Michael Feingold: “One problem that New York has always had with greatness is that our mainstream theater is a commercial theater, and what’s great does not always make money: Sometimes, especially when it comes in a new form, the disruption it causes actively drives the pleasure-seeking, affluent crowds away.”
Tag: 03.25.16
Fire Maurice Sendak Estate’s Executors, Demands Museum-Library
“More than a year into the lawsuit it filed over Maurice Sendak’s will, the Rosenbach of the Free Library of Philadelphia has asked a Connecticut judge to remove the executors of the author-illustrator’s estate. Motivated by ‘financial self-interest,’ Sendak’s executors have refused to carry out his wish to leave millions of dollars’ worth of books to the Rosenbach,” the motion claims.
Did A Novel Written By A Computer Program Just Become Runner-Up For A Big Literary Prize? Not Exactly
“‘A Japanese A.I. Wrote a Novel, Almost Wins Literary Award,’ one typical headline read. [Another] worried that ‘no occupation is safe’ if an algorithm could compete in such a contest. Look a little closer, however, and this story isn’t about the rise of the machines – it’s a lesson on the limitations of contemporary A.I. technology.”
High Art Has Lost Its Allure For The Rich. What Does That Mean For Our Culture?
“Classics and antiquity have lost cultural cache in the age of disruption, and there is no longer an aristocratic imperative to support noble projects of lofty ambition. Today we’ve neither dutiful Kings, Vaticans, or robber barons to seduce the hoi polloi into complicity with visions of the transplendent. Nor do the experiments in democracy we deem “states” seem to be doing much better, having withdrawn much of the already measly funding available for highbrow cultural endeavors.”
Can Broadway Musicals Get Brave?
Despite Hamilton and Fun Home, “the season to come – with its promised jukebox musicals, revivals, and adaptations of television shows and films – suggests that most producers are still playing it safe. … Why has [the genre] been so slow to change? And what can writers, directors and producers do to productively shake up the form?” Alexis Soloski sees some hope.
The Best Part Of Easter? Satan And The Harrowing Of Hell
Molly McArdle explains how medieval images of the Devil, and of the time between the Cruicifixion and the Resurrection, helped her finally make sense of the Catholic faith in which she’d grown up.
This Funding Freeze For Natural History Museums Is Making Scientists Pretty Angry
“Although the NSF invests a lot of other money into cataloguing and studying life on Earth, the CSBR is unique in funding the infrastructure behind natural history museums. It pays for unglamorous but essential things like basic specimen care and storage. Typical grants are worth around $3 to 5 million, and collectively, they amount to just 0.06 percent of the full NSF budget. And yet, they’re crucial.”
The Artist Who Has To Do His Work Between Heartbeats (Literally)
“Based in a tiny studio in the jewelry quarter in Birmingham, Short has also inscribed a quote from Abraham Lincoln on the tip of a Civil War bullet, one from Rosa Parks on the rim of a commemorative medal, and one from Steve Jobs on a gold microchip the size of a fingertip.”
In One Week, ‘Making A Murderer’ Crushed Every Other TV Show Out There
But the real interesting thing is that it didn’t do this in its first week, making the argument that maybe, just maybe, everyone should start looking at TV show popularity data way farther out from release dates.
This Cleaning Guy Has A Double Life As A Prizewinning Novelist
“‘It is a peculiarity of capitalists and the bourgeoisie to think that we workers have no culture,’ says the novelist, whose many tattoos include one of Karl Marx on his left arm.”