Philip Kennicott: “History tells us these things are all too common, even as modern media saturation makes it seem somehow unprecedented. Flip through the pages of any tourist guide to an old castle, church or palace, and there is often a litany of fires, floods, revolutions and occasional bouts of revolution and iconoclasm.” – Washington Post
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Florida’s Salvador Dalí Museum Plans $38 Million Expansion With Virtual Reality Exhibits
The St. Petersburg museum will add a 20,000-square-foot extension to house educational and community events and elaborate digital facilities, including virtual reality tech along the lines being used in its current “Dalí and Magritte” exhibition. – ARTnews
In Cognito: We’re Not Just Hardwired To Think The Ways We Do. Culture Plays A Big Role
If we look closely, it’s apparent that evolutionary psychology is due for an overhaul. Rather than hard-wired cognitive instincts, our heads are much more likely to be populated by “cognitive gadgets, tinkered and toyed with over successive generations. Culture is responsible not just for the grist of the mind – what we do and make – but for fabricating its mills, the very way the mind works.” – Aeon
That Drunk Guy Who Broke A Thumb Off An Ancient Chinese Terra Cotta Warrior? His Trial Got Really Weird
A young shoe salesman from Delaware, who now has no idea what he was thinking at the time, did the deed at an Ugly Sweater party at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 2017. He was tried last week under an art theft law that could have sent him to prison for decades. Expert testimony got so strange that the jury hopelessly deadlocked. Jeremy Roebuck explains how it all went down. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
What Happened To Shakespeare’s Library?
And why would we care? “We do know a few things about Shakespeare’s relationship with books. He wrote plays according to a method that has been labeled plagiaristic; “appropriative” is a more polite term, and historically more accurate.” – Lapham’s Quarterly
It’s Final: All Of Kafka Archives Will Go To National Library Of Israel (And Who Knows What They’ll Find Inside?)
“A district court in Zurich upheld Israeli verdicts in the case last week, ruling that several safe deposit boxes in the Swiss city could be opened and their contents shipped to Israel’s National Library. … The Swiss ruling would complete the acquisition of nearly all his known works, after years of lengthy legal battles over their rightful owners.” – AP
Unpublished Daphne Du Maurier Poems Discovered Tucked Into Picture Frame
“The two unknown poems were found tucked underneath a photo of a young Du Maurier in a swimming costume standing on rocks, which was part of an archive of more than 40 years of correspondence between the author and [a] close friend.” – The Guardian
UK Theatre Industry Says It Has A Gender Wage Gap Because There Are So Few Women Doing Tech
“Participating employers” — those with more than 250 employees, among them Ambassador Theatre Group and Delmont Mackintosh as well as the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and the RSC — “identified technical departments as the biggest driver of pay inequality between men and women in the sector, with many pledging to explore flexible working initiatives and offer better support to parents as a way of balancing the workforce.” – The Stage
The Greatest Dance Teacher Who Never Told You **Anything** — Students Remember Merce Cunningham
Karole Armitage: “Merce did not talk to anyone, ever. He gave no corrections, no communication.” Michael Cole: “He never admonished anybody. … We rehearsed completely in silence.” Valda Setterfield: “He always said: ‘I don’t tell people what to do. If they don’t ask me questions, they’re not ready to hear the answer.'” – The Guardian
The Real Prizes In This Ballet Competition Aren’t The Awards
At the Youth America Grand Prix, says founder/artistic director Larissa Saveliev, “You don’t have to win to get the prize. The real prizes are the scholarships. And for those, you just have to be noticed by one director. We are the biggest matchmaker operation in the ballet world.” – The New York Times