Antony Beever, the historian whose 20-year-old book was suddenly banned in Ukraine (and who has seen his books banned in Russia as well), writes, “It was an astonishing own goal by the Ukrainian committee of experts when the country wants to be seen as more democratic and western than Vladimir Putin’s Russia to their north.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
The Dutch Opera’s Costume Storage Was Full, So 4,000 Costume Pieces Are On Sale
The opera hasn’t had a costume sale for nine years, and people snapped up tickets quickly. Not everything is on sale, of course: “Pieces of the Dutch National Opera’s recent history — the sweat, drama and flecks of fake blood — may end up at other opera houses or in the closets of avant-garde dressers. The house plans to keep its prized pieces for its archives.”
How The New ‘Black Panther’ Movie Approaches African History, And What’s Untold
Actor Lupita Nyong’o appears in the Marvel superhero movie. Her father, a politician in Kenya, writes about why he believes the film will be more than a superhero movie to the continent of Africa: “Just imagine an African nation that was never colonised, had its own civilisation and decided to develop on her own steam by empowering her people without leaving the women behind. What would such a nation be capable of doing, especially when it discovers that it has some precious minerals that it can sell to the outside world and use the wealth to modernise society without destroying her own culture and way of life?”
Uma Thurman Finally Talks About – And Makes Accusations Against – Harvey Weinstein
Quentin Tarantino doesn’t come off very well, either. Thurman says, “I went from being a creative contributor and performer to being like a broken tool.”
Reading Linda Nochlin And Pretty Much Wanting To Boot Jeff Koons From The Museum
This is what happens when you go to the Art Institute of Chicago, or pretty much anywhere, after being trained by Nochlin to truly see. “How ought we read these works? Now that we know the assumed universality they project is specious, what do we do? Nochlin’s answer, in part, is to see the works in their own time, to lay bare their assumptions and examine them for ourselves. Meaning needs context. By looking at how artworks were situated in their own historical moment, how they resonated then and now, Nochlin takes charge of the interpretation.”
The Black Market Bot Factory That Inflates Celebrities’ Twitter Followers (By The Millions)
This doesn’t sound shady at all: “Devumi sells Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, businesses and anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online. Drawing on an estimated stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, each sold many times over, the company has provided customers with more than 200 million Twitter followers” – and at least 55,000 of the accounts are basically identity theft.
MoviePass Abruptly Canceled Some Big AMC Theatres, But AMC Shouldn’t Be Worried
Seriously, MoviePass, this supposed negotiation tactic doesn’t look like a good idea: “n fact, doing the math, it looks like MoviePass may account for less than 5 percent of the revenue AMC makes from ticket sales.”
Step Into The Artwork And Listen To The Tracking Signal Of 19 Satellites Orbiting The Earth
The mysterious, metallic nautilus shell is only one of the artworks that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs team of artists has produced. The artist team has “made travel posters for planets in distant galaxies, and they’ve simulated Jupiter’s churning atmosphere in a small room. They once drilled a hole in a grain of sand, then displayed it alongside six rooms filled with sand to give a sense of how tiny we are in the vast universe.”
So, Steven Soderbergh’s ‘Mosaic’: What Was That?
He insisted it wasn’t a “Choose your own adventure” TV miniseries/app. Instead, “it’s both a dazzlingly experimental work and a totally conventional murder mystery. It’s frank and secretive, flooding viewers with information without giving them the tools to make sense of it. The story has multiple different paths to follow but they all end up in the same place. Less a show than a television experience, it’s brilliant and exasperating.”
The YouTube Poet Who’s Calling Out Those Who Think Their Poetry Isn’t Political
Danez Smith’s poetry is part of a movement, or so it feels. “This is a significant moment for poetry. We are meeting days after Ocean Vuong (gay, Vietnamese and a friend of Smith’s) won the TS Eliot prize, and it is tempting to think poetry is at a turning point, belatedly diversifying, relaxing its borders. The reality is that there is still a long way to go, but this is a flicker of intent, the poetic ghettoising becoming less flagrant. It’s a mainstream momentum.”