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Today's Stories

How Journalism Media Lost The American Public

"I actually think that the decline of trust has to do with newspapers’ becoming more responsible, more accurate. Nobody I know would trade today’s newspaper for one from 1960." - Harper's

Instant Translation Is Like Magic. But Might We Be Losing Something?

As people embrace these transformative tools, they risk eroding capacities and experiences that embody values other than seamlessness and efficiency. - The Atlantic

The Crushing Debt Of Arts Schools

Art schools are marketed as gateways to success. However, the fine print tells a different story: crushing debt, unreliable outcomes, and a mismatch between what’s promised and what’s delivered. - Hyperallergic

Expert Critics Look At This year’s Booker Finalists

Academic critics read closely this year's Booker Prize finalists: Each novel has emotional temperature and structural ambition: domestic quietudes stretched into myth, migration histories turned intimate, masculinity stripped to bone, love sagas operating as cultural x-rays. A list that prizes atmosphere over spectacle. - The Conversation

Enough With Those Claims Culture Has Become Less Creative. Look Around!

The Internet didn’t destroy monoculture. It exposed the fact that monoculture was always a bottleneck, popped the cork, and let the contents fizz out.  - ARTnews

Fired Philadelphia Art Museum Director Sues Over Her Dismissal

In her lawsuit, which was filed in Pennsylvania state court, the former director, Sasha Suda, contends that she was fired “without a valid basis” after negotiations over the terms of her departure with the museum’s board of trustees had reached an impasse. - The New York Times

How To Build an Imagination: The Books Of Childhood

We learn from stories. Our ancestors were raised on myths about their ancestors, tales about their saviours, emperors and lawgivers, and, eventually, novels about any number of times and places, most of them named.  - Equator

Fighting The Algorithms: Tips For Discovering New Music

"For the past year and a half, I’ve been trying to figure out the easiest way to uncover new music. Not new releases, not new songs like the ones I already like, but music that’s new to me, by artists I haven’t encountered before." - The New York Times

Why Music Education Should Resist Conformity

We live in an age of unprecedented connectivity, and yet this very connectedness has led to something paradoxical: uniformity. In our quest to standardise, streamline, and compare ourselves globally, we risk erasing the very differences that make human creativity, and particularly music, so rich. - The Strad

@100: Remembering Charles Mackerras’ Impact On English Musical Life

Mackerras had a major impact on British musical life, whether as Music Director of English National Opera and Welsh National Opera, working with major symphony orchestras, or conducting smaller groups such as the English Chamber Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. - Gramophone

Washington National Opera Considers Leaving The Kennedy Center

Leaving the Kennedy Center is a possible scenario after a collapse in box office revenue and “shattered” donor confidence in the wake of Trump’s takeover, said Francesca Zambello. - The Guardian

The Trump Administration Keeps Using Norman Rockwell’s Imagery, And His Family Is Fed Up

“It’s important to us that younger generations know what the work stood for and don’t get some false impression from these decontextualized samplings — and we don’t want it to be associated with what the Department of Homeland Security is doing.” - Washington Post (MSN)

It’s Actually Not So Hard To Make Your Movie Sets Accessible

And it benefits literally everyone, advocates say, including the audience. “If everyone feels like this is a safe set and they can do their best work, the work will just be better.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

After Fifty Years In San Francisco, This Gallery Is Moving Out

The plan: Rena Bransten Gallery will turn into a pop-up. "I have uncertainty about whether the model that we all grew up in, going to galleries, is viable,” the gallery director says. “I need to really look around and see what people are doing.” - San Francisco Chronicle

Iconoclast Art Guitar Maker Ken Parker Has Died At 73

“Parker leveraged his extensive experience in woodworking and guitar repair, along with his maverick streak, to build groundbreaking guitars that went on to be displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.” - The New York Times

Filmmaker Yi Zhou Accuses Actor Jeremy Renner Of Unwanted Sexual Contact

Zhou accused Renner of sending unwanted sexual images, and of threatening “to call immigrationICE” to intimidate her. The actor denies the accusations. - Los Angeles Times (AOL)

