When she started there in 1977, it was in a little bungalow in Santa Monica with the oldest radio transmitter west of the Mississippi. When she left in 2010 after 30 years as GM, "KCRW had become a cultural and intellectual trendsetter ... for public radio listeners across America." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
In recent years, the Malayalam-language cinema industry of Kerala — the state with the country's highest literacy rate and standard of living — has been moving beyond the action-pic, song-and-dance blockbusters typical of Bollywood to depict ordinary people and such sensitive topics as closeted gay politicians. - The New York Times
Who could have predicted that on Netflix, Ginny & Georgia's numbers would be so far ahead of The Witcher - or The Crown? (Anyone who remembers the Nielsens from the first age of Prestige TV, of course.) - The Verge
Remy Golan, an art history professor whose review for Brooklyn Rail was tanked by Koons, says, "I thought it was pathetic. ... Supposedly these journals are about opinion, about free speech, so where’s the free speech?" - The New York Times
VHS tapes are back, baby. And DVDs, Blu-Rays, cassette tapes, essentially anything that a streaming corporation can't surveill - or suddenly yank away. - Washington Post
"Around two-dozen books were removed from two plantation gift shops' offerings after the Texas Historical Commission received complaints that the titles were too focused on racism and white supremacy." - Houston Chronicle
"Every artist must exist in two realms: as the art maker, who thinks and ponders and creates work of radical honesty (an activity that one could argue is inherently political), and as the art mover, who, however reluctantly, must be part showman and part businessperson." - MSN (The Atlantic)
"No one is stopping the artist from making art about anything that they want... But artists who make a living from their work are also entrepreneurs, and entrepreneurs can face consequences. This is not censorship; it is, like it or not, capitalism." - The Atlantic
Now that the pandemic relief funds have stopped, many arts organizations are scrambling to balance their budgets. The new report says "the duration" of those funds hasn't matched the "slower rebuild" many arts organizations are facing. - NPR
"Among the most influential and progressive leaders in American opera, … (he maintained) a commitment to living composers through world and American premieres. He believed opera was a theatrical medium as much as a musical one and had a devotion to advancing the careers of promising young singers." - Santa Fe New Mexican
Automakers have been gradually leaving AM receivers out of their new-model cars, and they really want — for legitimate reasons — to drop AM from their electric vehicles. Yet there are legitimate reasons for regulators and lawmakers to insist that AM radios remain. Ernie Smith explains. - Tedium
Artist and CalArts professor Mel Chin "had to pull off something like an art heist in reverse. Instead of stealing art from a well-guarded museum, Chin wanted to smuggle art onto the set of one of the most popular television shows in the world." - Slate
Ariel Dorfman: "The smiling, friendly form of capitalism now presents — the very fact that it doesn’t wish to shock or alienate its customers — may, in the end, prove even more dangerous to our ultimate well-being than was true half a century ago." - Salon
"It includes bans on biometric systems that identify people using sensitive characteristics such as sexual orientation and race, and the indiscriminate scraping of faces from the internet," plus some copyright protections as well. - Wired
That would be bamboo. It grows quickly in the hot climate; it sequesters plenty of carbon; it's inexpensive; it withstands floodwaters well. And Lari's innovative-yet-simple design for small houses made of traditional mud and limestone on bamboo frames can be built and repaired quickly by villagers themselves. - MSN (The Washington Post)
"In an astonishingly prolific career that spanned more than six decades, Lear created or developed some of the most seminal comedies in television history, including All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude, Good Times, The Jeffersons, (and) One Day at a Time, ... tackling hot-button issues long considered taboo." - NBC News
"Darling is a 41-year-old Oxford-born, Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, video, drawing and performance; he also released a collection of poetry, Virgins, last year. His Turner Prize-winning exhibition is an installation that places viewers in a custom-built environment evoking chaotic city streets and industrial barriers." - CNN
"The company had a shortlist of five places where it was considering setting up a new headquarters, with Manchester, the biggest city in Europe without a resident opera company, always the favourite. … (The announcement comes) a year after funders said it must move its base out of London." - The Guardian
After a play about Black Frenchwomen's experiences premiered in the summer in southern France, a series of racist attacks followed - and one actress dropped out before the play transferred to Paris. - The New York Times
