It was back in the late 1990s and the idea of being online was new. Hence explanations of how the web and websites worked… – Classical Dark Arts
Florida’s Salvador Dalí Museum Plans $38 Million Expansion With Virtual Reality Exhibits
The St. Petersburg museum will add a 20,000-square-foot extension to house educational and community events and elaborate digital facilities, including virtual reality tech along the lines being used in its current “Dalí and Magritte” exhibition. – ARTnews
That Drunk Guy Who Broke A Thumb Off An Ancient Chinese Terra Cotta Warrior? His Trial Got Really Weird
A young shoe salesman from Delaware, who now has no idea what he was thinking at the time, did the deed at an Ugly Sweater party at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 2017. He was tried last week under an art theft law that could have sent him to prison for decades. Expert testimony got so strange that the jury hopelessly deadlocked. Jeremy Roebuck explains how it all went down. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
UK Theatre Industry Says It Has A Gender Wage Gap Because There Are So Few Women Doing Tech
“Participating employers” — those with more than 250 employees, among them Ambassador Theatre Group and Delmont Mackintosh as well as the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and the RSC — “identified technical departments as the biggest driver of pay inequality between men and women in the sector, with many pledging to explore flexible working initiatives and offer better support to parents as a way of balancing the workforce.” – The Stage
The Fyre Festival Of Broadway Shows: How The Steve Jobs-Bill Gates Musical Became An Epic Disaster
“The planned 2016 production Nerds has become one of the biggest debacles in New York theater history, spawning a $6 million lawsuit and leaving at least one castmember feeling ‘stranded’ by the experience.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Funders For Jewish Arts And Culture Are Disappearing, And Organizations Are Closing
“Today, Jewish funders’ focus is primarily on Jewish engagement — whether through Birthright Israel or the study of Jewish texts” — and donations for Jewish arts groups are simply drying up. – Inside Philanthropy
How All Those Non-Cunningham Dancers Learned The 100 Solos For Merce’s 100th Birthday
Yes, it’s true: none of the dancers in the Night of 100 Solos for the Cunningham centennial were ever members of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Gia Kourlas reports on how the performers were chosen and how they’ve gone about learning Merce’s dance vocabulary. – The New York Times
Would You Admit To Using A Thesaurus? Embarrassing, Right?
To be looking for bigger or better words is thought to be pretentious. But why? Isn’t it better to be able to communicate with more precision? – The Outline
Report: Amazon Said To Be Planning New Streaming Service
The world’s biggest e-retailer would market the free music service through its voice-activated Echo speakers, sources say, and would offer a limited catalog. It could become available as early as next week. – Billboard
Share This? Our Online Sharing Habits May Be Deadening Real Life
We get that little jolt of pleasure when we share something online and the likes and comments pile up. It’s addictive (and meant to be). But there’s a case to be made that empty low-cost likes can start to replace genuine sharing of experience in real life. Are “likes” the new junk food? – The New York Times
Tuba Virtuoso Sam Pilafian, 69
As a busy soloist, a founding member of the influential Empire Brass quintet and a partner to the acoustic guitarist Frank Vignola in the jazz group Travelin’ Light, Mr. Pilafian expanded the musical possibilities of his lumbering instrument. – The New York Times
Is Brexit Truly Shakespearean, Or Do We All Just Not Understand Shakespeare?
The problem is that “the plays can very easily function as a kind of confirmation bias, where we find exactly what we are looking for. The allure of such topical readings is ultimately narcissistic: Shakespeare is our contemporary, our own world is the most interesting of all, and the plays mirror our own times and our own views. This is an interpretive trap.” – The Guardian (UK)
When The Star Of A Ring Cycle Is The Traditional Villain
At the Met, “the typically villainous Alberich — the dwarfish Nibelung of the title — is portrayed with nobility and nuance by Tomasz Konieczny, in a stunning company debut.” – The New York Times
Brazilian President Who Says The Holocaust ‘Can Be Forgiven’ To Be Honored In A Private Event At NY Museum
The American Museum of Natural History said on Twitter that it was “deeply concerned” and “exploring its options” as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is set to be honored at a gala at the museum. “In a statement Friday, the museum said the event ‘does not in any way reflect the Museum’s position that there is an urgent need to conserve the Amazon Rainforest, which has such profound implications for biological diversity, indigenous communities, climate change, and the future health of our planet.'” The gala is a month away. – The New York Times
Author Beverly Cleary Just Turned 103, And Her Most Important Creation Helps Kids And Adults Make Sense Of The World
Ramona Quimby “is a plain girl in the suburbs. Nothing remarkable happens to her, no one notices her particularly, nor does she have the power to make her own magic.” And yet. – LitHub
Gary Stewart, Who Turned Rhino Records Into An Essential Label, Has Died At 63
Stewart did a lot more than run Rhino and help get playlists onto iTunes as an Apple exec. He “advocated for lesser known, unjustly dismissed or overlooked music by artists including the Monkees, Love, Dionne Warwick, the Neville Brothers and hundreds of others, and in doing so helped reframe cultural conversations by bringing into the present recordings considered to be long past their expiration date.” – Los Angeles Times
