Author: Matthew Westphal

A TV Critic Considers The Most Compelling Villain On Our Screens This Summer: Karen

Hank Stuever: “As soon as one Karen flames out across the Internet, another apparently more unhinged Karen rises in her place. … Amid a culturally fractious and largely failed attempt to quell a killer pandemic, paired with a stirring surge in support of civil rights and police reform, there’s a strange sort of solace that comes from watching these Karen … videos spring up like summer dandelions across the regulation-green lawn of the fragile, white American psyche.” – The Washington Post

That Statue Of Teddy Roosevelt That’s Coming Down In New York? This Russian Collector Will Buy It

Andrei Filatov, a rail transport and investment magnate (who is also chairman of the Chess Federation of Russia), has offered to purchase the long-controversial statue in front of the American Museum of Natural History that depicts Theodore Roosevelt on horseback flanked by half-naked American Indian and African men on foot. He’d made a similar offer for a statue of Alexander Baranov, the Russian colonial governor of Alaska, in Sitka that activists want relocated. – The Art Newspaper

A Theater-Within-A-Theater, Modeled On Shakespeare’s Globe, Will Divide Socially Distanced Patrons With Partitions

The Wilma in Philadelphia plans to construct and install what it’s calling The Wilma Globe. “It would be built within the current Wilma Theater and would place audience members, individually or by small groups, into two tiers of stalls separated by wooden dividers and facing the stage. With a flexible configuration it could seat as many as 100 people or as few as 35.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Geoffrey Rush: Trial By Media (A Drama In Ten Parts)

“This story is about reckless journalism. About one desperate Murdoch newspaper that sacrificed tried and true practice to grab a scoop. About the damage inflicted on two people, their families and friends by that scoop, the subsequent defamation trial and the newspaper’s failed appeal. About how this reckless act set back the Me Too movement in Australia and tarnished an industry dedicated to telling the truth.” – Crikey (Australia)

What Ballet Companies Are Losing As They Cancel This Year’s ‘Nutcracker’s Is More Than Just Money

Sarah Kaufman: “Artistically, The Nutcracker is a big playing field where dancers can achieve breakthroughs, because over the unusually long run of performances, they are typically cast in many different roles … [and get] chances to experiment and become comfortable in a range of characters and styles. It’s a prized platform for showing off strengths and catching the director’s eye. So while missing a cherished holiday ritual is surely a letdown for audiences …, it’s an incomparable hardship for the dancers.” – The Washington Post

Has This Dealer Really Found A Long-Lost Frida Kahlo Painting? Probably Not

“Scholars in the work of surrealist Frida Kahlo have searched for more than six decades for The Wounded Table, a 1940 oil painting illuminating her pain over the breakup of her marriage to muralist Diego Rivera that hasn’t been seen since an exhibition in Poland. And the historians strongly reject the idea that the mystery of its whereabouts has been solved, as claimed by a Spanish art dealer who says the painting is now sitting in a London warehouse awaiting a buyer willing to spend more than 40 million euros.” – Yahoo! (AP)

The Search For A Gender-Neutral Singular Pronoun Has Gone On For Centuries

Yes, they has been used in the singular since the late Middle Ages, but people complained about it, and looked for a different solution, back then and ever since. The effort to come up with alternatives has engaged not only lexicographers, writers and teachers but also attorneys, judges, and legislators; the issue even played a role in the fight for women’s suffrage. – London Review of Books