Art

12 Musicals I Will Do Before I Die

When we program a season for New Line Theatre, there are lots of considerations. Commercial potential is nowhere near the top of the list, but by necessity, it is on the list. After all, we have to keep New Line in operation, and you'd be amazed how expensive musicals are to produce.I would love to do a season of really weird, really obscure musicals, but New Line probably can't survive doing that. Having said that, we have produced some extremely weird shows over the years -- Floyd Collins, Ja...
Tags: Stephen King, Theatre, Broadway, Theater, Bucket List, Broadway Musicals, Times Square, Newman, Mack, Neil Simon, Scott Miller, Faust, Mack Sennett, Mabel, Shenandoah, Randy Newman

Finding Love (And Community) In Gaming

For many of us, virtual worlds are fertile ground for growing new friendships and romance. In online role-playing platforms, gamers may feel more confident in their social interactions than in real life because they can be seen exactly as they want to be seen, says Anthony Bean, a clinical psychologist in Fort Worth, Texas, and founder of Geek Therapeutics. – Wired
Tags: Art, People, Fort Worth Texas, Anthony Bean, 12.01.20

New mystery metal monolith appears on a California mountaintop

Not long after a similar structure was discovered in a Utah desert, a silvery column has been found in AtascaderoA new mystery metal monolith has appeared atop a mountain in California, just a week after a similar structure captured the imagination of the world when it was discovered in the deserts of Utah – before being taken down and disappeared.The local newspaper in the small town of Atascadero, on the central California coast, reported that the silvery column had been found atop Pine mounta...
Tags: Art, Utah, California, US news, Public Lands, Pine, Atascadero

How Hollywood Studios Are Reinventing (Again) For The Streaming Age

“Amid the backdrop of the pandemic and the ongoing, years-long digestion of several mega-mergers, from Disney-Fox to ViacomCBS to AT&T’s WarnerMedia, pretty much every legacy entertainment house in town is in the process of maneuvering a massive ship-turning effort to better point their armadas in the direction of streaming.” – Variety
Tags: Art, Media, Disney Fox, Hollywood Studios Are, WarnerMedia, 12.02.20

The Arts’ COVID Losses By The Latest Numbers

How have things changed since the pandemic? A recent Brookings Institution report shows America’s arts and creative industries lost $150 billion in sales and 2.7 million jobs through July. The “fine and performing arts” alone (commercial and nonprofit) incurred losses of $42.5 billion and a whopping 50% of its workforce (-1.4 million jobs). – Americans for the Arts
Tags: Art, America, Brookings Institution, Issues, 12.01.20

How UK Theatres Are Changing During COVID

Theatres that normally function as places of gathering, storytelling and entertainment have found themselves playing a very different role in the age of coronavirus. –
Tags: Art, UK, Theatre, 12.01.20

Secret To A Great Book? Mood

Horror is a mood, one of the most under-appreciated, under-discussed literary devices available to writers. And because horror is a mood, it’s subjective and transcends the limits of specific tropes or themes within a book—horror can be part and parcel of fantasy novels, mysteries or thrillers, literary fiction, and historical fiction. – Book Riot
Tags: Art, Words, 11.30.20

Study: Hunger And Loneliness Activate Same Part Of The Brain

“[This study] provides empirical support for the idea that loneliness acts as a signal—just like hunger—that signals to an individual that something is lacking and that it needs to take action to repair that.” – Smithsonian
Tags: Art, Ideas, 11.24.20

Spotify’s Most Streamed Tracks Of 2020

Bad Bunny was the biggest artist globally, amassing 8.3bn streams. The Puerto Rican star’s second album YHLQMDLG notched up 3.3 billion streams, followed by The Weeknd’s After Hours and Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding. – BBC
Tags: Art, Spotify, Music, Hollywood, Malone, 12.01.20

Camilla Wicks: Towering talent found, lost, and found again

The clear, slipped voice at the other end of the phone was neither astonished nor impressed to learn that her recording of the Sibelius Violin Concerto was a collector’s item whose original LP was then selling for $125. “It’s not that good,” she said, sounding mildly exasperated. Oh, but it is. – David Patrick Stearns
Tags: Art, Ajblogs, Camilla Wicks, 12.02.20

The Rediscovery (At Last) Of Ethel Smyth

“In 1934, all of musical England gathered to celebrate the 75th birthday of one the country’s most famous composers – Dame Ethel Smyth. During a festival spanning several months, audiences crowded into the Queen’s Hall, London, to hear her symphonic cantata The Prison, or settled in at home to listen to the BBC broadcasts of her work. At the festival’s final concert in the Royal Albert Hall, the composer sat beside Queen Mary to watch Sir Thomas Beecham conduct her Mass.” Yet within a couple of...
Tags: Art, Music, England, London, Bbc, Mary, Thomas Beecham, Royal Albert Hall, Ethel Smyth, Dame Ethel Smyth, 12.02.20

