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These Arts Funders Tried To Incorporate Love Into Their Program. How Did They Go About It, And Did It Work?

F. Javier Torres and Leila Tamari, who ran ArtPlace America’s National Creative Placemaking Fund: “[We] wondered to ourselves, well, what does love look like in grantmaking? We think it begins by remembering that behind each proposal, set of guidelines and evaluation criteria is a human being — the people who do the work. And, to incorporate love, you need to find ways to share power, be transparent, and prioritize relationships. In some cases, we succeeded, and in others, we missed the target completely.”

Why Missy Mazzoli Writes ‘Accessible’ Music

“There was a postwar feeling that things should not be romantic, people moving away from a romantic aesthetic to something colder and more calculated, both in the music and in attitude to the audience as a whole. That attitude doesn’t relate to our contemporary culture. I see why it happened, but I don’t find it interesting as a way to move forward for myself. My mission is to connect with people. The purpose of creating music is to feel less alone, to create a community around the work to express something that can’t be expressed in words.”

Improv Comedy With A Robot (It Doesn’t Always Work)

“A.L.Ex (which stands for Artificial Language Experiment) has been fed the subtitles from more than 100,000 films, from action movies like Deep Impact to the pornographic film Deep Throat. When someone talks to it, the system uses a tool called a neural network, vaguely modeled on the brain, to analyze similar exchanges in its database and compose its own response. [Creator Piotr] Mirowski made his stage debut with A.L.Ex in July 2016. It did not go to plan.”

Hollywood’s Billion-Dollar Plan To Make And Market Ten-Minute Videos For Smartphones

NewTV, founded and led by former Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg and with former eBay and HP chief Meg Whitman as CEO, “is aiming to launch by the end of 2019, with a premium lineup of original, short-form series comprising episodes of 10 minutes each. The service will have two subscription tiers,” with and without advertising. Just about every major Hollywood studio has bought in.

Lumberyard, The New Dance Center In The Catskills, Announces Its First Season

“The center, 5,500 square feet of performance spaces and buildings along the Hudson River in upstate New York, had a soft opening this summer but is to officially open on Sept. 1 with [Alan] Cumming and [Savion] Glover, who will be joined by the jazz drummer Marcus Gilmore.” The highlight of the fall will be a new piece by Lucinda Childs, set to a score by Pulitzer winner David Lang.

Frida Kahlo Exhibition In Hungary Criticized For ‘Promoting Communism’

In an article headlined “This is the way communism is promoted using state money,” the conservative newspaper Magyar Idők, aligned with the nationalist Fidesz party of prime minister Viktor Orbán, wrote about a popular show of the Mexican painter’s work at the Hungarian National Gallery, “You won’t believe it but Trotsky has emerged in Budapest again, this time from Frida Kahlo’s bed.”

World Cup Boosted Sales Of Russian Literature

“According to state statistics, more than 1 million foreign tourists and football fans visited Russia in the first two months of this summer, contributing a growth in book sales reported to be almost 50 percent higher than were seen in the same timeframe of 2017.” The increased demand from visitors was largely for the classics, with the only widely-requested 20th-century titles being The Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago.

Oscars To Feature New Category: Popular Movies

At one point in its history, Oscar voters routinely named blockbusters such as “Titanic” or “Gladiator” as the year’s best. That’s changed. Recent best picture victors such as “Moonlight,” “Spotlight,” and the 2018 winner “The Shape of Water” have been firmly ensconced in the arthouse world, whereas well-reviewed hit films such as “Guardians of the Galaxy” or “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” have only been recognized for their technical achievements.