They Were Dancing ‘Nutcracker’ When An Earthquake Struck New Zealand

And they kept right on dancing. - Radio New Zealand

When You Have A Multi-Set Show, You Need More Than A Director

Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, on his new series Pluribus: "The concept of the others being in sync telepathically led to us hiring our first-time choreographer, ever. Technically, I think he's billed as a movement coordinator or a movement designer.” - Collider

A Passionate Plea To Stop Devaluing Art, And The Future

“For years we’ve been grappling with the collapse of the creative middle class due to corporate greed. … We have more content than ever, but fewer opportunities for art and artists to thrive.” - LitHub

A Christmas Carol, But Make It Contemporary Britain, And Also A Big Fun Musical

“Gurinder Chadha was wandering through the Charles Dickens Museum in London, trying to commune with the author’s spirit. ‘If you were alive today,’ the film-maker asked him, ‘what story would you tell?’” - The Guardian (UK)

By Topic

Instant Translation Is Like Magic. But Might We Be Losing Something?

As people embrace these transformative tools, they risk eroding capacities and experiences that embody values other than seamlessness and efficiency. - The Atlantic

Enough With Those Claims Culture Has Become Less Creative. Look Around!

The Internet didn’t destroy monoculture. It exposed the fact that monoculture was always a bottleneck, popped the cork, and let the contents fizz out.  - ARTnews

Hey, If You’re Addicted To Technology, You Might Do Worse Than Looking At How Renaissance Nuns Lived

Or at least … that’s an idea? “Using the 17th-century nun Sor Juana as inspiration, lay out five steps to writing an assertive, non-people-pleasing email.” - NPR

Apple TV Has A New, Colorful Logo, Created Fully By Hand In An Old-School Studio Way

The design team “gathered in a studio with a blacked-out stage, a giant glass version of the Apple TV logo, and a bevy of colorful studio lights.” - Fast Company (Archive Today)

All Roads Lead To Rome, But Make It A Digital Map

OK, cool, especially if you’re a Roman Empire kind of person: “Users can digitally explore nearly 300,000 kilometers of roads laid across the vast Roman Empire at its height in the mid-second century.” - Open Culture

Why One Bowdoin Professor’s Mantra Is Never Talk To The New York Times

“If you have enough money to get somebody, anybody, to produce a white paper for you, which you can then put on some think-tank stationery? Then, my friend, you are ready to enter into the rushing current of elite reportage ... no matter how unhinged the position you’ve take.” - LitHub

The Crushing Debt Of Arts Schools

Art schools are marketed as gateways to success. However, the fine print tells a different story: crushing debt, unreliable outcomes, and a mismatch between what’s promised and what’s delivered. - Hyperallergic

The Trump Administration Keeps Using Norman Rockwell’s Imagery, And His Family Is Fed Up

“It’s important to us that younger generations know what the work stood for and don’t get some false impression from these decontextualized samplings — and we don’t want it to be associated with what the Department of Homeland Security is doing.” - Washington Post (MSN)

Filmmaker Yi Zhou Accuses Actor Jeremy Renner Of Unwanted Sexual Contact

Zhou accused Renner of sending unwanted sexual images, and of threatening “to call immigrationICE” to intimidate her. The actor denies the accusations. - Los Angeles Times (AOL)

When Words, And Then Truth, And Then Reality, Fall Apart

“Navigating life in an era of ‘alternative truths’ has proved to be a disorienting experience: How can people live together when truth has become whatever one would like it to be?” - Le Monde (Archive Today)

Two Top BBC Officials Abruptly Quit Over Editing Of Documentary About January 6

The resignations “came several days after The Daily Telegraph published details of a leaked internal memo arguing that a BBC Panorama documentary had juxtaposed comments by Mr. Trump in a way that made it appear that he had explicitly encouraged the attack on the Capitol.” - The New York Times

Inside The Kennedy Center’s Nose-Dive

Interviews with 25 people, including current and former Kennedy Center executives, board members, longtime employees, recent hires, industry leaders and Trump administration officials, revealed a Washington institution in crisis. - The New York Times

