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T H E A R T S P O R T A L

An artist's palette

The arts or creative arts are a wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling, and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing, and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both dynamic and a characteristically constant feature of human life, they have developed into innovative, stylized, and sometimes intricate forms. This is often achieved through sustained and deliberate study, training, and/or theorizing within a particular tradition, across generations, and even between civilizations. The arts are a vehicle through which human beings cultivate distinct social, cultural, and individual identities while transmitting values, impressions, judgements, ideas, visions, spiritual meanings, patterns of life, and experiences across time and space.

Prominent examples of the arts include:

visual arts (including architecture, ceramics, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, and sculpting)
literary arts (including fiction, drama, poetry, and prose)
performing arts (including dance, music, and theatre)

They can employ skill and imagination to produce objects and performances, convey insights and experiences, and construct new environments and spaces.

The arts can refer to common, popular, or everyday practices as well as more sophisticated, systematic, or institutionalized ones. They can be discrete and self-contained or combine and interweave with other art forms, such as the combination of artwork with the written word in comics. They can also develop or contribute to some particular aspect of a more complex art form, as in cinematography. By definition, the arts themselves are open to being continually redefined. The practice of modern art, for example, is a testament to the shifting boundaries, improvisation and experimentation, reflexive nature, and self-criticism or questioning that art and its conditions of production, reception, and possibility can undergo.

As both a means of developing capacities of attention and sensitivity and as ends in themselves, the arts can simultaneously be a form of response to the world and a way that our responses and what we deem worthwhile goals or pursuits are transformed. From prehistoric cave paintings to ancient and contemporary forms of ritual to modern-day films, art has served to register, embody, and preserve our ever-shifting relationships to each other and to the world. (Full article...)

Outline of performing arts
Outline of the visual arts

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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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"Mother's Day", also known as the "Rugrats Mother's Day Special" or "Rugrats Mother's Day", is the second episode of the fourth season of the American animated television series Rugrats and the show's 67th episode overall. It revolves around the holiday from the perspective of a group of babies—Tommy Pickles, Chuckie Finster, and Phil and Lil Deville. Tommy, Phil, and Lil attempt to find the perfect mother for Chuckie (who is raised only by his father Chas) while sharing their favorite memories about their moms. At the end of the episode, Chuckie's mother is revealed to have died of a terminal illness. It concludes with Chuckie and Chas looking through a box of her belongings, including a poem she had written for her son. Meanwhile, Didi Pickles tries to plan the perfect Mother's Day with her mom Minka, while Betty DeVille helps Stu Pickles with his invention to help mothers.

Norton Virgien and Toni Vian directed the episode from a script by Jon Cooksey, Ali Marie Matheson, J. David Stem, David N. Weiss, Susan Hood, and Ed Resto. Series co-creator Paul Germain had pitched two potential storylines to explain the absence of Chuckie's mother, but Nickelodeon executives rejected his proposed ideas that the mother was either divorced from Chas or had died. Before "Mother's Day" premiered, only minor references to Chuckie's mother had been made. Germain left the show in 1993, and several new writers replaced him. The concept was later revised and approved as a Mother's Day special. Germain said that he was disappointed at being unable to cover the topic during his time on the series. (Full article...)
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William Sterndale Bennett – engraving after a portrait by John Everett Millais, 1873

Sir William Sterndale Bennett (13 April 1816 – 1 February 1875) was an English composer, pianist, conductor and music educator. At the age of ten Bennett was admitted to the London Royal Academy of Music (RAM), where he remained for ten years. By the age of twenty, he had begun to make a reputation as a concert pianist, and his compositions received high praise. Among those impressed by Bennett was the German composer Felix Mendelssohn, who invited him to Leipzig. There Bennett became friendly with Robert Schumann, who shared Mendelssohn's admiration for his compositions. Bennett spent three winters composing and performing in Leipzig.

