and discriminatory beliefs.” And you know, that sounds like what’s wrong with YouTube. –Wired
Google Is Building A Massive New Smart City In Toronto. Here’s What It Will Look Like
Sidewalk Labs, the smart-city startup from Google parent company Alphabet, has released its master innovation and development plan to turn a sizable swath of Toronto’s Lake Ontario shoreline into “the most innovative district in the entire world.” – CityLab
Arts Council England Plans To Include “Relevance” In Funding Criteria
“Most of us already lead creative and cultural lives: we join book clubs, we take craft classes, we stream music,” the strategy document says. “The task for the Arts Council is to enable more people to take advantage of more opportunities to develop and express their creativity, and to support them to engage with the widest possible range of culture.” – Arts Professional
NRA Shuts Down Production Of NRA TV, Amid Financial, Political Crisis
The development is the latest in what has been a tumultuous year for the N.R.A. It has struggled to right its finances; faced investigations in Congress and by Letitia James, the New York attorney general; and witnessed a leadership struggle that pitted Oliver North, the N.R.A.’s former president, against Mr. LaPierre. – New York Times
What Makes A Successful Theatre Artistic Director? Voices, Courage…
Joseph Haj: “When I see artistic directors who have a five-show season directing three of the shows, I think: nobody’s that interesting, nobody. I don’t care how beautiful and thrilling a maker you are, your community deserves and wants a variety of aesthetics and voices and approaches. I don’t want a season that looks too much like me.” – HowlRound
The Hottest Attraction At England’s Biggest Rock Festival Is Not A Band
It’s a 140-ton, 100-foot crane that used to lift freight at the docks in Bristol. Now — decked out with multiple speakers that shoot flames into the air, all powered by a generator that runs on recycled frying oil — it’s the center of the nighttime dance floor at the Glastonbury Festival. – The Guardian
Thinking About Music As Not Just The Notes But The Cultural History In The Performance
Jeremy Dutcher incorporates in his live and recorded music an unusual and affecting act of legacy, playing transcribed wax recordings from 1911 by an early anthropologist of a tribal elder singing and speaking, and following the melodies with his own heldentenor voice and mellifluous keyboard compositions. – San Francisco Classical Voice
Breakdancing Is About To Become An Olympic Sport
“Breakdancing moved a step closer to the 2024 Olympics on Tuesday, and now organizers can look to book a street venue in Paris. Called breaking in Olympic circles, its medal debut was last October at the Buenos Aires Youth Summer Games. The street dance competitions will have 16 athletes in each of the men’s and women’s medal events in Paris.” – Yahoo! (AP)
When Norman Mailer Covered The Moon Landing (It Wasn’t Pretty)
“Mailer on the moonshot: loads of words, loads of money. A big deal for Life magazine. And for Mailer? Grim opportunism. Out of tune, bardically bereft, plucking (as it were) flaccid strands of sheep’s gut, he was ripe for anticlimax. But he needed the cash.” – The Atlantic
Beta Blockers (And How I Became Utterly Hooked On Them)
Shannon Paulus discovered them in college and found them a sort of miracle cure for pre-performance anxiety, just as so many performers have. Then she learned the hard way about the dangers of dependence on them. She recounts how she got herself hooked and unhooked — and looks into a company that’s making it way too easy to get a prescription for them online. – Slate
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Cinema Is Not An Oxymoron. It’s A Real Genre
“Haredim – a Hebrew word meaning ‘those who tremble at the word of God’ that encompasses a multiplicity of ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects – tend to isolate themselves from secular society, which they see as a threat to their traditional way of life. They generally appear to shun film and television, so it is a surprise to discover that many have been making films with considerable zeal, viewed by both religious and secular audiences, for some time.” – The Guardian
Baltimore Symphony Nearly Doubled Its Debt In Less Than Two Years
“The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra owed its vendors $2.1 million as of late April … That’s almost an 81% increase over the $1.2 million the orchestra owed to merchants as of Sept. 25, 2017.” – The Baltimore Sun
Some Good News From Nôtre-Dame: Near-Exact Replica Of Clock Destroyed In Fire Found
“With original drawings lost and no digital records, photographs of the historic clock were the only clue experts had about how they might rebuild it. Then French clockmaker Jean-Baptiste Viot stumbled across an almost identical version while completing an inventory last month at Sainte-Trinité church in northern Paris.” – Yahoo! (AFP)
Auction Of Caravaggio Discovered In Attic Called Off
“Judith and Holofernes, which was found under an old mattress in the attic of a house in the French city of Toulouse, was snapped up by a foreign buyer, the auction house selling it said on Tuesday.” – Yahoo! (AFP)
Anna Burns’s ‘Milkman’ Gets Another Major Award, The Orwell Prize
The novel, which has already won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, has received the first-ever Orwell Prize for political fiction. The more-established Orwell Prize for political non-fiction writing went to Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing. Both books concern the Troubles in Northern Ireland. – The Guardian
Michael Tilson Thomas’s Heart Surgery A ‘Complete Success’
“The unspecified procedure [at the Cleveland Clinic] was, according to MTT’s statement in his announcement of taking medical leave, ‘in continuation of treatment for a heart condition I have managed for many years.’” – San Francisco Classical Voice
It Doesn’t Have To Be Netflix OR Movie Theatres
Netflix is a business like any other, one locked in a seemingly unresolvable war with the movie-theater industry, which it views as a rival. Twelve percent of Americans see at least one movie a month in theaters; Netflix has about 60 million U.S. subscribers, or a fifth of the country. Both are huge money-making endeavors, and the idea that one has to die for the other to prosper is hard to grasp. – The Atlantic