Fighting The Algorithms: Tips For Discovering New Music

"For the past year and a half, I’ve been trying to figure out the easiest way to uncover new music. Not new releases, not new songs like the ones I already like, but music that’s new to me, by artists I haven’t encountered before." - The New York Times

Why Music Education Should Resist Conformity

We live in an age of unprecedented connectivity, and yet this very connectedness has led to something paradoxical: uniformity. In our quest to standardise, streamline, and compare ourselves globally, we risk erasing the very differences that make human creativity, and particularly music, so rich. - The Strad

@100: Remembering Charles Mackerras’ Impact On English Musical Life

Mackerras had a major impact on British musical life, whether as Music Director of English National Opera and Welsh National Opera, working with major symphony orchestras, or conducting smaller groups such as the English Chamber Orchestra and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. - Gramophone

Washington National Opera Considers Leaving The Kennedy Center

Leaving the Kennedy Center is a possible scenario after a collapse in box office revenue and “shattered” donor confidence in the wake of Trump’s takeover, said Francesca Zambello. - The Guardian

Music Labels Are Beginning To Make AI Deals. What Does It Mean For Musicians?

Such settlements and strategic partnerships will help major labels set the ground rules for developing AI-music ecosystems. And it seems they are becoming common. - The Conversation

An AI Map Of Bob Dylan’s Songs

Could machine analysis measure the qualities that make Dylan’s songs resonate – how complexity arises, how new images mix with the familiar, how ambiguity threads through songs? - Aeon

Fired Philadelphia Art Museum Director Sues Over Her Dismissal

In her lawsuit, which was filed in Pennsylvania state court, the former director, Sasha Suda, contends that she was fired “without a valid basis” after negotiations over the terms of her departure with the museum’s board of trustees had reached an impasse. - The New York Times

After Fifty Years In San Francisco, This Gallery Is Moving Out

The plan: Rena Bransten Gallery will turn into a pop-up. "I have uncertainty about whether the model that we all grew up in, going to galleries, is viable,” the gallery director says. “I need to really look around and see what people are doing.” - San Francisco Chronicle

Turns Out The Louvre Photo’s ‘Fedora Man’ Is A 15-Year-Old French Teen Who Loves To Dress Rather Nattily

The mysterious person “was cast as an old-school detective, an inside man, a Netflix pitch — or not human at all. ... Pedro understood why. ‘In the photo, I'm dressed more in the 1940s, and we are in 2025,’ he said. ‘There is a contrast.’” - NPR

Indigenous Artist Tania Willard Wins Canada’s Largest Contemporary Art Prize

The chair of the jury said, "She harvests berries to make ink drawings, harnesses wind and fire to compose  poems and operas, and builds worlds with her BUSH Gallery collaborators. In the face of precarity, scarcity and conflict, her work offers a model of sustainability, abundance and connection.” - CBC

The National Exhibits That Took Years, Even Decades, To Plan, Are Shuttered And Empty

“At a time when the Trump administration is cutting arts funding and seeking to influence content at the Smithsonian, the shutdown, now the longest in the nation’s history, is adding further uncertainty to D.C.’s already rattled museums.” - Washington Post (MSN)

The New York Times’s 10-Minute Painting Focus Challenge Is Changing Its Creators

“Buchanan said he had begun noticing subtle things in his own life, like how cracks zigzag across the sidewalk, or the way light hits the water, or the way a plant is squeezed against a rock.” - The New York Times

Expert Critics Look At This year’s Booker Finalists

Academic critics read closely this year's Booker Prize finalists: Each novel has emotional temperature and structural ambition: domestic quietudes stretched into myth, migration histories turned intimate, masculinity stripped to bone, love sagas operating as cultural x-rays. A list that prizes atmosphere over spectacle. - The Conversation

How To Build an Imagination: The Books Of Childhood

We learn from stories. Our ancestors were raised on myths about their ancestors, tales about their saviours, emperors and lawgivers, and, eventually, novels about any number of times and places, most of them named.  - Equator

A Passionate Plea To Stop Devaluing Art, And The Future

“For years we’ve been grappling with the collapse of the creative middle class due to corporate greed. … We have more content than ever, but fewer opportunities for art and artists to thrive.” - LitHub