In 1837 Bennett began to teach at the RAM, with which he was associated for most of the rest of his life. For twenty years he taught there, later also teaching at Queen's College, London. Among his pupils during this period were Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry, and Tobias Matthay. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s he composed little, although he performed as a pianist and directed the Philharmonic Society for ten years. He also actively promoted concerts of chamber music. From 1848 onward, his career was punctuated by antagonism between himself and the conductor Michael Costa. (Full article...)
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WWJ-TV (channel 62), branded CBS Detroit, is a television station in Detroit, Michigan, United States, owned and operated by the CBS television network. It is owned by the network's CBS News and Stations group alongside WKBD-TV, an independent station; the stations share studios on Eleven Mile Road in the Detroit suburb of Southfield. WWJ-TV's transmitter is located in Oak Park.

Founded as WGPR-TV in 1975 by Dr. William V. Banks and the International Free and Accepted Modern Masons as an extension of WGPR (107.5 FM), channel 62 in Detroit was the first Black-owned television station in the continental United States. Though its ambitious early programming plans catering to the Black community were not entirely successful due to economic and financial limitations, the station still produced several locally notable shows and housed a fully-staffed news department. WGPR-TV helped launch the careers of multiple local and national Black television hosts and executives, including Pat Harvey, Shaun Robinson, Sharon Dahlonega Bush, and Amyre Makupson. The original studios for WGPR-TV, still in use by the radio station, have been preserved as a museum and recognized as a historical landmark with inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. (Full article...)
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Third printing, 1922

Sair Tjerita Siti Akbari ([ʃaˈir tʃeˈrita siˈti akˈbari]; Perfected spelling: Syair Cerita Siti Akbari, Malay for Poem on the Story of Siti Akbari; also known as Siti Akbari) is an 1884 Malay-language syair (poem) by Lie Kim Hok. Adapted indirectly from the Sjair Abdoel Moeloek, it tells of a woman who passes as a man to free her husband from the Sultan of Hindustan, who had captured him in an assault on their kingdom.

Written over a period of several years and influenced by European literature, Siti Akbari differs from earlier syairs in its use of suspense and emphasis on prose rather than form. It also incorporates European realist views to expand upon the genre, although it maintains several of the hallmarks of traditional syairs. Critical views have emphasised various aspects of its story, finding in the work an increased empathy for women's thoughts and feelings, a call for a unifying language in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and a polemic regarding the relation between tradition and modernity. (Full article...)
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Pei in 1980

Ieoh Ming Pei (/ˌjoʊ mɪŋ ˈpeɪ/ YOH ming PAY; Chinese: 貝聿銘; pinyin: Bèi Yùmíng; April 26, 1917 – May 16, 2019) was a Chinese-American architect. Born in Guangzhou into a Chinese family, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the garden villas at Suzhou, the traditional retreat of the scholar-gentry to which his family belonged. In 1935, he moved to the United States and enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school, but quickly transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Unhappy with the focus on Beaux-Arts architecture at both schools, he spent his free time researching emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier.

After graduating, he joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and befriended the Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. In 1948, Pei was recruited by New York City real estate magnate William Zeckendorf, for whom he worked for seven years before establishing an independent design firm, I. M. Pei & Associates, in 1955. In 1966, that became I. M. Pei & Partners, and became Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in 1989. Pei retired from full-time practice in 1990. In his retirement, he worked as an architectural consultant primarily from his sons' architectural firm Pei Partnership Architects. (Full article...)
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1918–1919 poster by Leopoldo Metlicovitz

Gianni Schicchi (Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒanni ˈskikki]) is a comic opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano, composed in 1917–18. The libretto is based on an incident mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy. The work is the third and final part of Puccini's Il trittico (The Triptych) – three one-act operas with contrasting themes, originally written to be presented together. Although it continues to be performed with one or both of the other trittico operas, Gianni Schicchi is now more frequently staged either alone or with short operas by other composers. The aria "O mio babbino caro" is one of Puccini's best known, and one of the most popular arias in opera.

