“Severely damaged during the Second World War and closed to the public for more than 70 years, the Romanesque Hall at the heart of Budapest’s Szépművészeti Múzeum (Museum of Fine Arts) will be a highlight of its reopening tomorrow (31 October), following a three-year restoration. The total cost of the renovation was around €40m.”
Blog
The Idea That It’s Too Risky To Program Plays By Black Playwrights Is A Myth: UK Study
“Providing evidence to counteract the idea that such work presents a risk in terms of audiences, ticket revenue or artistic quality, [the report] concludes that ‘it becomes increasingly difficult to justify the reasoning behind risk-averse programming, when risk is all too often closely associated with race’.”
They’ve Been Building Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia For 136 Years Without A Permit. Barcelona Has Fined Them €36 Million
This isn’t as unfair as it might sound: the money is mostly going to improving city infrastructure and maintenance in the area around the church, which gets more than 3 million visitors each year.
New Program Offers Low-Interest Loans To Arts Groups For ‘Social Impact’
The UK nonprofit Nesta “has launched a new £3.7m fund that will make small repayable loans to English arts, cultural and creative organisations … to help [them] ‘articulate, monitor and evaluate their social impact’. Recipients of longer term loans that can demonstrate they are achieving their goals will be rewarded with lower interest rates.”
The Music Modernization Act Helped Right Some Music Industry Wrongs. Now For The Next Phase
Songwriters and publishers will experience a better licensing process, and higher royalties. Legacy artists will now be ensured of payment from digital radio, in some cases at the highest rates in history. And producers will be better able to collect digital royalties. But there are other issues and injustices that need fixing.
The Rise of “Athleisure” As A Cultural Phenomenon
“One hundred years ago, you would have day clothes for the street, dinner clothes for the restaurant, theater clothes, and so many genres of dress. Those barriers have come down. Athleisure is the ultimate breaking down of barriers.”
It’s Been 20 Years Since Harry Potter First Appeared. Now He’s An Entire Industry
The children’s book series is a juggernaut that spawned a film series, theme parks, a Broadway play and museum exhibits. It’s been 20 years since readers in the U.S. were first introduced to the wizarding world, and more than 500 million copies of the books have been sold worldwide.
A Big TV Production Boom In Toronto. But Will It Bust?
There are more than 500 new scripted shows being produced in North America this year, a record number not including reality, sports or returning series. Many of those shows are filmed in Toronto; currently shooting in the city are Season 8 of Suits, and the second seasons of Star Trek: Discovery and American Gods.
Why Ursula Le Guin Resisted The Science Fiction Label
Although Le Guin was a vocal defender of science fiction and fantasy who argued that those genres had as valid a claim to literature as the best realist or mimetic fiction, she also saw her writing in broader terms. “Where I can get prickly and combative is if I’m just called a sci-fi writer,” Le Guin said. “I’m not. I’m a novelist and poet. Don’t shove me into your damn pigeonhole, where I don’t fit, because I’m all over. My tentacles are coming out of the pigeonhole in all directions.”
Big “Existential” Questions About That AI Art That Sold At Auction Last Week
Why has this become the working definition of “coming to auction”? Because, by and large, we’ve tacitly come to accept that market-leading gatekeepers are the sources that matter most in charting the history of the art market. And as the market becomes an increasingly powerful force in shaping public understanding, they also become (like it or not) the sources that matter most in charting the history of art itself.