YouTube as highbrow cultural library

This list of streaming arts videos has been out for a few days now, but it’s worth bookmarking, if only to remind yourself that there’s more to YouTube than political attack videos and sneezing pandas. There’s actually culture there, from highbrow (Jackson Pollock in action, above; Igor Stravinsky conducting his own Firebird Suite; Vladimir Nabokov talking about Lolita to Lionel Trilling) to pop (a pre-fame Nirvana rehearsing in a garage; Kurt Russell’s failed Star Wars audition; the famous final Beatles concert on the Apple rooftop). Kudos to The Observer’s Ajesh Patalay for digging through all of YouTube to find these (and h/t to USA Today’s Pop Candy for the link). If you have any rarities or underappreciated YouTube arts videos that Patalay missed, share the links below.