Gatekeeper, here, doesn’t mean the patriarchal bogeyman of progressive fever dreams. It means the picky curator who maintains a necessary membrane between your half-formed, typo-addled thoughts and the wider world. It means the tastemaker who triages opinions and batters the better ones into readable form. - The Walrus

 On one side are texts produced before the arrival of generative LLMs. On the other, everything that has followed—texts that might still be useful, even compelling, but that will always face a lingering suspicion of not being entirely human, of having been smoothed by systems trained to predict the word that comes next. - LA Review of Books

The years from 2000 to 2025 as a period of creative emptiness and stagnation so intractable that it will be remembered (or, rather, is being remembered, through the anticipation of remembrance) as voided time, a dark age. - Yale Review

Our reigning cultural ideology has been poptimism—the idea that if a lot of people like a work of art, then it has to be good. Now sloptimism, which holds that if there’s a lot of art out there and people are engaging with it then how bad can it be? - The New Yorker

For decades, the beautiful game depended on the human eye: a scout on the sideline, attentively watching, waiting for that something special. That process, however, is becoming increasingly data-driven. - The Conversation

Among humans, “you can feel lonely at a party, or you can feel fine alone in your office." Whatever the ideal degree of togetherness, Tye and others think that an animal’s need to balance time alone and time with others represents a kind of homeostasis: an equilibrium that’s critical for survival. - Knowable

Trump’s threat to walk away from the Kennedy Center suggests an additional danger: He could lose interest and doze off, as if at yet another Cabinet meeting or NBA Finals game, leaving parts of the government to fend for themselves. - The Atlantic

The board voted Thursday to seek a stay of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper's May 29 ruling that said Trump's name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center. - NPR

Just under three years after opening, the museum on Charleston’s waterfront is facing financial troubles severe enough that all staffers, including senior executives, are taking mandatory 20-day unpaid furloughs on a staggered schedule from July through December. The IAAM will remain open throughout this period. - WCIV (Charleston)

Nearly 50% of employers are looking to expand their workforce in the next three to five years. Video games, music, design and fashion were particularly expecting to grow over that time. - The Conversation

The plan from City Council members and the Prebys Foundation will have the nonprofit provide $3 million in one-time replacement money, while the city shifts $6 million of hotel occupancy tax money from renovation of the Convention Center to fund arts and culture. - KPBS (San Diego)

“Last year, the (Pennsylvania Council on the Arts) renamed itself Pennsylvania Creative Industries and reorganized its funding criteria, making organizations with budgets under $100,000 ineligible for grants. … (Last Thursday) the council approved a new program called Spotlight, which makes state funding available to organizations with budgets between $10,000 and $100,000.” - WHYY (Philadelphia)

On May 14, almost exactly 43 years later, Michael Jackson's Billie Jean was No. 1 again, prancing to the top of Spotify’s global chart following the release of the biopic “Michael.” - The Wall Street Journal

On Thursday an update to the Spotify iOS app switched the icon back to the well-known logo users are familiar with. That did away with the glowing green mirrorball icon for the Spotify app for Apple devices that it introduced the second week of May. - Variety

“The Washington National Opera (WNO) filed a lawsuit Thursday, alleging that the Kennedy Center failed to return more than $17 million in donations made to the organization after its split from the venue earlier this year.” - The Hill

“The renewal will give Honeck a 25-year tenure with the orchestra, making him the longest-serving music director in the Pittsburgh Symphony’s 131-year history. Honeck, who began his tenure in the 2008/09 season, has overseen a period of significant artistic growth and international visibility for the orchestra.” - Moto Perpetuo

Chad Smith: “I can see that it was an abrupt announcement externally. It didn’t represent abrupt decision-making, though. It was a very considered conversation that has been going on for some time. … Our intention was to have a joint statement, but that wasn’t agreed to.” - The New York Times

The imprint, which will operate within Sony Music, Levit’s longtime label, is called No Silence, and will feature artists other than Levit himself. Among the first three releases, available in October, will be a complete 16-hour performance of Satie’s Vexations. - Gramophone