Puccini had long considered writing a set of one-act operas which would be performed together in a single evening, but faced with a lack of suitable subjects and opposition from his publisher, he repeatedly put the project aside. However, by 1916 Puccini had completed the one-act tragedy Il tabarro and, after considering various ideas, he began work the following year on the solemn, religious, all-female opera Suor Angelica. Gianni Schicchi, a comedy, completes the triptych with a further contrast of mood. The score combines elements of Puccini's modern style of harmonic dissonance with lyrical passages reminiscent of Rossini, and it has been praised for its inventiveness and imagination. (Full article...)
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Good Girl Gone Bad is the third studio album by Barbadian singer Rihanna. It was released on May 31, 2007, by Def Jam Recordings and SRP Records. Rihanna worked with various producers on the album, including Tricky Stewart, The-Dream, Neo da Matrix, Timbaland, Carl Sturken, Evan Rogers and Stargate. Inspired by Brandy's fourth studio album Afrodisiac (2004), Good Girl Gone Bad is a pop, dance-pop and R&B record with 1980s music influences. Described as a turning point in Rihanna's career, it represents a departure from the Caribbean sound of her previous releases, Music of the Sun (2005) and A Girl like Me (2006). Apart from the sound, she also endorsed a new image for the release going from an innocent young woman to an edgier, more mature look.

Critics gave generally positive reviews of the album, praising its composition and Rihanna's new musical direction, though some criticized the album's lyrics and inconsistency. The album received seven Grammy Award nominations and one win in the Best Rap/Sung Collaboration category for "Umbrella" at the 2008 ceremony. The album debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart and sold 162,000 copies in its first week. Certified six-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), it sold more than 2.8 million copies in the United States. The album reached number one in Canada, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. As of June 2017, the album has sold over nine million copies worldwide. (Full article...)
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Hoodeners in Deal, Kent, in 1909

Hoodening (/ʊd.ɛnɪŋ/), also spelled hodening and oodening, is a folk custom found in Kent, a county in South East England. The tradition entails the use of a wooden hobby horse known as a hooden horse that is mounted on a pole and carried by a person hidden under a sackcloth. Originally, the tradition was restricted to the area of East Kent, although in the twentieth century it spread into neighbouring West Kent. It represents a regional variation of a "hooded animal" tradition that appears in various forms throughout Britain and Ireland.

As recorded from the eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, hoodening was a tradition performed at Christmas time by groups of farm labourers. They would form into teams to accompany the hooden horse on its travels around the local area, and although the makeup of such groups varied, they typically included someone to carry the horse, a leader, a man in female clothing known as a "Mollie", and several musicians. The team would then carry the hooden horse to local houses and shops, where they would expect payment for their appearance. Although this practice is extinct, in the present the hooden horse is incorporated into various Kentish mummers plays and Morris dances that take place at different times of the year. (Full article...)
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The Delaware Tercentenary half dollar (also known as the Swedish Delaware half dollar) is a commemorative fifty-cent piece struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the first successful European settlement in Delaware. The reverse features the Swedish ship Kalmar Nyckel, which brought early settlers to Delaware, and the obverse depicts Old Swedes Church, which has been described as being the oldest Protestant church in the United States still used as a place of worship. While the coins are dated "1936" on the obverse and the reverse also has the dual date of "1638" and "1938", the coins were actually struck in 1937.

Authorizing legislation for the coin passed Congress in early 1936. Although there was no opposition, the legislation was changed to add protections for collectors against abuses, such as low mintages or strikings at multiple mints, which marked some commemorative coins at that time. Once the coin was authorized, the Delaware Swedish Tercentenary Commission (DSTC) held a competition to design the coin, judged by Mint Chief Engraver John R. Sinnock and sculptor Robert Tait McKenzie, which was won by Carl L. Schmitz. (Full article...)
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Romances is the twelfth studio album by Mexican singer Luis Miguel, released on 12 August 1997, by WEA Latina. It is the third album of the Romance series, in which Miguel covers Latin songs from 1940 to 1978. Aside from Miguel, the production also involved arranger Bebu Silvetti, and Armando Manzanero, who directed all of Miguel's Romance albums. Romances consists of twelve cover versions and two new compositions by Manzanero and Silvetti. Recording took place in early 1997 at the Ocean Way recording studio in Los Angeles, California.

