“The prominent Russian art gallery owner Marat Guelman is being evicted from an exhibition space in Moscow after hosting a charity auction for political prisoners … Two days [after the event], Guelman was served with an eviction notice from the company that rents out the building housing his gallery at Moscow’s acclaimed Winzavod art center.”
There’s A New Theatre Company In Detroit
“Hoping to become a cultural staple for the city, Detroit Public Theater is modeled after New York’s Public Theater (hence the name). Its mission: not only to foster new artists and dig into the community with theatre programming, but present challenging new works.”
How Safe Is Iran For Readers And Writers?
Ask Azar Nafisi, the woman who wrote “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” and she’ll tell you: “the truth of the matter is that the laws have remained the same, and there is no real security until there is real reform and real change. As you can tell from reading Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, the human rights situation in Iran — the situation of journalists, writers, political prisoners — that also remains the same.”
Do We Seriously Still Need A ‘Women’s Prize’ For Fiction?
“What was it that meant that women’s work was not seen, somehow, as valuable as the writing of their male counterparts. Tradition; nervousness about a plurality of voices; a sense that some subjects were more important than others?”
Parallel, Opposite Lives For Ballet Dancers From The West And East
“Polunin has achieved everything that Womack dreams of. And for him, that is cause for despair.”
The (Pseudo) Scientific Belief In Projecting Our Thoughts Into The Universe
“The device is a cosmic ham radio—a direct, if fuzzy, line to the big Whatever that provides things when they are asked for in the right way. Radionics is also called psionics or psychotronics, and radionics machines ‘wishing machines.'”
Fort Worth Symphony Musicians Fight More Pay Cuts
FWSO president and CEO Amy Adkins, with the approval of the nonprofit’s board of directors, proposed cutting the concert season from 46 weeks to 43, decreasing artist fees for the Concerts in the Garden series by 25 percent, and eliminating three weeks of paid time off. The loss in wages would mean a nearly 23 percent loss in salary since 2010 once inflation is accounted for.
Big Changes At Once-Floundering, Now Thriving Oregon Ballet Theatre
Over the next two years, the company will be moving to new studios, selling its old building to retire all of its $1.8 million debt, expansion into the suburbs, and a summer outdoor series dedicated entirely to women choreographers – and, of course, the ballet-and-beer initiative.
Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia In Barcelona Begins Final Phase Of Construction
Remaining work on the great basilica, for which Antoni Gaudí laid the first stone in 1882, includes the west sacristy, the six central spires, and the Tower of Jesus. When complete, Sagrada Familia will be the tallest house of worship in Europe. (photos)
‘The Moth In The Flame’ – An Unpublished Short Story By Truman Capote
“Written for his high school newspaper, The Green Witch, in the early 1940s, … ‘The Moth in the Flame’ captures in a very short space the vast range of tumultuous emotions that spring from a distressing encounter.”
Four Centuries Of Cat Art Go Up For Auction
“The sale … is one of the largest of its kind to occur in the UK, featuring 244 works – and the trove is really delightful, bringing to public eye many rare and original illustrations that depict cats in a variety of ways, from straightforward portraits to bizarre or humorous caricatures.”
‘Boulez Is Napoleon, Stockhausen Is Just Bismarck’: A 1967 Interview With Morton Feldman, In English For The First Time
This interview … was conducted in 1967 by composer and musicologist Jean-Yves Bosseur, then aged twenty. … [It] was conducted in English originally, but the audiotapes have been lost. Therefore until now this interview has only been available in French translation.”
London’s Handel House Museum Opens A Hendrix Half
“In the mid-18th century, George Frideric Handel wrote his epic oratorio Messiah in a Georgian town house here. Around 230 years later, Jimi Hendrix moved in next door. Now, a revamped museum dedicated to both musical pioneers is set to open Feb. 10 on Brook Street in the Mayfair district, in the adjacent apartments where they lived.”
Los Angeles Is Hiring An Artist – To Help Reduce Traffic Deaths
“The artist will be embedded in the city’s Department of Transportation, to focus on how to save bike riders and pedestrians from being maimed or killed by automobiles.” Says the department’s general manager, “I want somebody who can understand the issues and think of them in different ways.”
Small Towns Using The Arts To Attract New Business And People? It’s Working In Wisconsin
“The arts are playing an increasingly important role in stimulating the local economies of small towns and rural communities throughout Wisconsin.”
The Root Of All Evil: The Original Jack O’ Lanterns Weren’t Pumpkins, They Were Turnips
“Jack-o’-lanterns originated in Ireland, ‘where people have been carving turnips and other root vegetables for centuries, to ward off evil spirits.’ Irish legend holds there was an actual man named Jack …”
Is Poetry A Better Password?
Turning random strings of characters into rhymed, metered verse was the brainchild of Kevin Knight, a senior research scientist at USC’s Information Sciences Institute and a professor in their Computer Science Department, and Marjan Ghazvininejad, a Ph.D. student at the institute.
Obama: I Learned About Complexity From Reading Novels
“When I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels”.
Romance Writer Accused Of Plagiarizing
“Her book was almost a word-for-word, scene-for-scene duplication of my book, except the characters’ names had been changed, and short M/M love scenes had been inserted. The only scene she didn’t include was the epilogue, which couldn’t be altered to an M/M scene. It involved the heroine in labour and the hero having sympathetic labour pains.”
Who Owns “Star Wars”? George Lucas Or The Fans?
Love or hate it — or love it and hate it, as legions of its fans do — the “Star Wars” series is a force to reckon with, less because of Mr. Lucas than the fans who elevated it to cinema’s alpha and omega.
Demand-Pricing Ticketing Software Dramatically Boosts Ticket Revenue
“Inspired by airline and travel booking websites, the centre began using the Neo-Ticketing system in October 2015, testing a number of different algorithms that automatically adjust ticket prices according to time or demand.”
Why Science Is Actually A Difficult Set Of Ideas
“The capacity for self-correction is the source of science’s immense strength, but the public is unnerved by the fact that scientific wisdom isn’t immutable. Scientific knowledge changes with great speed and frequency – as it should – yet public opinion drags with reluctance to be modified once established.”
Out Of Ideas? What Exactly Is An Ideas Festival?
The idea of an “Ideas Festival” is so broad that it could mean almost anything and thus, to most people, means absolutely nothing. Will they be celebrating new ideas? Old ideas? Is the festival strictly academic? Policy-oriented? Does it strive to make “ideas” culturally relevant? Will there be award statuettes shaped like light bulbs? And so on.
Bruce Coppock Retires From Leading St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Successors Appointed
Coppock, 64, led the orchestra from 1999 to 2008 and retired after being diagnosed with bile duct cancer. He survived the rare and usually fatal condition and returned to the SPCO in 2013, as the orchestra was emerging from a bitter contract dispute that led to a 191-day lockout of the musicians.
This Week In Misguided Schools Censoring Books: ‘Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close’
“Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel … was suddenly pulled from the honors English curriculum at Illinois’s Mattoon High School because of ‘several passages that were ‘extremely’ vulgar detailing sexual acts’.”