New York’s major arts organizations, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Lincoln Center, are now intertwined with the Koch name for decades. Not that there wasn’t dissent – from the outside. On the inside: “He also sat on several cultural boards, hobnobbing there and at galas, with people of varying political persuasions. The longstanding decorum of such gatherings suggested that, like sedate family Thanksgiving dinners, politics was not generally a polite topic for conversation.” – The New York Times
Author: ArtsJournal2
Werner Herzog Is Now A Disney Character
Yes. It’s weird, and it’s true: He’s a “mentor” of some sort in a new Star Wars TV show. Luckily, the show looks super-grim. Still: What? – Vulture
How The Rossini Renaissance Sparked From A Beachfront Festival To The World
The Rossini Festival in Pesaro, Italy, may never be a Salzburg, but it sure changed Rossini’s reputation. Most of the composer’s “operas were long dormant. For much of the 20th century, Rossini had become a one-opera composer, known solely for his comedy The Barber of Seville.” Then the Pesaro festival ramped up, pursuing “the scholarly rediscovery of even Rossini’s most obscure compositions, together with a dedication to teaching the magnificent fireworks of Rossinian style.” – The New York Times
Guess Who Just Got Into Podcasting?
The company that’s into just about everything else (well, not that company, the one that just announced a huge slate of movies and TV show for its new streaming service, but a different big company): Netflix. The company’s line about podcasts: “We are always looking for different ways to engage with people. … We’re talking a lot with our documentary team about what opportunities are out there.” (Shocker: True crime is doing well for Netflix.) – Variety
Kicking The Sophomore Curse To The Curb, By Taking Eight Years To Publish A Second Novel
Téa Obreht took her time after The Tiger’s Wife struck the bestseller list and stayed for many, many months. She says, “It was appropriate to let the wrong books go and wait for the right one to come along.” – The New York Times
Apple Hired Hundreds Of Contractors To Listen To Siri Recordings – And Has Now Laid Them Off
This is how the recently revealed program worked in Ireland: “Fixed-term workers in Cork were hired to listen to and ‘grade’ Siri recordings. …Staff then transcribed and ‘graded’ these recordings based on a number of different factors.” Now those contractors – around 300 people – have been laid off by Apple. – The Irish Examiner
Spotify Sued For Doing Things Like Putting Eminem Under An ‘Unknown Author’ Level
Yes, that little-known songwriter Eminem … er. But it’s actually far bigger than the potential millions or billions Eight Mile Style claims Spotify owes. “Eminem’s publisher is doing more than merely questioning Spotify’s compliance with copyright law. The lawsuit also makes a pretty bold argument regarding a new law’s constitutionality.” – The Hollywood Reporter
What Is The Legal Difference Between An ‘Audiobook Caption’ And, Well, A Book?
Audible – the Amazon-owned audiobook giant – is being sued by the big 5 publishers. Why? A new feature that automatically generates “captions” for its audiobooks. Captions that … well, one might be forgiven for thinking we already have “captions” for books, which are books. The argument: “Audible didn’t seek a license, doesn’t plan to compensate publishers and won’t allow them to decide which titles are made available as so-called distributed text. [The lawyer] also says Audible’s Immersion Reading feature, which requires a user to purchase both the audiobook and eBook, meets the goal of Captions without infringing publishers’ rights.” – Wired
Dear Good Morning America: Ballet Is For Boys
When host Lara Spencer of Good Morning America decided to go after six-year-old Prince George for his studies, she made especial fun of his ballet classes. Her apology Instagram post (after the predictable outcry) didn’t go well either. “The dancer Barton Cowperthwaite said in a comment: ‘No one wants to see a hiking picture from deep in your photo library. We want to see you make an apology, on air, for publicly dragging a child and an entire art form through the mud.'” (This rather ugly episode has spawned a hashtag: #ballet4boys) – The New York Times
A Class War In Cornwall Gives Rise To A Dark Movie
Like a lot of coastal areas in a whole lot of countries, Cornwall isn’t all sweetness and ocean and light. There’s a “tension between tradition and progress,” and 20 years ago, a filmmaker wanted to write about a civil war – but now, it’s less civil war than “a question of who gets to belong in a county defined as much by its poverty as by tourists and second-home owners.” – The Guardian (UK)