Romances has sold over 4.5 million copies and received platinum certifications in several Latin American countries, the United States and Spain. Miguel promoted the album by touring the United States, Latin America and Spain. Upon its release, Romances received generally positive reviews from music critics. They mainly praised his vocals and production of the album although few reviewers found the arrangements to be repetitive and the record too similar to its predecessors. The album earned Miguel several awards, including the Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Performance in the United States. Six singles were released: "Por Debajo de la Mesa", "El Reloj", "Contigo (Estar Contigo)", "De Quererte Así (De T'Avoir Aimee)", "Bésame Mucho", and "Sabor a Mí". (Full article...)
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Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological sensitivity to corporate symbols. The action takes place in London, Tokyo, and Moscow as Cayce judges the effectiveness of a proposed corporate symbol and is hired to seek the creators of film clips anonymously posted to the internet.

The novel's central theme involves the examination of the human desire to detect patterns or meaning and the risks of finding patterns in meaningless data. Other themes include methods of interpretation of history, cultural familiarity with brand names, and tensions between art and commercialization. The September 11, 2001 attacks are used as a motif representing the transition to the new century. Critics identify influences in Pattern Recognition from Thomas Pynchon's postmodern detective story The Crying of Lot 49. (Full article...)
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LaBelle in 2012

Leah LaBelle Vladowski (September 8, 1986 – January 31, 2018) was an American singer. She rose to prominence in 2004 as a contestant on the third season of American Idol, placing twelfth in the season finals. In 2007, LaBelle began recording covers of R&B and soul music for her YouTube channel. These videos led to work as a backing vocalist starting in 2008 and a record deal in 2011 with Epic in partnership with I Am Other and So So Def Recordings. LaBelle released a sampler, three singles, and a posthumous extended play (EP).

Born in Toronto, Ontario, and raised in Seattle, Washington, LaBelle began pursuing music ambition as a career in her teens. As a child, she performed in the Total Experience Gospel Choir and the musical Black Nativity. In 2005, LaBelle attended the Berklee College of Music for a year before dropping out and relocating to Los Angeles. While in college, she collaborated with Andreao Heard on a demo. Following the advice of an industry contact, LaBelle released her music through her YouTube channel. Keri Hilson hired LaBelle as a backing vocalist after hearing her rendition of "Energy", which led to her working for other artists on their tours. (Full article...)
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"A Canterlot Wedding" is the title of the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth episodes of the second season of the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The fifty-first and fifty-second episodes overall, they were directed by James Wootton and written by Meghan McCarthy. "A Canterlot Wedding" premiered as an hour-long event on The Hub on April 21, 2012. In these episodes, Twilight Sparkle (Tara Strong) learns her brother, Shining Armor (Andrew Francis), will be marrying Princess Cadance (Britt McKillip). The news excites Twilight, but she becomes concerned about the marriage when she notices Cadance is not behaving like the friendly, caring individual she remembers her to be.

"A Canterlot Wedding" was series developer Lauren Faust's final involvement in the show. The episodes are a direct reference to the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. They deal with themes that have been considered serious and complex for a children's television series; scholars believe that they involve feminism-related themes. Before the premiere of "A Canterlot Wedding", The Hub began a major marketing campaign that included interactive content on the network's website, promotional events, and a print advertisement in The New York Times in the form of a ceremonial wedding announcement. The episodes' debuts attracted almost one million combined viewers, and critics praised their ambition, music, and visual sequences. (Full article...)
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Allegro is a musical by Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (book and lyrics), their third collaboration for the stage. Opening on Broadway on October 10, 1947, the musical centers on the life of Joseph Taylor Jr., who follows in the footsteps of his father as a doctor, but is tempted by fortune and fame at a big-city hospital.

