“The advent of digital information and with it the era of big data allows geneticists to decode the human genome, humanists to search entire bodies of literature, and businesses to spot economic trends. But it is also creating for many the sense that we are being overwhelmed by information. How are we to manage it all?”
Category: today’s top story
Why Are Broadway Theatre Tickets So Expensive?
“Broadway plays and special events are limited-time-only star-studded events that draw lots of rich people. And producers have gotten wise to the idea that rich people are extremely price insensitive when it comes to seeing celebrities on the Great White Way, especially if there’s only a short window. The message rich people appear to be sending is: If you charge it, we will pay it.”
Arts Festivals Across England Being Canceled For Olympics
“The Olympics has led to many music festivals across England being cancelled with organisers claiming they cannot compete with a summer of sport.”
The Colorado Symphony Saved Itself By Reinventing Just About Everything
“Just seven months ago, the CSO was poison — so toxic that 20 trustees made an angry and abrupt exit when a move to make players part-time failed. Now it is re-emerging as something everyone wants a taste of.”
New York’s Arts Super-Fan
“Lois Kirschenbaum has been called the city’s biggest and longest-standing opera and ballet buff, showing up nightly to performances in New York since the early 1950s. Even at the old Met, on 39th Street, there was Ms. Kirschenbaum, wrangling her way in.”
Natasha Trethewey Appointed US Poet Laureate
“Unlike the recent laureates W. S. Merwin and her immediate predecessor, Philip Levine, both in their 80s when appointed, Ms. Trethewey, who will officially take up her duties in September, is still in midcareer and not well-known outside poetry circles.”
Ray Bradbury, 91
“By many estimations Mr. Bradbury was the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream. His name would appear near the top of any list of major science-fiction writers of the 20th century, beside those of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein and the Polish author Stanislaw Lem.”
Corcoran Gallery Considers Leaving Its Historic Building – And Maybe Even DC
“After more than a century of occupying a handsome Beaux-Arts building at one of Washington’s high-profile addresses, on 17th Street NW across from the White House, the Corcoran Gallery of Art” – mired in longstanding financial troubles – “is considering a move to another neighborhood, possibly even to Maryland or Virginia.”
Is The TV Business Going The Way Of Newspapers?
Bottom line, as it has in newspapers, the TV business is going to have to get radically more efficient. It won’t disappear–newspapers haven’t disappeared–but the fat and happy days will have to end. As for the other question, “when,” the answer may be “now.”
Funds To Bail Out Artists
“It turns out that a number of small, private rescue funds have been lending a hand to a group that is definitely not in the too-big-to-fail camp: writers, artists and other creative types. Think of these funds as sort of a TARP for the arts crowd, only with much smaller dollar figures, and with little or no help from Washington.”