The tour starts with a mock-up of a chief officer’s work space. A mannequin wearing a K.G.B. chief officer’s uniformis at a desk with a flag of Soviet Russia behind him. To the mannequin’s left sits a bronze desk lamp, which, according to the curators, sat in a villa belonging to the former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. – The New York Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
Shortly Before Its Annual Conference, Workers At The Grantmakers In The Arts’ Hotel Went On Strike. What To Do?
It was a tough decision says Edwin Torres, the organization’s new leader. Do we live our values or not? So GIA arranged to move its sessions to cultural venues all over Oakland. It made, says Torres, for a more interesting experience… – Barry’s Blog
Rewrite The Bible? Well, Yes, Actually
Robert Alter’s method of peeling down to the strangeness of the original in order to reveal another kind of beauty can be bracing, like seeing a familiar painting with its accumulations of smoke and varnish gone. — The New Yorker
Disney Posts $580 Million Loss For 2018
The loss is primarily because of the company’s investment in the Hulu streaming service. Disney has announced its own streaming service Disney+ which is supposed to launch later this year. Streaming is the future, but its an expensive one. – TechCrunch
Facebook’s Ten Year Challenge – The Perfect Way To Train Facial Recognition Programs?
Imagine that you wanted to train a facial recognition algorithm on age-related characteristics and, more specifically, on age progression (e.g., how people are likely to look as they get older). Ideally, you’d want a broad and rigorous dataset with lots of people’s pictures. It would help if you knew they were taken a fixed number of years apart—say, 10 years. – Wired
The Next Chapter For Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre
“I think our job as cultural leaders is to empower that conversation, to say ‘Let’s elevate artists’ leadership at this time when we need people to articulate a future that we can all get behind.’” – Toronto Star
The Promise Of Esa-Pekka Salonen And The San Francisco Symphony (A Sneak Preview)
The classical field is now waiting to see what Mr. Salonen will do in his career’s full maturity. He has announced a benevolent little think-tank army of artists who will be helping him, including Nico Muhly, Esperanza Spalding and Julia Bullock, and their plans will germinate through next year, as the orchestra turns to celebrating Mr. Thomas’s final season. – The New York Times
Why The Bauhaus Still Has Ahold Of Us 100 Years Later
The name has become an adjective as well as a noun – Bauhaus style, Bauhaus look. And now it is coming up for the centenary of its founding, which shows both that what was called the “modern movement” is now part of history and that its influence is very much still around us. – The Guardian
Movies Are Global – And That’s Changing Hollywood
Twenty years ago Hollywood earned 30 percent of its revenue internationally. Now it’s 70 percent. And that means what Hollywood makes is more and more influenced by the international market. – BBC
Why Have Netflix’s Recent Movies Attracted Such Massive Audiences?
Netflix published the figures for some of their biggest recent releases – Sex Education, You and Bird Box. And those numbers were pretty impressive, with the two series on course to be watched by 40 million accounts by the end of the month. Bird Box, which features Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock as the lead, has already passed more than 80 million views. — BBC