After the immense successes of the first two Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, Oklahoma! and Carousel, the pair sought a subject for their next play. Hammerstein had long contemplated a serious work which would deal with the problems of the ordinary man in the fast-moving modern world. He and Rodgers sought to create a work which would be as innovative as their first two stage musicals. To that end, they created a play with a large cast, including a Greek chorus. The production would have no sets; props and projections served to suggest locations. (Full article...)
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Late Registration is the second studio album by the American rapper and record producer Kanye West. It was released on August 30, 2005, through Def Jam Recordings and Roc-A-Fella Records. West recorded the album over the course of a year during sessions held at studios in Hollywood and New York City, in collaboration with Jon Brion. The album features guest appearances from Adam Levine, Jamie Foxx, Common, Brandy, Jay-Z, and Nas, among others.

West's production for Late Registration departed from the sped-up soul samples of his debut studio album, The College Dropout (2004), moving towards a more elaborate and orchestral style with a 20-piece ensemble. Drawing creative inspiration from alternative acts such as Fiona Apple and Portishead, he experimented with musical shifts, string arrangements, and a variety of instruments not usually associated with hip hop, including a celesta, harpsichord, and Chinese bells. In an effort to write authentic yet relatable lyrics, West engages in storytelling while showcasing his Christian heritage that informed his relationship to the capitalist market economy. He critiques multiple issues, such as institutional racism, higher education, health care, and the blood diamond trade. (Full article...)

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Women's suffrage in the United States

Credit: Cartoon: Merle De Vore Johnson; Restoration: Adam Cuerden

"I did not raise my girl to be a voter": A 1915 parody from Puck of the anti-World War I protest song "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier" with the context altered to women's suffrage. A conductor labeled "political boss" leads a lone female soloist surrounded by a male chorus with various labels including "procurer", "child labor employer", and "sweat shop owner". Arguments in favor of granting women the right to vote included the contention that female voters would support laws that reduced prostitution, labor abuses, and other perceived social evils. The fight for women's suffrage in the United States began in the 1830s, and concluded with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on August 18, 1920.

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Did you know...

... that the lobby of the Suffern, New York post office (pictured), features a relief depicting a semi-naked woman shooting a flaming arrow?
... that Mary Shelley's verse drama Midas is a commentary on both Ovid's Metamorphoses and Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Tale?
... that deforestation in Staffordshire inspired contributions from Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward to a book of poetry about Needwood Forest by Francis Mundy?

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In this month

5 May 1726 – Handel's opera Alessandro premieres at the King's Theatre in London with Italian castrato singer Senesino in the title role
12 May 1926 – Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1, which he composed at the age of 19 while a student at Leningrad Conservatory, receives its first performance
22 May 1844 – Impressionst painter and printmaker Mary Cassatt (self-portrait pictured) is born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania
26 May 1897 – Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, which later became the subject of numerous theatrical, film and television interpretations, is published by Constable & Co.
29 May 1913 – Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring premieres in Paris and causes a riot in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work

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Featured biography

Henry Moore was a British artist and sculptor. Born into a poor mining family in the Yorkshire town of Castleford, he became well-known for his large-scale abstract cast bronze and carved marble sculptures; substantially supported by the British art establishment, Moore helped to introduce a particular form of modernism into Britain. His ability to satisfy large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy towards the end of his life. However, he lived frugally and most of his wealth went to endow the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts. His signature form is a pierced reclining figure, first influenced by a Toltec-Maya sculpture known as "Chac Mool", which he had seen as a plaster cast in Paris in 1925. Early versions are pierced conventionally as a bent arm reconnects with the body. Later, more abstract versions, are pierced directly through the body in order to explore the concave and convex shapes. These more extreme piercings developed in parallel with Barbara Hepworth's sculptures. Hepworth first pierced a torso after misreading a review of one of Henry Moore's early shows. (Full article...)