Cultural Weekly’s Top 10 Stories of the Year

In a year filled with uncertainty, Cultural Weekly’s readers are sure-footed – you like stories with depth, analysis and strong points of view.

Here are your Top 10 most-read stories for 2011.

10. In Why Theatre Will Survive, Adam Leipzig walks down Hollywood Blvd. and discovers that theatre, although the least technological of all the arts, may end up being the longest-lived of them all.

9. You contributed over 40 comments to our Thanksgiving edition’s What Creativity Are YOU Thankful For? You thanked teachers and poets, playwrights and musicians. You shared how thecreative spirit affects our lives.

8. In Becoming Chaz, Remaking Oprah, Ulli K. Ryder looks at two transitions — Chaz Bono’s and Oprah’s network. Ulli got headlines and press this year with her dissection of Herman Cain’s speaking style.

7. Hoyt Hilsman called for the creation of an American National Film Commission. This was picked up by many sites and ran worldwide. People in other countries tended to agree. People in America called him names.

6. With The Majesty of Lucien Freud, ArtTalk’s Edward Goldman reflects on the death of this great painter.

5. We’re All Robert Capa Now suggests that as we all have cell phone cameras, we call become war zone photographers at a moment’s notice. This article keeps getting noticed after 40 weeks here.

4. How did democracy start? Perhaps Theatre Invented Democracy.

3. As a Cultural Weekly reader, you love poets. Many of you love My Rodeo by Jack Grapes, and have posted a record 90+ comments!  Watch for more poems next year.

2. Many of you engage in the movie business, as contact sport or spectator sport. Adam Leipzig’s Indie Films: State of the Union, which ran last January during the Sundance Film Festival,  shares a comprehensive history of American independent cinema and a look at the then-current landscape. Watch for a full update in our next edition, just before 2012’s Sundance.

1. So many of you are artists!  Maybe that’s why the most-read article of the year is Why Artists Aren’t Making a Living, and Artistic Directors Aren’t Making a Difference by Diane Ragsdale at Jumper.

Here’s to next year – may everyone make a living and make a difference!

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