This year, Ukraine’s largest music festival struck a different chord. Gone were the international headliners, the massive performance halls and the hundreds of thousands of visitors. Instead, beloved local artists graced the stage this past weekend at the Atlas Festival — the first since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 — for a smaller but...
Art & Style
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AI Found to Boost Individual Creativity – at the Expense of Less Varied Content
Stories written with AI assistance have been deemed to be more creative, better written and more enjoyable. A new study published in the journal Science Advances finds that AI enhances creativity by boosting the novelty of story ideas as well as the ‘usefulness’ of stories – their ability to engage the target audience and potential for publication....
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The Road to the Village: Novelist Chigozie Obioma on Nigeria’s Brutal Civil War, Love and Redemption
Chigozie Obioma is the Nigerian author of the novels The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019), both shortlisted for the Booker Prize for their unique, folkloric tales of Nigerian life in decades past. Like them, his 2024 novel The Road to the Country is “tinged with fable and prophecy”. It’s set in the...
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The Beginnings of Fashion: Paleolithic Eyed Needles and the Evolution of Dress
A team of researchers led by an archaeologist at the University of Sydney are the first to suggest that eyed needles were a new technological innovation used to adorn clothing for social and cultural purposes, marking the major shift from clothes as protection to clothes as an expression of identity. “Eyed needle tools are an...
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Hackers Claim Responsibility for Christie’s Cyberattack and Threaten to Release Client Data
The group RansomHub say they are behind the attack that took down the auction house’s website earlier this month The hacker group RansomHub has claimed responsibility for the cyberattack that took down Christie’s website earlier this month. It said it is now in possession of “sensitive personal information” on the auction house’s clients, which it is threatening...
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US Returns 600 Looted Antiquities Worth $65 M. to Italy
On Tuesday, Italy officially welcomed 600 antiquities from the United States, worth a collective $65 million, that were looted years ago and scattered in the holdings of museums, galleries, and collectors. The trove includes ancient gold coins, mosaics, manuscripts, and bronze statues, all of which were recovered during an extensive criminal investigation. The items were...
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Workers at Seattle Museum Protest Show, Accusing It of ‘Platforming Zionist Ideology’
A group of workers at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle led a walkout last week, accusing a current exhibition at the institution of falsely comparing antisemitism to anti-Zionism. On social media, the workers, posting as a collective entity under a Palestine-themed account, said the show exemplified the “significant negative impact that platforming Zionist ideology has on...
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FBI Investigating Hundreds of Missing and Stolen Items from British Museum
The FBI is investigating the sale of hundreds of items on eBay suspected to be stolen and missing artifacts from the British Museum, according to a new report published by BBC News. The law enforcement agency assisted the Metropolitan Police with the recent return of 268 items from a collector in Washington, D.C. The FBI also contacted a buyer in...
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Nîmes: a New Scene for Contemporary Art?
The inaugural edition of the Contemporaine de Nîmes triennial pairs young talents with established artists to create a dialogue with the city. The Contemporaine de Nîmes initiated by the City of Nîmes in 2024, is a timely arrival. It recalls the enduring ties of this city, also known as the French Rome, to the forefront of modernity....
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Legal Experts Assess the Impact of This Super Election Year on the Art Market
How politics, new tax and anti-money laundering regimes, and AI copyright will affect the art trade in 2024 At the start of 2023, there was considerable optimism that the year ahead was going to be one of stabilization, following a challenging period with the fallout from COVID-related lockdowns, the reduction of frictionless trade through Brexit,...
