Yo-Yo Ma, cellist and Lil Buck, dancer, improvise a new ballet

The world-famous cellist in a suit and a young man in a baseball cap make an unlikely pair. Until the music starts playing and the young man starts slowly moving, his body bending and collapsing to the mournful tune. A friend of Yo-Yo Ma’s, the cellist, caught Lil Buck dancing on YouTube and paired the two for a collaboration for an event to bring the arts back into schools.

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

Michael Bierut: Creating the logo for the Frank Gehry designed New World Symphony


Award-winning designer, Bierut is a partner in the New York design firm Pentagram. He was commissioned by the New World Symphony to create a new logo inspired by the Gehry-designed performance hall itself. Here he shares the path he took to create the logo—a process by which art of one sort influenced art of another.

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

Selling Classical Music on Milk Bottles

Ingenious and charming. Glad they went with milk and not, say, concert soda. Clever, very clever.

If every piece of advertising could be this wonderful and thought-out, people would start hugging us the way they do firemen at the grocery store. Can you hit this bar with something you do this year? Let's make it a mission.

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

Shakespeare, Our Contemporary

James Shapiro, Carol Gilligan and Kenji Yoshino--a professor of English, a psychologist, and a law professor, respectively, discuss how plays like Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth and Titus Andronicus speak to our contemporary ideas of love, leadership and revenge.

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

Why Man Creates by Saul Bass, 1968

A series of explorations, episodes & comments on creativity by iconic designer Saul Bass.

Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.