Ten million people visited the Louvre last year, before France’s lockdown in March, and no museum can become so crowded without cancelling its own purpose, or replacing it with another purpose—the purpose of a dutiful hajj, of having been there. There are too many people looking to allow anyone to see. – The New Yorker
Blog
Is There Such A Thing As Contemporary Conservative Literature? Can There Be?
No, Atlas Shrugged doesn’t count as literature, and neither do Ann Coulter and Dinesh D’Souza. “To define Right-wing literature is to ask what literature is and what it’s for, but the most ready-to-hand answers (beauty, truth, empathy, expression) are incongruous to conservatism’s means, if not to the perverse utopianism of its final objectives.” – Aeon
Google Now Lets You Search For A Song By Singing It
The update, a new feature called ‘Hum to Search’, was announced at Google’s Search On event and is available from today. It allows you to search for a piece of music which either has no lyrics, or whose lyrics you can’t remember. – Classic FM
Meet The New York Dance World’s Bubble Doctor
“Bubbling has gained traction in the dance world as companies and organizations try to find ways of bringing artists together to create work in a safe environment. That involves rules, medical protocols, tests and vigilance, and it requires a presiding authority to decide what those should be. Enter Dr. Wendy Ziecheck, a Manhattan internist, who trained with George Balanchine’s doctor and was the medical director for the Rockettes before taking this unlikely new career path.” – The New York Times
Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, Battered By Pandemic, May Have To Rework Its Entire Business Model
“Until its COVID-forced closure in March, the Kimmel was earning 93% of its income,” mainly from touring Broadway shows and rent from its resident groups, “leaving just the small remainder to be made up in donations — an unusually lopsided ratio among nonprofits. Now, though, with ticket sales gone, the Kimmel cannot lean on a list of loyal donors to the extent that some other groups can.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Arts And STEM Require Same Type Of Creativity: Study
“According to study authors, the creativity toolkits used in the arts and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are actually very similar. Fundamentally, both rely on being open to new ideas, employing divergent thinking, and maintaining a sense of flexibility, they say.” – Fast Company
Meet One Of America’s Most Promising Young Black Conductors
Roderick Cox, 33, had been associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra for two years when, in 2018, he won the Georg Solti Conducting Award. He then relocated to Europe, and his career has been on the rise ever since. – The Dallas Morning News
2,000-Year-Old, 120-Foot-Long Etching Of Cat Found In Peruvian Desert
“The newly identified likeness is a Nazca Line — one of hundreds of ancient drawings created in the Peruvian desert by removing rock and soil to produce a ‘negative’ image in the sand. … Dated to between 200 and 100 B.C., the geoglyph is thought to be older than any others previously discovered in the region.” – Smithsonian Magazine
For Its First Post-Lockdown Show, Prado Walks Straight Into Controversy Over Art World’s Sexism
“The exhibition, whose English title is ‘Uninvited Guests’, explores how artworks bought and celebrated by the Spanish state between 1833 and 1931 treated women as people and artists. … [The show has] faced criticism from some female artists and academics, who have accused the museum of echoing the very misogyny it has sought to expose by focusing on many works by men rather than celebrating those by women.” – The Guardian
China Is Now Officially The World’s Most Lucrative Movie Market
“Movie ticket sales in China for 2020 climbed to $1.988 billion on Sunday, surpassing North America’s total of $1.937 billion. … Analysts have long predicted that the world’s most populous country would one day top the global charts. But the results still represent a historic sea change: North America has been the global box office’s center of gravity since the dawn of the motion picture business.” – The Hollywood Reporter