Category: people

“After three decades as masked crusaders for gender and racial equality in the art world – and increasingly, everywhere else – the Guerrilla Girls have lately been enjoying a victory lap. … What follows is an oral history of the Guerrilla Girls and their big-footed leaps across the cultural world, recounted by the Girls themselves, their art-world contemporaries and younger artists they inspired, as well as curators, dealers and museum directors who were witness to their insurrection.”

“Janeway joined Knopf in 1970 and eventually became a senior vice president and senior editor who worked with writers from all over the world. … [Her] uthors ranged from biologist E.O. Wilson to Nobel Prize-winning fiction writer Imre Kertesz.”

“[He] overcame blindness from a barroom bullet to forge a 30-year career as a champion athlete, poet, actor, theater company founder and, especially, playwright inspired by his own harshest experiences and the social problems of south Los Angeles.”

The Moustache Brothers, “active for more than three decades, is renowned in the country for political satire, which still risks a prison sentence for its performers if delivered in Burmese in a public site. Since 2001, the troupe’s members have shared their act from this garage seven nights a week for gatherings of as many as 40 foreigners, who pay the equivalent of $10 each.”

“Ai traveled to Munich last week after having his passport returned, four years after it was confiscated, for a medical checkup and to see his young son. In an interview with the Munich-based daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung published on Wednesday, the dissident artist said Chinese authorities now have a more positive attitude toward him.”

“[He] published his first short story just before his 40th birthday and went on to write two dozen books, but who became even better known as a longtime NPR book critic” on All Things Considered.

“There’s another popular saying: Wherever there are Chinese people, there is Teresa Teng’s music. I never appreciated her symbolism as a child, back when her music seemed soft and ubiquitous. But it’s not hard to imagine how Teng’s songs about love and distance spoke to the various migrations and political estrangements throughout the Chinese-speaking world. For immigrants throughout the Chinese diaspora, her music was a reminder of their journeys, an excuse to indulge in nostalgia, three or four minutes at a time.

On doing a press tour to promote her movie: “I don’t want to dress like a dickhead and talk about myself. A lot of it feels like I’m being punished for doing something that I’m proud of. Imagine all day having to talk about your writing. Wouldn’t you just run a warm bath and open your wrists?”

“On Thursday Ai disclosed that the British embassy in Beijing had turned down his request for a business visa, saying he had failed to disclose a criminal conviction. Instead it gave him a visa covering 20 days in September, when a major exhibition of Ai’s work is opening at London’s Royal Academy.”