— by a sizable margin, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. “The voting process [for the Great American Read] wasn’t terribly scientific … but there are themes among the final 10: They’re largely geared at young readers, nine of the top-voted authors are white, and seven are women. Half are Americans, and the only living writers among them are [J.K.] Rowling and [Diana] Gabaldon.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Intact 2,400-Year-Old Shipwreck, World’s Oldest, Found In Black Sea
“The 75-foot-long ship … appears similar to merchant vessels depicted on ancient Greek vases. A small piece of the wreck was raised and radiocarbon dated to around the fifth century B.C., a time when Greek city-states were frequently trading between the Mediterranean and their colonies along the Black Sea coast.”
Florida Cut Its Arts Funding By 90%. Here’s How Arts Groups In Tampa Bay Are Coping
No major organizations have shut down, though programming has been seriously cut back, as Andrew Meacham reports. Local governments are chipping in what little they can, and philanthropists have stepped up as a stopgap, but long-term survival is a real question.
Painter Harold Gregor Dead At 89
“Gregor first gained national renown in the 1970s within the Photorealism and Abstract Expressionism movements, and his landscapes regularly feature vibrant colors and skewed perspectives. He often broke down his body of work into five categories: ‘Illinois flatscapes,’ ‘Illinois landscapes,’ ‘Illinois colorscapes,’ ‘trail paintings,’ and ‘vibrascapes.'”
Police Resume Search For ‘World’s Most Wanted’ Painting, A Caravaggio Stolen 49 Years Ago
The Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco was cut from its frame in a Palermo church in 1969, and its theft is number two on the FBI’s list of unsolved art crimes. Now the Italian carabinieri have announced that they believe the painting is still intact and somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Melbourne International Arts Festival Breaks Box Office Record
“More than 100,000 people bought tickets to events during the 19-day festival, with the average “core audience” member attending three or four shows.” Total box office revenue was more than A$3.5 million.
A ‘Velvet Revolution’ — Alex Ross On Claude Debussy
“Debussy accomplished something that happens very rarely, and not in every lifetime: he brought a new kind of beauty into the world. … His influence proved to be vast, not only for successive waves of twentieth-century modernists but also in jazz, in popular song, and in Hollywood. When both the severe [Pierre] Boulez and the suave Duke Ellington cite you as a precursor, you have done something singular.”
What If Disruption Was Just A Tech Con Game?
Over the past year the breathless articles that used to accompany new tech innovations have dried up, replaced with dystopian concerns about the Dark Web, privacy, hacking, fake news, and the deadening and manipulative effects of social media addiction.
Art Reviews – Or Observations – That Go Beyond
People regularly complain that art criticism displays an off-putting insider-y tone, complete with jargon. But that’s not what I am about to talk about here.
Six Characters in Search of a Babymother
Of course, it’s pure coincidence that the royal pregnancy of the Duchess of Sussex (you may know her as Meghan Markle) was announced only a little before the curtain went up on Nina Raine’s new play, Stories, at the National Theatre. But the news couldn’t be more apt.