Art and Culture

“’This is a day for Asante. A day for the Black African continent. The spirit we share is back,’ said Asante King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II.” Of course, Britain has only “loaned back” the looted items for three years. – BBC…
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‘I want it strong! Make it sharp! Take it on the downbeat and 5, 6, 7, 8!” A mass of laser-focused, high-kicking dancers move as if their lives depended on it – an epic battle royale, defeating their rivals round by round. Or an audition…
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The Cowles Center in downtown Minneapolis announced on January 31 that its 500-seat Goodale Theater would stop presenting dance on March 31—thus ending its planned season early—and subsequently close. Since opening in 2011, The Cowles…
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“The team responsible for the beloved Bay Lights art installation, which dimmed 14 months ago, announced on Thursday that it secured over $10 million in funding to illuminate a 1.8-mile section of the bridge. … The revived…
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The Sherman, Texas school board finalized a separation agreement with former superintendent Tyson Bennett, who had forbidden a high school production of Oklahoma! that included a transgender student in the cast. The cancellation was…
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ROME (AP) — A European court on Thursday upheld Italy’s right to seize a prized Greek statue from the J. Paul Getty Museum in California, ruling that Italy was justified in trying to reclaim an…
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In April 2022, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, two men arrived at the library of the University of Tartu, Estonia’s second-largest city. They told the librarians they were Ukrainians fleeing war and asked to consult 19th-century first…
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One spring day in 1840, on the bank of Goose Pond in Massachusetts—not far from Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau would make his stand—Ralph Waldo Emerson and the poet Jones Very were admiring the interplay of wind and water. “I…
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This week on the podcast, I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down (in person) with Broadway dancer extraordinaire (Mean Girls and Finding Neverland on Broadway; Mean Girls First National Tour; Hamilton (“and Peggy”) National…
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In 1939, Ernest Hemingway left a large collection of his belongings—the manuscript of his earliest short story, childhood trinkets, memorabilia from his time at war, intimate letters, books, and more—in a storeroom behind Sloppy Joe’s, a…
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