“This Is A Generic Presidential Campaign Ad,” assembled entirely from stock footage by the stock-footage company Dissolve, lays out all the messaging elements for (the generic) Candidate (slogan: “For an American America”). (video)
Tag: 07.01.16
America Spends A Lot On Military Bands. Should It?
“The value that the military bands offer is far greater than a small percentage point reduction on a budget line. The historic precedent for Pentagon funding for these programs stretches back to the United States’ founding.”
Donor Sues Museum To Get Her Money Back
Dr. Helga Wall-Apelt, who donated millions for a gallery for Asian art at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, is suing the museum for breach of contract. She claims the Ringling failed to build the gallery within a reasonable time, failed to display the Asian art she donated for the wing, and failed to hire a curator for the collection.
Harlequin Romances Is Starting A Literary Fiction Imprint
“The publisher … is launching an imprint called Park Row Books, dedicated to ‘thought-provoking and voice-driven novels’ that have ‘mainstream appeal.’ The first books are scheduled for the summer of 2017.”
What Carlos Acosta Is Up To (A Lot), Now That He’s Back In Cuba
He’s founded a company, Acosta Danza, with hald of the dancers trained in classical ballet and the other half in modern dance. (He wants to add in hip-hop and flamenco.) He’s working to keep cultural exchange and resources flowing between the island and Britain. And his biggest dream is to revive the legendary National Art Schools of Havana, built during the ’60s but then abandoned.
What’s Ailing The Met Opera? We Need To Change The Way We Talk About It
“The arts world has to let go of these popular, though incorrect clichés. First, paid capacity is a terrible way to gauge success—it does not provide real numbers that are actually tied to the budget. That four-year old study from the NEA needs to be put to rest, and we need a more updated, nuanced study of arts attendance in this country. And “Baumol’s cost disease” is an idea that has been vastly overplayed when talking about the arts… to the degree that Baumol himself is pushing back on how it’s being used.”
That Time Igor Stravinsky And The Boston Symphony Caused A National Scandal
“He did compose a weird arrangement of the national anthem, and the Boston police really did ban him from performing it — sparking a national uproar and a tense showdown that played out live on the radio. Depending on how you read it, it’s a story of ego and hubris, or patriotism and generosity.”
NPR’s Podcast Strategy To Grow Its Audience
“The demographic that went up the most in the first quarter of 2016 was the 18 to 24 year-olds [average quarter hour listening was up 20% according to Nielsen]. To be fair, it’s not a huge audience. But I point it out because it’s the direction we want to go. It didn’t come at the expense of any of our journalism either.”
Ukrainian Opera Star Killed By Sniper In Separatist War
Baritone Vasyl Slipak, 41, “had left his native Ukraine in the 1990s to settle in France, where he regularly sang at the Paris Opera. But after war erupted in 2014, he decided to return home and join a volunteer battalion to fight Russian-backed separatists on the country’s eastern front.”
Iranian Cartoonist Who Drew Government Ministers As Goats And Monkeys Is Finally Released From Evin Prison
“When a cartoon in which [Atena Farghadani] depicted government officials as farm animals appeared on [Facebook] in 2014, it led to her receiving a prison sentence of more than 12 years. During her ordeal Farghadani was beaten, strip-searched, went on hunger strike and – despite being only 29 – suffered a heart attack.”