How A Reader Evolves Into Being A Completionist

“I want to know: I want to watch writers grow from book to book, to follow the way their interests shift and their style adapts as they do more and more work. I want to be aware of the through-lines—sometimes overt, sometimes understated.” - Reactor

AI Translation Is Nowhere Near Good Enough For Travel

“Each of these devices requires time, patience, and ideally, a solid internet connection. You need to predownload language pairs to ensure offline capability. You have to have the wherewithal to gesture to a conversation partner what the device is.” - The Verge (Archive Today)

Russian Publishers And Bookstores Are Nervous As Kremlin Cracks Down On Books

“Publishers have faced a difficult dilemma: stop offering books that the Kremlin dislikes, clandestinely cut the risky parts or openly redact them to show readers that something was censored. … ‘Right now we’re all playing Minesweeper, (said one literary critic,) when you don’t understand what is forbidden and what is not.’” - The New...

How Journalism Media Lost The American Public

"I actually think that the decline of trust has to do with newspapers’ becoming more responsible, more accurate. Nobody I know would trade today’s newspaper for one from 1960." - Harper's

It’s Actually Not So Hard To Make Your Movie Sets Accessible

And it benefits literally everyone, advocates say, including the audience. “If everyone feels like this is a safe set and they can do their best work, the work will just be better.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

When You Have A Multi-Set Show, You Need More Than A Director

Vince Gilligan of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, on his new series Pluribus: "The concept of the others being in sync telepathically led to us hiring our first-time choreographer, ever. Technically, I think he's billed as a movement coordinator or a movement designer.” - Collider

A Christmas Carol, But Make It Contemporary Britain, And Also A Big Fun Musical

“Gurinder Chadha was wandering through the Charles Dickens Museum in London, trying to commune with the author’s spirit. ‘If you were alive today,’ the film-maker asked him, ‘what story would you tell?’” - The Guardian (UK)

Birmingham, England: The Next Hollywood?

Why not? After all, “the city was once synonymous with groundbreaking television." - BBC

Why US Companies Actually Might Want TikTok

The e-commerce wing is now as big as EBay, despite all of the news that the app would be banned. Think billions of dollars - in only two years of existence. - Wired

They Were Dancing ‘Nutcracker’ When An Earthquake Struck New Zealand

And they kept right on dancing. - Radio New Zealand

Toronto’s Only Purpose-Built Dance Venue To Reopen

The auditorium at Queens Quay had been called the Fleck Dance Theatre; early this year, the Harbourfront Centre, which manages Queens Quay, declined to renew the Fleck’s lease. Now the Toronto Stage Company will take over, presenting its own mainstage season there and making it available to dance organizations. - Ludwig Van

Why Robotics Companies Are Working With Dancers

“As moving machines like drones and self-driving cars become more integrated into our daily lives, the tech companies behind them are realizing they need experts who understand motion through space and time, and how the nuances of that motion affect the way we feel about their products. Translation: They need dance artists.” - Dance...

When Dance Movement Is Constrained By Costumes

Josephine Flos was rehearsing the opening of “Figure,” a new dance piece created by the fashion designer Lisa Konno in collaboration with the choreographer Peter Leung, that tries to answer a simple question: What if choreography starts with the costumes? - The New York Times

Is Marseille Becoming A Dance Capital?

“The Ballet National de Marseille has also taken a bold new direction under the leadership of the experimental collective (LA)Horde, producing edgy performances drawing on internet-native styles like jumpstyle and TikTok choreography. Dancers and choreographers are relocating to the city, too.” - Dance Magazine

NYC’s Joyce Theatre Gets $15M Boost For Dance

Two of New York’s most prominent dance philanthropists are donating $15 million to the Joyce Theater, a leading dance stage in Manhattan, helping to assure the theater’s long-term financial stability at a time when dance organizations are struggling with declining financial support and audiences. - The New York Times

Alex Winters On Working With Keanu Reeves Again, This Time On Broadway

“A child actor turned movie star turned director and producer and prolific tech documentarian, Winter’s career has been fitful, searching and unconventional, full of sharp left turns and voracious curiosity.” - The Guardian (UK)

How Strangers Negotiate Sex, Onstage

"Without being clued in to the content of the play, connected with the show’s intimacy director … to go over the show’s simulated sexual choreography. They signed intimacy riders that detailed what they were agreeing to do onstage.” - The New York Times

Has Chicago’s Theater Scene Addressed The Issues In The “We See You, White American Theater” Letter?

“WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times asked some Black Chicago theater makers what has changed for them since 2020. Among those interviewed for this story, even the most optimistic back in 2020 felt no significant change in the years since. That’s despite the promise of major action by groups themselves.” - WBEZ (Chicago)

“The Baker’s Wife,” A Musical That’s Been Proofing In The Oven For 50 Years

Composer Stephen Schwartz and book writer Joseph Stein spent months on a pre-Broadway tour in 1976 trying to fix the show. It didn’t work, although one song, “Meadowlark,” became a hit. Since a revival in 2002, productions have been trying to address the piece's problems, and now there's a high-profile staging Off-Broadway. - TheaterMania

The Persistent, Pernicious Myths About Shakespeare And Marlowe

The Romantic ideal of a singular creative genius remaking the rules of his era doesn’t really match William Shakespeare, who was (for a theater guy) fairly conventional. Christopher Marlowe is a better fit, and he transformed more than he gets credit for, but mythmaking distorts his image as well. - The Atlantic (Yahoo!)

Theatre Might Just Want To Be Everybody’s Church

“There’s an inherent theatricality to church, and a furtive spirituality to theater. In form, they’re similar: Everybody crowds into a room, usually sits facing the same direction, and focuses on a central action — at least for a while.” - The New York Times

Iconoclast Art Guitar Maker Ken Parker Has Died At 73

“Parker leveraged his extensive experience in woodworking and guitar repair, along with his maverick streak, to build groundbreaking guitars that went on to be displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.” - The New York Times

Gillian Tindall, Author Who Wrote About What Lies Beneath The Present, Has Died At 87

Tindall’s The Fields Beneath: The History of One London Village “(1977) was a wonderfully discursive portrait of a community that Mary Shelley had described as an 'odious swamp’” - and it has never been out of print. - The New York Times

Actress Pauline Collins, Known For “Shirley Valentine,” Has Died At 85

She began her carer in theatre and TV and first became widely known as troublemaking parlour maid Sarah on Upstairs, Downstairs. Her turn as the lonely housewife talking to the wall in the one-woman play Shirley Valentine won her an Olivier, a Tony, and, for the film adaptation, an Oscar nomination. - The Hollywood...

What Margaret Atwood Left Out Of Her Memoir

By telling a straightforward tale about her life in which she is the unquestionable hero, Atwood leaves little space for truly literary tensions but plenty of space for gossipy ones. - The Walrus

Kristin Chenoweth On The Backlash To Her Tweet On Charlie Kirk’s Death

“It was tough on me, but I’m not going to answer any questions about it because I dealt with it. It nearly broke me, and that’s all I’m going to say. You probably know my heart, so you probably know. … Anybody that knows me knows how I believe.” - The Hollywood Reporter

Actress Diane Ladd, Three-Time Oscar Nominee, Has Died At 89

She received nominations for Best Supporting Actress for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Wild at Heart, and Rambling Rose; she performed in the latter two (and several other films) alongside her daughter, Laura Dern. Ladd appeared in a dozen or so other movies as well as scores of television shows. - The Hollywood Reporter

AJ Premium Classifieds

AJClassifieds

Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra seeks President & Chief Executive Officer

The next President & CEO will lead the KSO into its next century of artistic excellence, inspired community-engaged education, and strategic growth.

Texas Ballet Theater seeks Director of Development Via Sweibel Arts

Texas Ballet Theater seeks a strategic, relationship-driven Director of Development to lead fundraising and donor engagement as the company launches a $40 million capital campaign.

