“Hamilton” Breaks Broadway Box Office Records Over Thanksgiving

With many tourists in the city, schools on break and star power lifting the tide, audiences turned out en masse. “Hamilton” grossed a whopping $3.4 million in a regular eight-performance week, breaking its own record set this January. With the show sold out nonstop, the average ticket price hit $321.13, reflecting a premium pricing model that producers have started to employ across the industry.

How Reuters Is Using Artificial Intelligence To Find And Write News

“Once a conversation or rumor is potentially identified as news, an important consideration is its veracity. To determine this, Tracer looks for the source by identifying the earliest tweet in the conversation that mentions the topic and any sites it points to. It then consults a database listing known producers of fake news, such as the National Report, or satirical news sites such as The Onion. Finally, the system writes a headline and summary and distributes the news throughout the Reuters organization.”

How Social Media Make It Difficult To Really Think

“If you’re on social media, you’re being presented with stimuli all the time, stimuli that are demanding a response from you. If that’s the case, how do you navigate that moment? The thesis of the book is that, in reality, we don’t want to master those impulses. We don’t want to, because by responding to those stimuli in an instinctive way, we can signal our belonging. But we ought to resist those stimuli, because the social and personal costs of not resisting those stimuli are enormous.”

The Problem With Plays About Campus Sexual Assault: Good Drama Just Isn’t Helpful

Alexis Soloski: “A boy student assaults a girl student. It’s sad, yes. But to quote Shakespeare again, it’s ‘everyday’s news.’ Who wants to write about a victim? It’s depressing. Better to thrill an audience with some he said, she said, right? … We know that sexual assault on college campuses is both epidemic and underreported, in part because women and men who have experienced assault doubt that they will be believed. So is it too much to ask for a play that confirms the truth of an assault? Or suggests that a victim wasn’t somehow asking for it?”

Soprano Carol Neblett, 71

Dubbed “the world’s sexiest soprano” by People magazine in 1975, “Ms. Neblett was a supremely confident and, to many critics, supremely talented singer and actress, known for her charming, often sensual portrayals of comic characters and dramatic heroines.” She made operatic history in 1973 as the first opera singer to appear in full-frontally nude onstage.

Jakarta, One Of The World’s Largest Cities, Finally Has A Major Art Museum

“For a city of its huge size – 10 million people – and economic heft, Jakarta lacked many things one might expect of a thriving Asian metropolis: a metro system, for one, as well as a major international modern and contemporary art museum. The metro system will be operational in 2019, but the contemporary art museum has come even sooner. On Nov. 4, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, known as Museum Macan, opened its doors to the public.”

Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.27.17

Women’s wages and employment at the top of the art world
I would venture this: the more a “top” position has multiple, inflexible time demands, the greater the gender differences will be. Does that mean we can look at the gender distribution of orchestral conductor or museum director positions and say “well, that’s just market forces”? No, we don’t have to do that. … read more
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2017-11-27

False Dichotomy: Boston Globe’s Deaccession-or-Die Editorial on the Berkshire Museum
With surprising disregard for the facts, the Boston Globe‘s editorial writers yesterday flatly (and wrongly) asserted that the Berkshire Museum needs to sell “40 of the museum’s most valuable works” in order to “remain viable.” … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-11-27

Monday Recommendation: Jones, Lewis & The Vanguard
Lisik and Allen, 50 Years At The Village Vanguard (SkyDeck)
Dave Lisik and Eric Allen tell the story of The Vanguard Orchestra and its predecessors. In a huge book illustrated with hundreds … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-11-27