Art

A $42 million project that will add new buildings, landscaping, and accessibility to the site of the iconic Rothko Chapel recently broke ground in Houston, Texas. Over the next two years, the site will see construction of an administration and archives building, a new program center, a guest bungalow for visiting speakers and fellows, a

The starting point of my new book The Propaganda of Freedom is the core tenet of the cultural Cold War as prosecuted by the CIA and the Kennedy White House: that only “free artists” in “free societies” can produce great art. And yet this is a risible claim, self-evidently counter-empirical; I’ve dubbed it the “propaganda of freedom.”

MBW Reacts is a series of analytical commentaries from Music Business Worldwide written in response to major recent entertainment events or news stories. Only MBW+ subscribers have unlimited access to these articles. If you want to know what’s really going on at Universal Music Group, its annual report is a good place to start. The

Empires and nation-states are remembered for their monuments, but they also leave behind plenty of miniatures. Inside the Egyptian pyramids, within the chamber where the pharaoh’s mummy rests, stand collections of little statues—wooden figurines of mummified servants, clay hippos painted turquoise—to remind the ruler how the world once looked. Academics have complained that miniatures suffer

Fifteen people were injured when a tram crashed at Universal Studios Hollywood on Saturday night, according to authorities. The Los Angeles County Fire Department shared on social media that it responded to the theme park just after 9 p.m. for reports of a crash. “A tram tour was in progress on the Universal Studios Hollywood

We geezers who were college students in the late Sixties felt a rush of déjà vu at the sight of today’s front-page photos in the NY Times and Wall Street Journal showing confrontations between student demonstrators and police. I came of age in the tumultuous era of Vietnam War protests and racial tensions. I participated

​Before I needed to earn a living from writing I was a member of the avant-garde, fervent and full of high opinion. The other day while cleaning up old files, I came across a typescript of “Synchronic Non-Causative Agent,” an unpublished paper of mine written more than half a century ago. (I had sent to

I ask Liang whether the prominence of AI in meetings might make humans less likely to attend. Knowing that there will be a summary available seems a disincentive to actually showing up. Liang himself says that he attends only a fraction of the meetings he’s invited to. “As CEO of a startup, I get tons

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav saw the value of his 2023 compensation package rise to $49.7 million, compared with $39.3 million in 2022 when the Discovery-WarnerMedia merger had closed. The entertainment conglomerate disclosed latest pay details for its top executives in a regulatory filing. Zaslav’s 2023 pay consisted of a $3 million salary, and more than

Our possessions – the things we view as “mine” – play an important role in our lives. Beyond their functionality, they can serve as poignant reminders of cherished memories. They can symbolise not only who we are, but also who we used to be, and who we aspire to become. From faded photo albums to

“What’s the world for you if you can’tmake it up the way you want it?”–Toni Morrison, Jazz* The attempts I made to get out of my own head were sundry and full of nonsense. I visited a petting zoo for adults. I tried learning to meditate from a British computer voice. I stocked up on

Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) is one of the oldest and largest professional nonprofit theatres in the nation whose programming reaches national and international audiences. Founded in 1935 and located in Ashland, its purpose is to create world-class theatre, revealing our collective humanity through illuminating interpretations of new and classic plays, and inspiring a love of

Recent guidance issued by the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, to the Office for Students reveals conflicting priorities in government and pours fuel on fires burning in an already troubled higher education sector. The focus on science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) – “strategically important high-cost subjects” – is met by a freeze on funding for

Since 2001, the Jazz Journalists Association (over which I preside) has celebrated some 350 “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz,” as Jazz Heroes. The class of 2024 Jazz Heroes has just been announced, recognizing the good works of 33 people whose efforts extend from the Baja-San Diego borderland to Ottawa, Canada, through 27

NPR has put on temporary suspension the editor who penned an essay that criticized the network for losing the trust of listeners as it has covered the rise of Donald Trump and coverage of Covid, race and other issues. Uri Berliner has been suspended for five days without pay, starting last Friday, according to NPR’s

May 2024 Issue [Report] The Life and Death of Hollywood by Daniel Bessner, Film and television writers face an existential threat Photo illustration by Nicolás Ortega [Report] The Life and Death of Hollywood Film and television writers face an existential threat by Daniel Bessner, In 2012, at the age of thirty-two, the writer Alena Smith

29 March, 2024 This article is taken from the April 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. Seiji Ozawa was the first of his kind and, in many respects, the last. No conductor from China or Japan ever commanded world

Just because you see something done in a movie, that doesn’t mean you should try it yourself. Take, for example, a human running on top of a moving train. For starters, you can’t be sure it’s real. In early Westerns, they used moving backdrops to make fake trains look like they were in motion. Now

And now for my hottest take in a minute: There are already too many books in the world. As a reader, I’m constantly overwhelmed with new material, and I know I’m not alone. And this is before we factor in how the market is flooded with AI-generated ripoffs for sale on Amazon. Please don’t misunderstand

With 2024 a year of acute financial distress and outright closures in the for-profit journalism world, some commentators are arguing that nonprofit startups have become the great hope for the future. The continued growth of the sector is clearly a plus as legacy for-profit media shrinks drastically, but two experts involved in grantmaking I spoke