Assistant Professor/Associate Professor of Theatre Arts (Directing) or Assistant Professor/Associate Professor of Professional Practice in Theatre Arts (Directing)

The Program aims to attract dynamic and dedicated artists with vision, a standing in the profession, a commitment to teaching, service, and an appetite for collaborating across disciplines.

Director of Programming, Hult Center, Eugene, OR

Application Deadline: Monday, December 1, 2025, at 5 p.m. P.T. Accepting Online Applications Only Via the City of Eugene’s Website: Director of Programming | Job

Modern Women: 21st Century Dance a COLORING BOOK and CALENDAR 2026

Modern Women: 21st Century Dance coloring book and calendar 2026 Great gifts for women, girls, dance lovers and those who love them.

The Trump Administration Keeps Using Norman Rockwell’s Imagery, And His Family Is Fed Up

“It’s important to us that younger generations know what the work stood for and don’t get some false impression from these decontextualized samplings — and we don’t want it to be associated with what the Department of Homeland Security is doing.” - Washington Post (MSN)

A Passionate Plea To Stop Devaluing Art, And The Future

“For years we’ve been grappling with the collapse of the creative middle class due to corporate greed. … We have more content than ever, but fewer opportunities for art and artists to thrive.” - LitHub

When Words, And Then Truth, And Then Reality, Fall Apart

“Navigating life in an era of ‘alternative truths’ has proved to be a disorienting experience: How can people live together when truth has become whatever one would like it to be?” - Le Monde (Archive Today)

Two Top BBC Officials Abruptly Quit Over Editing Of Documentary About January 6

The resignations “came several days after The Daily Telegraph published details of a leaked internal memo arguing that a BBC Panorama documentary had juxtaposed comments by Mr. Trump in a way that made it appear that he had explicitly encouraged the attack on the Capitol.” - The New York Times

The National Exhibits That Took Years, Even Decades, To Plan, Are Shuttered And Empty

“At a time when the Trump administration is cutting arts funding and seeking to influence content at the Smithsonian, the shutdown, now the longest in the nation’s history, is adding further uncertainty to D.C.’s already rattled museums.” - Washington Post (MSN)

How Strangers Negotiate Sex, Onstage

"Without being clued in to the content of the play, connected with the show’s intimacy director … to go over the show’s simulated sexual choreography. They signed intimacy riders that detailed what they were agreeing to do onstage.” - The New York Times

Film Festival In New York Cancelled At Last Minute After Chinese Filmmakers Withdraw

“The inaugural IndieChina film festival was planned to take place between 8 and 15 November. But on 5 November the festival’s curator ... posted on Facebook that he had been forced to cancel 80% of the planned screenings because film-makers had pulled out” after their families in China were pressured by authorities. - The...

Bizarre Attack By Teen Tourist On Met Museum Artworks

On Monday, a 19-year-old hurled water at a 19th-century portrait and a 16th-century altarpiece, then ripped two tapestries. His mother turned him over to police, who said he seemed to be to be under the influence of an “unknown substance” and took him to a hospital before having him arraigned for criminal mischief. -...

Anti-Israel Protestors Light Flares Inside Crowded Paris Concert Hall

Thursday night’s Israel Philharmonic concert at the Philharmonie was interrupted three times by demonstrators, including twice when flares were lit in the balcony and smoke filled the auditorium. One of the disruptors was attacked by angry audience members and a physical fight broke out. Four people were arrested. - BBC (MSN)

James Gaffigan Appointed Music Director Of Houston Grand Opera

The New York-born, Houston-trained conductor is currently general music director of the Komische Oper Berlin and just completed a term leading Valencia’s Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. Gaffigan succeeds Patrick Summers, who departs at the end of this season. - CultureMap Houston

Will This Silent-Film Era Instrument Disappear?

"A cousin to self-playing player pianos, photoplayers automatically play music read out of perforated piano rolls. During their slim heyday — from their invention around 1910 until about 1930, when the silent film era is thought to have ended — photoplayers delighted audiences.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

Honestly, The Architecture Of The White House Was Simply An Honor System

Yes, you can blame the man who destroyed that honor system, but it could have been set up quite a bit differently. - The Atlantic (MSN)

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