One answer lies in the sheer ubiquity and sensory intensity of gardens by the second half of the 19th century, when impressionism came into being. Social change that made leisure gardens accessible to all (no longer just kings and aristocrats). - The Conversation

“Visitors rightly expect exceptional exhibitions, meaningful educational experiences, digital access, welcoming spaces, and opportunities for deeper engagement. Those expectations require sustained investment. That challenge is particularly significant for an institution that remains committed to free general admission for all.” - ARTnews

“By analyzing the surfaces of eight Vincent van Gogh paintings, surface metrology indeed confirmed the veracity of one long-contested but recently confirmed Van Gogh specimen — and correctly flagged another that’s been debunked.” - Artnet

According to several people familiar with the call, Glimcher spent much of the meeting explaining why Pace had reached this point. The gallery had grown too large. Costs had risen too high. The model no longer worked. - ARTnews

While the inaugural survey revealed gaps in leadership roles and pay for women, this edition offers a more detailed picture of the structural pressures determining who is—and, crucially, who isn’t—able to build a sustainable long-term career in the arts. - Artnet

PTT's plan features a design by PAU and HOK that references the original beaux-arts station – unceremoniously demolished in the 1960s – and retains Madison Square Garden (MSG) on the site. - Dezeen

“(The Latin poet) recognized that bees had what we might call social being — co-dependent, organized, enterprising — and he praised them for having all the virtues of a Roman citizen: industrious, hardworking, loyal, and (willing) to die to defend the colony.” - Literary Hub

“The streamers are newer. They don't have established libraries of ‘80s and ‘90s movies to reboot, and yet they're still looking for familiarity of titles. (Finding hot titles on BookTok to adapt is) one way to compete at an IP level.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

“(The Authors Guild research) found that only 25% of print books and e-books read in the past month were bought new or through a paid subscription. ... Average author earnings, now pegged at about $10,000 annually, have declined about 42% since 2009, the year Kindles first entered the market.” - Publishers Weekly

“The retailer, which operates 1,200 outlets globally in airports, railway stations and hospitals, … has already experienced a fall in revenues in its UK airport operation due to the conflict in the Middle East, (and) said North America had now also been affected.” - The Guardian

“The Lord of the Rings author’s translation of a medieval religious text from the early 13th century had lain forgotten in the Bodleian Libraries’ collections until now. His reworking of Sawles Warde, an early Middle English prose homily, which he titled Soul’s Ward ..., is to be published for the first time.” - The Telegraph...

“A sign of the nation’s complete engulfing by war was the presence of so many soldiers on the stages; writers who had become soldiers, soldiers who had become writers. The Russia-Ukraine war has dragged on so grievously, and for so long, that entire publishing cycles have turned since 2022.” - The Guardian

The court also found that the AI overview made claims "that are not even made in the search results." None of the linked sources drew any connection between the plaintiffs and the shady companies the AI mentioned. The court called these "the defendant's own statements." - The Decoder

“It’s clear that” — with the cuts in federal funding for public broadcasting likely being permanent — “there’s vulnerability in being a small, independent public media broadcaster, financial or otherwise, which makes merging with a larger organization appealing.” - Editor and Publisher

The European Commission is investigating the $111 billion Paramount-WBD deal under the EU’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation, looking at the approximately $24 billion being fronted for the takeover by the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. - Variety

The top factor, perhaps, was the ongoing fallout from Hollywood’s contraction. It’s no small thing that, since 2022, studios have tightened their belts and downsized their slates, reducing the job opportunities available for average industry workers. - The Hollywood Reporter

It will be an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement, but it’s something. Joining her as recipients of this year’s Governors Awards are director Ridley Scott and animator Floyd Norman. - AP

How much do we want the internet to be television? A good gimmick for social-media content doesn’t automatically translate to interesting TV, a medium that many of us enjoy precisely because it doesn’t live or die by an algorithmic social-media feed. - The New Yorker

“For (a decade NCAAkron) has supported research and development of new work by over 800 dancers from around the United States through dancing labs and residencies. ‘As nobody questions when a scientist goes into a lab, that’s what we believe is possible for a choreographer going into the studio,’ said director Christy Bolingbroke.” - Signal Akron