How COVID Turned One Of The Year’s Hottest Plays Into A Site-Specific Work

After the pandemic blew up the plans of every American stage company for this year, Blanka Zizka, director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, got the idea to create a COVID bubble for cast and crew at a house in the Poconos, where they’d do a site-specific production for later viewing online. And one of the year’s most awarded scripts, Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning, seemed like the perfect choice. Writer Jane M. Von Bergen reports on how Zizka and her colleagues made it happen, ...
Tags: Art, Theatre, Philadelphia, Poconos, Wilma Theater, Blanka Zizka, Jane M Von Bergen, Zizka, 11.27.20

Muslims Have Been Visually Depicting The Prophet Muhammad For Centuries

Certainly, images of the Prophet of Islam have been far, far less common than those of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary and other Christian figures, and Muslim culture, especially in the Arab world, has tended to disapprove of pictures of any human or animal. Yet miniatures and manuscript illuminations featuring Muhammad did start appearing in the late Middle Ages in the Persianate world, and a calligraphic equivalent in Arabic was developed as well. – The Conversation
Tags: Art, Christian, Visual, Muhammad, Jesus Christ the Virgin Mary, 11.24.20

How Your Brain’s Built In Biases Let You Believe Untrue Things

There are several well-known mechanisms in human psychology that enable people to continue to hold tight to beliefs even in the face of contradictory information. – The Conversation
Tags: Art, Ideas, 12.01.20

Dolly Parton Funded A COVID Vaccine. It’s Not The First Time She’s Come To Our Rescue.

Jessa Crispin: “In the past month, Dolly Parton has saved us both from the pandemic and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, if you’ve been paying attention. Dolly Parton has been saving us her entire career.” – The Guardian
Tags: Art, People, Dolly Parton, Jessa Crispin, Macy, 12.01.20

Time To Talk About Dancer Body-Shaming?

Dancers are rarely ever given comprehensive or healthy guidance on how to get into the shape that’s being asked of them—even when the resources are available. – The Observer (UK)
Tags: Art, Dance, 11.30.20

Digital sigil generator

The Sigil Engine translates your intentions into sigils, graphical symbols used in magick and other occult practices to help achieve a desired outcome. Artists Darragh Mason and David Tidman created the site as an exploration of "technomancy," the use of technology for magickal purposes. — Read the rest
Tags: Post, Design, News, Occult, Magick, Darragh Mason, David Tidman

Biden’s Cabinet Needs A ‘Dr. Fauci For The Arts’

Peter Marks: “Now, more than ever, we need a secretary of arts and culture. As President-elect Joe Biden rolls out his circle of close advisers, the notion is gaining momentum among leaders and advocates of nonprofit groups and for-profit companies: that someone should be named to coordinate arts funding, unite assorted agencies and underline the value of arts and entertainment to the nation’s financial, social and psychological well-being.” – The Washington Post
Tags: Art, Joe Biden, Biden, Issues, Fauci, Peter Marks, 12.02.20

Net Neutrality’s Biggest Enemy Is Leaving The FCC Early

“U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said he’ll leave the agency Jan. 20, eliminating the possibility of a holdover Republican majority at the agency that could have temporarily stymied changes sought by the incoming Biden administration. Since being elevated to the chairmanship by President Donald Trump in 2017, Pai, a Republican, has led the commission in dismantling net neutrality regulations.” – Bloomberg
Tags: Art, Media, Fcc, Republican, Biden, Donald Trump, U S Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, 11.30.20

Merriam-Webster And Dictionary.com Have The Same Word Of The Year For 2020, And It’s No Surprise

Both sites base their choice on search statistics, and the clear leader was, of course, pandemic. (Coronavirus was close behind.) – Mic
Tags: Art, Words, 11.30.20

BookExpo And BookCon Are No More

“The pandemic arrived at a time in the life cycle of BookExpo and BookCon where we were already examining the restructure of our events to best meet our community’s needs.” – Publishers Weekly
Tags: Art, Words, BookCon, 12.01.20

'It can be uncomfortable': how a New York farmhouse is facing its racist past

In a new exhibition, three artists reckon with the history of slavery at the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum with a range of challenging piecesWhen people think of buildings in Manhattan, chances are they think big and brash, cloud-piercing skyscrapers for tourists to marvel at.But the borough is also home to the far more modest Dyckman Farmhouse, a white clapboard home built in 1765. It’s the oldest farmhouse in the city, and just off 204th Street in Inwood, once home to Dutch farmer William Dyckman, ...
Tags: Art, New York, Design, US news, Culture, Art and design, Slavery, Manhattan, Inwood, 204th Street, Dyckman Farmhouse Museum, Dyckman Farmhouse, William Dyckman

