Category: today’s top story

“We have no colonies on Mars, we still can’t get by without prehistoric fuel, the dishwasher still doesn’t get all the dishes clean, and very few of us have personal jetpacks. You call this progress?”

“As likely to cadge a cigarette from a student as to ask them to conjugate a Greek verb, Beard is opposed to the elite image of her subject. ‘The importance of Mary is that she is the living embodiment of the fact that classics isn’t just for posh people and men and in fact never has been.'”

“The National Endowment for the Arts made sweeping cuts in its support of established PBS shows on Wednesday, and for the first time awarded significant grants to an array of gaming, mobile and Web-based projects.”

The new 46-member collective that calls itself The Declassified “plans to give chamber music concerts in various formations. But it mainly wants to establish residencies for weeks at a time at universities, conservatories and just about anywhere else. Performing would be only part of a menu of teaching, master classes and projects that bring audience members closer to performers.”

“Sarah Jessica Parker, Kerry Washington and Forest Whitaker are adopting some of the nation’s worst-performing schools and pledged Monday to help the Obama administration turn them around by integrating arts education. The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities announced a new Turnaround Arts initiative as a pilot project for eight schools.”

“One mainstay in recession-era stories about the creative class has been pieces about artists who have “reinvented” themselves – an architect brewing a perfect cup of coffee — in difficult times. Or artsy types who have pursued their ‘Plan B’ – making vegan cupcakes or running a groovy ice cream truck. Fun to read, counterintuitive, more colorful than dreary unemployment statistics – and deeply unrepresentative of what’s really going on.”

“A call by a group of academics and cultural commentators to close every second state-subsidised cultural institution–in particular art museums and theatres–in response to the economic downturn has provoked a robust response from German artists, filmmakers and writers.”

On Tuesday evening, he launched what he termed “an art war to prevent the destruction of culture” by setting light to a painting by a French artist, Séverine Bourguignon, worth up to €10,000 (£8,200). “This is a war. This is a revolution,” Antonio Manfredi said. “And in a revolution, there are winners and losers.” He vowed to continue destroying works from the permanent collection at the rate of one a day until someone took notice of Cam’s plight.”

The artist/activist writes, “[In] the long run, [China’s] leaders must understand it’s not possible for them to control the Internet unless they shut it off – and they can’t live with the consequences of that. The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that.”

“Facing a federal lawsuit by a local musicians union, San Antonio Opera plans to file for liquidation bankruptcy within 20 days, the opera company’s lawyer said Monday.”