“’Welcome to bad dancing,’ says Alex Ketley, a choreographer and former member of the San Francisco Ballet who teaches Dance 123: Hot Mess & Deliberate Failure as Practice. Ketley, an advanced lecturer in the department of theater and performance studies and a former Guggenheim Fellow, says it’s his most popular course.” - Stanford Magazine

The passionate ballroom dance of Buenos Aires and Montevideo has found a large, equally passionate base of fans in Istanbul, where a multitude of milonga clubs, dance studios and schools have arisen to support a vibrant tango scene. - AP

Following widespread rumors that the chosen candidate was a politically-connected university professor with no experience in ballet, the company’s dancers issued a public statement stressing the importance of a qualified, experienced director. The Culture Minister responded, insisting that no choice had been made and the rumors were groundless. - The Chosun Daily (Seoul)

Choreographed by Benjamin Millepied, no less. “Tennis doesn’t have a strong tradition of opening numbers — and certainly not of dance routines.” - The New York Times

“Her choreography landed like a bomb in a landscape where vaudeville and ballet ruled the day.” - The New York Times

Pride: the Musical, now at the National Theatre in London, is the stage adaptation of a 2014 film about the London-based activist group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners and the members of a Welsh colliery community whom they supported financially during the 1984-1985 miners’ strike. - The Guardian

Georgia Classic Theatre is being founded by former artists with Georgia Shakespeare, which operated from 1985 to 2014. GCT held its first fundraiser last month and will present its first production, of Macbeth, this fall. - ArtsATL

Rau’s trials — with real witnesses and arguments, followed by symbolic judgments — have put Gisèle Pelicot’s rapists, mining companies in the Congo, and the Russian jurists who prosecuted Pussy Riot in the dock. But when Rau invited controversial billionaire Peter Thiel for a tribunal, stakeholders rebelled. - The Guardian

Emma Dante, who will receive the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at this year’s Venice Theatre Biennale, led a revival of interest in dialect plays in Sicily in the ‘00s, and she’s staged works in Neapolitan and Apulian as well.  Then, last year, she up and moved to Rome. - The New York Times

This year’s event has a record number of participants, and is set to break even after operating at a loss for the last two years. The motto “L.A. is a theater town” is emblazoned on posters and T-shirts all over the festival, featuring thousands of artists in nearly 500 live performances. - Los Angeles...

“Aurora Theatre Company devastated generations of fans and artists when it announced last summer it was vacating its (Berkeley) space and laying off staff. Now the 34-year-old theater, beloved for its intimate, high-quality productions featuring local actors, is coming back.” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

The growing trend for auctions of deceased famous people’s personal items – which has boomed ever since the hugely popular Marilyn Monroe estate sale in 1999 – has even attracted its own portmanteau: “deleb” as in dead celebrity. - The Guardian

“Over a seven-decade career, Hockney explored and reimagined classical portraiture, landscape painting and pop art, working in painting, collage, photography and digital drawing. … One of the most popular and critically lauded British artists of his” — and perhaps any — “generation, his works sold for record prices at auction.” - AP

“In a career that spanned six decades and crisscrossed artistic and commercial contexts, Michals challenged photographic convention and innovated new forms; he is best known for building sequential, frame-by-frame narratives that pair photographs with handwritten text to poetic effect.” - Frieze

As seen in a viral video posted to Instagram on Tuesday, Wembanyama and his sister Eve, who also plays professional basketball, but in Europe, were spotted in Gramercy Park, one of just two private parks in New York City, sketching a statue of Edwin Booth. - ARTnews

“He focused on kinetic sculpture … and the geometric optical illusions of Op Art, infusing them with regional influences” — he was Argentine, though he spent his career in Paris — “and often overtly political content, … pioneer(ing) a form of socially conscious, audience-friendly sculpture and vibrantly colorful, politically engaged painting.” - The New...

“The singer became a major star across the French-speaking world in the 1980s and 1990s with a string of hits that became part of French popular culture. He also appeared in more than 40 film and television productions. … (He faces) allegations by at least 13 women of rape, attempted rape and sexual assault.”...