Alpaca carpets, Saint Laurent surfboards, and Basquiat paintings: Meet the interior designer who worked with Kylie Jenner on her lavish mansion in one of LA's ritziest suburbs

Martyn Lawrence Bullard. Lu Tapp Martyn Lawrence Bullard is one of the most prolific interior designers in the world. His clients include Kylie Jenner, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian, Cher, Tommy Hilfiger, and even Kid Rock. In an interview with Business Insider, Bullard talked about his design principles and his famous work on Jenner's Hidden Hills home, Cher's LA condo, and Tommy Hilfiger's Miami escape pad.  Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. In 2018, Martyn Lawrence Bu...
Tags: Feature, Design, London, Entertainment, La, India, Los Angeles, Trends, Wealth, Switzerland, James Bond, Miami, Warhol, Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Cher

Work Made For Disabled Dancers Gets More Widespread And More Sophisticated

Brian Seibert looks at two projects, Heidi Latsky Dance’s On Display and Kinetic Light’s Descent, that are indicative of the variety and diversity found in the field of disability dance today. – The New York Times
Tags: Art, Dance, Heidi Latsky, Brian Seibert, 12.01.20

Remorseful American Tourist Returns Ancient Marble Fragment She Stole From Rome

“The National Roman Museum recently received the piece of stone, which was inscribed in black marker, ‘To Sam, love Jess, Rome 2017.’ ‘I feel terrible for not only stealing this item from its rightful place, but writing on it,’ said the note accompanying the item. ‘It was a big mistake on my part and only now, as an adult, do I realize just how thoughtless and despicable it was.'” – Artnet
Tags: Art, Rome, Sam, Visual, National Roman Museum, 11.30.20, Jess Rome

Boy Thrown From Tate Modern’s Deck Can Now Walk, Says Family

The victim, visiting London with his family from France, was 6 when he was hurled from the museum’s viewing deck by a deranged 17-year-old (now imprisoned) in August of 2019. The boy’s family says that he can now walk with a cane and breathe well enough to speak in words rather than syllables, though he still suffers from chronic pain and memory loss. – CNN
Tags: Art, London, France, People, Tate Modern, 12.01.20

3 Logo Trends That Will Shine in 2021

Designers started the new decade full of optimism and energy, looking to push creative boundaries. It's safe to say no one saw what was coming. The list of challenges facing brands, creatives and the world at large in 2020 have been innumerable; but they've also been shared. Collective social experiences have created moments of global...
Tags: Design, Advertising, Voice

Cool Stuff: ‘Harry Potter’ Hogwarts House Crests Are the Next LEGO Art Sets

Over the summer, new LEGO Art sets were revealed that allow fans to build pop culture portraits of characters like Iron Man and Darth Vader. Now the next wave of LEGO Art building sets has been revealed, and it’s inspired by the wizarding world of Harry Potter. Coming in January, there will be Harry Potter LEGO Art sets that will let fans build tile mosaics of all for of the houses in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin can all be built f...
Tags: Art, Toys, Movies, Fantasy, Lego, Harry-Potter, Warner Brothers, Cool Stuff, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft, Hogwarts, Slytherin, Harry Potter Lego, Hogwarts House, LEGO HARRY POTTER, Harry Potter Hogwarts House, Gryffindor Hufflepuff Ravenclaw

Mixed-Race Ballerina Tells Of Discrimination And Harassment At Berlin State Ballet

Chloé Lopes Gomes, a Frenchwoman whose father came from Cape Verde, joined the corps of Staatsballett Berlin in 2017 after studying at the Bolshoi and dancing in companies in Nice and Lausanne. She says that she suffered harsh and repeated racial harassment from the ballet mistress in charge of the corps; when she reported the issue to top management, she was told that nothing could be done because that ballet mistress had a lifetime contract. – Pointe Magazine
Tags: Art, Dance, Nice, Cape Verde, Lausanne, Staatsballett Berlin, Berlin State Ballet, 12.01.20, Chloé Lopes Gomes

Japanese Art Installation Lets People Play Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” As They Walk on Socially-Distanced Notes on the Floor

The global pandemic has revealed the depths of systematic cruelty in certain places in the world that have refused to commit resources to protecting people from the virus or refused to even acknowledge its existence. Other responses show a different way forward, one in which everyone contributes meaningfully through the principled actions of wearing masks and social distancing or the principled non-action of staying home to slow the spread. Then there’s the critical role of art, design, and mus...
Tags: Google, Art, Music, College, Life, Italy, Nintendo, Tokyo, Kubrick, Facebook Twitter, Erik Satie, Josh Jones, Super Mario Brothers, Satie, Durham NC Follow, Spoon Tamago