While Royalty Exchange might sound like a dating service for those in the peerage, it’s actually a company geared to assisting artists looking to auction off some of their most valuable assets: their royalties and residual rights. Royalties and residuals are contract-guaranteed percentages doled out to creators and performers based on the use or performance of works they were involved in. And participation in a hit song, movie or TV show can mean they rack up pretty fast. – Los Angeles Times
Blog
Online Learning Platforms Report 400 Percent Enrollment Increases
While these more traditional education platforms have seen huge spikes in users and funding during the pandemic, consumers have also demonstrated a growing appetite for online classes geared toward entertainment and enrichment. MasterClass is adding more content, while Airbnb and Instagram Live have emerged as learning hubs, with influential instructors teaching everything from dance to poetry writing to cocktail making. – Fast Company
The Problem With UK Literary Prizes
In a country where publishing is so concentrated in the hands of just a few conglomerates who have acquired some of Britain’s most successful small presses, the chances of British novelists who are neither English, nor published by major London publishers, winning seems to be getting smaller. And for non-English UK novelists published by small presses (self-published works are ineligible for the Booker), the Booker is simply not a plausible option. – The Conversation
Alarming Preview: Sotheby’s Hawks Baltimore Museum’s Clyfford Still & Brice Marden
Sirens (coming from the street) were heard wailing at the beginning of Sotheby’s Virtual Preview of Highlights from Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Art — a fleeting but thematically appropriate soundtrack. – Lee Rosenbaum
Lear Lite
Shakespeare’s writing — all of it, poetry and plays — was repulsive to Tolstoy, who claimed in a pamphlet that whenever he read Shakespeare he was overcome by “repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment.” Orwell disagreed mightily: “Finally the most striking thing is how little difference it all makes.” – Jan Herman
Farther along
It’s just short of seven months since the death of my beloved wife, and not until recently did I feel that I was starting to become myself again. Sometimes the pain of Hilary’s loss takes me by surprise and I find myself crying — but not often. – Terry Teachout
Humanities Education Is Struggling. But Out In The Real World…
The “crisis” cannot be adequately described either by the number of openings on the academic job market, or the number of Great Books on university syllabuses. The health of the humanities should be measured instead by whether our society provides ample opportunities for its citizens to ask the fundamental questions about the good life and the just society. By that yardstick, it seems, the humanities are healthier than the doomsayers might lead us to believe. – The New York Times
Man Brings A Banksy On Antiques Roadshow And…
“I think the message here is that, if you do see a piece of graffiti art out there, leave it, leave it for the public,” Maas said in a manner reminiscent of a not-angry-but-disappointed dad. “I’m not lecturing you. I’m just saying, without that certificate, it’s just very difficult to sell. With it, it might be worth £20,000. Without it, you’re nowhere.” – Artnet
Life Is Getting Better (At Least Until Recently) So Why Are We Less Happy?
“Amid these advances in quality of life across the income scale, average happiness is decreasing in the U.S. The General Social Survey, which has been measuring social trends among Americans every one or two years since 1972, shows a long-term, gradual decline in happiness—and rise in unhappiness—from 1988 to the present.” – The Atlantic
Simon Rattle: Pandemic Is Forcing Many Musicians Out
“My worry is that so many musicians will be forced to leave the profession that we will not be able to return to anything like the cultural life that we enjoyed previously. And that this exodus is happening right now, and that it will not be noticed until it is too late,” said Rattle. – The Guardian