Casanova Is Getting His Own Interactive Museum

Carlo Parodi, founder of the Giacomo Casanova Foundation (and, not incidentally, CEO of the winery Casanova Prosecco), plans to site the museum in six rooms at the Palazzo Pesaro Papafava in Venice – and also hopes to create a temporary pop-up museum that would travel to such cities as Paris, Tokyo, New York, Beijing, and London.

Mayor Of Tehran Forced To Resign After Attending Dance Recital

“The mayor, Mohammad Ali Najafi, attended a celebration last week amounting to an Islamic version of Mother’s Day. There he encountered six [grade-school-aged] girls dancing in traditional costumes and throwing the rose petals in honor of a female saint.” Islamist hardliners were predictably outraged: said one mullah: “One cannot argue that these were children. They were young girls who incited arousal. They made the most atrocious movements. This cannot be justified.”

England’s Arts Funder Creates New Grants Program For Individual Artists

“Arts Council England (ACE) has launched a £14.4m fund for individual artists and creative practitioners in the early- and mid-stages of their creative careers. …Grants of between £2k and £10k will be available to individual creatives, or small groups of collaborators, to support research, the creation of new work or development of future ideas, training, networking or mentoring, or travel.”

The Ballerina Who’s Taught 100,000 Peruvian Slum Children Hip-Hop Dance

“Vania Masías vividly remembers the first time she saw acrobats somersaulting at a traffic light on a visit to her home city in 2004. She was at the peak of an illustrious career as a ballet dancer in Europe – but before long, she would leave it all behind it to nurture the raw talent she found in the streets of [Lima,] the Peruvian capital.”

Black Velvet Paintings Are (Finally) Getting Their Due In A Michigan Exhibit

Rasquache is the art of making do with very little – something that might lead to, well, black velvet paintings. “For generations, these pieces have been placed on the mantles of Chicano households from L.A. to Texas, Oklahoma to Michigan, and yet, have never really gotten the recognition they deserve as a legitimate art form” – until now.

Can Anyone Heal The University Of British Columbia’s Creative Writing Program (And Canadian Literature In General)?

Alix Ohlin is taking on at least the first task for a program that has been in disarray since the suspension and firing of its former chair, Stephen Galloway, under accusations of sexual harassment, in the fall of 2015 and early 2016. Ohlin, who was out of the country when this happened, says “I know it was an incredibly stressful time. … I think this program in particular is more than just the sum of these past few years. It does have a long tradition of fostering talent. It has great alumni, it has the ability to recover that and to rebuild and find itself again.”

Barbara Tuchman’s ‘The March Of Folly’, Even After 34 Years, Is All Too Relevant

“‘Wooden-headedness’ in statecraft, which she defined as ‘assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs,’ has clearly become a prevailing factor in our politics. As Tuchman wrote, wooden-headedness was best captured in a remark about Philip II of Spain: ‘No experience of the failure of his policy could shake his belief in its essential excellence.'” Historian Jon Meacham argues why “there is a lesson here not only for the president but for the people.”