Yeah, We Were Lied To: Emily Dickinson Was Actually A Trailblazing Rebel Artist
Molly Shannon, an actor who spent years on Saturday Night Live, didn’t think much of or about Dickinson until she got the chance to play her in a new movie. Then things changed. Shannon: “We have this story that she wanted her poems burned upon death when in reality she’s an L.G.B.T.Q. hero. She’s a model for new wave feminism, which talks about equality for all. [Screams] It makes me want to start a riot.” – The New York Times
This Is The Director Who Sued Her Government For The Chance To Show Her Film In Her Own Country
Wanuri Kahiu isn’t happy with how much trolling and nastiness she’s gotten since her film Rafiki was banned in Kenya because it positively depicted a same-sex relationship. But middle fingers up to the haters: “Days before Rafiki was banned, it was selected for Cannes. Now she has two Hollywood projects on the go: a sci-fi series for Amazon Prime, and a gig directing Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things, in a young adult drama produced by Reese Witherspoon, making her the first African woman to get a studio deal. One article bills her as ‘the next Kathryn Bigelow.'” – The Guardian (UK)
John Patitucci: Soul of the Bass
Keeping up with “music of quality that deserves even greater attention.” – Doug Ramsey
James Winn, Biographer Of Queen Anne And Dryden, And A Master Of The Flute, Has Died At 71
Winn didn’t like the way that the academic world tended to get itself twisted into silos, he said, which is why he wrote about cultural life during Queen Anne’s reign, the poetry of war, Bach and the Beatles. “Professor Winn himself was certainly not a silo-dweller; when he wasn’t teaching English or writing about the Restoration, he was performing with orchestras or small ensembles, or working on a recording.” – The New York Times
This Week, A Calmer Pizza Party And Potluck To ‘Decolonize’ The Whitney
The quickest way to the heart, and all that: “The activists offered pizza and veggie dumplings to protestors and members of the museum’s staff in an action far less boisterous than in previous weeks. In return, they were greeted with a milder security team and a relatively indifferent response from the Friday free pass museum visitors.” – Hyperallergic
The CIA Scheme That Brought ‘Dr. Zhivago’ To The World
OK, fine, everything we thought was good in art from the 1950s and 1960s was indeed funded by the CIA in some way. As for Dr. Zhivago, “Literary propaganda was a company-wide preoccupation. The scheme went all the way to the top.” – LitHub
Parents Lead Push To Remove Sackler Name From Harvard Building
Parents who lost children to the opioid epidemic are pushing Harvard to take the Sackler name off a building that used to host the Arthur Sackler Art Museum. One: “Harvard, we want the Sackler name to come down. … This is a wonderful institution. And to be associated with the Sackler family is wrong, on every level possible. No more blood money.” – The Washington Post (AP)
A Playwright Who’s Been Dead For 80 Years Is At The Heart Of Contemporary German Theatre
Really, why is Odon von Horvath so incredibly popular in Germany right now? Oh: “European directors have rushed to rediscover Horvath, who chronicled the struggles of ordinary people during a time of political menace and social uncertainty.” – The New York Times
The Winners Of The LA Times Book Prizes Cover Today’s Hot Topics
And also the hot topics of 80 years ago. While Rebecca Makkai won best novel for The Great Believers, “Julia Boyd won the History prize for chronicling the Nazi party’s ascent to power in Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism 1919-1945, a project that relied heavily on nearly century-old pieces of paper. ‘For anyone out there who has a box of letters in their attic and is thinking of throwing it out, don’t. Please,’ Boyd said.” – Los Angeles Times
Ignore The National Theatre’s Male-Playwright-Only Season
The reality is, the National Theatre is a leader in supporting women in theatre, at least according to one of its lighting designers. “If we want to give voices to women, then we need safe spaces to do so. This is about the direction of travel for our whole cultural sector and, while we can, and should, do better – the NT is a world leader.” – The Stage (UK)
Suzanne Farrell Returns To NYCity Ballet For First Time Since Peter Martins Fired Her In 1993
Farrell’s return to the company’s studios could be further evidence that its new leaders — Director Jonathan Stafford and Associate Director Wendy Whelan — are continuing to make changes for the good. It also seems like a healing act. – Washington Post
Mark Redhill: The Trap Doors That Make Good Poetry
“Poetry has an inherent ability to not be linear, not be logical, be at times more about sound or suggestion than about direct meaning. This sounds a little bit like how the logic of dreams work.” – Toronto Star
Disney Used To See Netflix As A Way To Make Money. Now It Will Compete. Here’s What That’ll Look Like
Disney has thought about itself primarily as a maker of content. Netflix? That was the railway carrying the content to market. But Netflix has moved into content-making in a big way. So Disney is jumping in with its own streaming service to compete. – recode
Do Environmental Crises Of 500 Years Ago Have Anything To Teach Us?
Indeed, they do. The worst environmental disasters – the ones that killed the most people – were often deliberately worsened by predatory governments, companies and individuals. Societies that escaped environmental disaster were relatively safe from colonial exploitation, and flexible in the face of shifting environmental circumstances. We face an uncertain future but, like early moderns, there is much we can do to either ease human suffering in the face of environmental upheaval – or make it a great deal worse. – Aeon