“The pamphlet changed the way Americans viewed government. Beginning with an origin story that echoed John Locke’s ‘Second Treatise of Government,’ Paine depicted people originally created free and equal in nature and subsequently forming representative governments to better secure their liberty and happiness.” - Salon

There is no longer a crisis in the humanities. Our field’s long-running narrative of continuous crisis is over. The bad news: The crisis of the humanities has been revealed by the events of the last year to be a crisis of civil society writ large. - Chronicle of Higher Education

Value capture occurs when you get your values from some external source and let them rule you without adapting them.” Because we live in a world in which nearly everything is quantified and ranked, value capture is everywhere. - The New Yorker

We have discovered that writing about local places that people are already connected to changes this dynamic and gives people a way to examine their own assumptions within a recognisable framework. - The Conversation

At odds with the outspoken desire for that which is novel and original in art, audiences also have a hunger for the familiar or at least the spectacularly plausible. If the future can’t be predicted, then maybe it can be gamed out, run through a series of thought experiments. - The Baffler

If friend groups seem ubiquitous, so does a quiet underclass of people like me, bemoaning their lack of them. - The Atlantic

“This year marks a decade of measurement. In celebration, we’re releasing our most comprehensive analysis yet: rankings for the top 100 communities nationwide and all 50 states.” - SMU DataArts

Charlotte Higgins: “’The goal,’ as one senior employee of the Smithsonian told me, ‘is to reframe the entire culture of the United States from the foundation up.’” - The Guardian

“After a monthslong lull in tensions, the Smithsonian is facing an ultimatum from the White House to comply next week with a demand” to produce a very long list of internal documents for “a comprehensive review of the institution’s content and plans — or risk potential cuts to its budget.” - The New York...

“The National Weather Museum and Science Center in Norman, Oklahoma, the only US museum dedicated to weather artifacts, said late last month that it is at risk of closing. The nonprofit, launched in the early 2000s, has relied completely on donations, grants, and partnerships for funding, and receives no federal funding.” - ARTnews

A growing share of O‑1B visas are now being granted to social media influencers and OnlyFans models, according to an immigration attorney. - Newsweek

After a string of fresh lawsuits and a landmark settlement in 2025, the new year promises to bring a wave of rulings that could define how U.S. copyright law applies to generative AI.  - Reuters

It’s a new lawsuit in a long, long battle, with opponents that are not exactly beloved. “X and the publishers have been in a legal battle for years, with the NMPA first suing the platform back in 2023 over allegations of mass copyright infringement.” - The Hollywood Reporter

“As my will to blindly obey crumbled, I began to secretly tune in to the American armed forces radio station that broadcast in Japan. … One day, ‘Losing My Religion’ came on, and I remember hearing it for the first time and freezing. I physically stopped walking.” - The Guardian (UK)

No doubt we should believe that leadership just as much as we’d believe any questionable partner. “Opera leaders had said that it was an amicable split, and made no mention of the political turmoil causing many artists to cancel their Kennedy Center engagements." - Variety

The resolution calls for the opera to move its performances out of the Kennedy Center’s 2,364-seat Opera House as soon as possible and to reduce the number of performances as a cost-saving measure. Opera officials said that new sites in Washington have been lined up but that no leases have been signed. - The...

On Monday, San Diego Opera announced that Jacobs has committed $4.5 million to establish The Joan and Irwin Jacobs San Diego Symphony and San Diego Opera Collaboration Fund. - San Diego Union-Tribune (MSN)

Mario Miralles has made violins and cellos for everyone from Yo-Yo Ma and Anne Akiko Myers to principals in the Los Angeles Philharmonic to students to Gustavo Dudamel. His home and studio were in Altadena, and he lost years’ worth of carefully sourced wood, instrument diagrams, and almost everything else. - The New York...

The design, by the Australian firms Cox Architecture and Hassell in collaboration with the Japanese practice Azusa Sekkei, is inspired by the wraparound verandas of traditional “Queenslander” houses. (Brisbane is the Queensland state capital.) - CNN

Across the US, artists report being called on to subsidise budgets for museum exhibitions, public commissions and even acquisitions. In some cases, opportunities evaporate entirely when the artist and organisation are unable to raise the money needed for production. - The Art Newspaper

“After starting out with ... mostly borrowed and donated items a century ago, the museum today boasts a collection of more than 39,000 items, including many Spanish Old Masters and significant numbers of French, Indian, Asian and American works. Annual attendance now tops 550,000, about five times (that of) 2010.” - The San Diego...

Amid widespread budget deficits, several top universities have suspended admissions to their art history graduate programs or cut the size of the cohorts they will admit, along with modifications to other humanities concentrations. - ARTnews

“Some temporary workers at the museum — assigned to roles in security, reception, ticketing, the bookshop, and the coatroom — lost their jobs following a change in service providers at the institution last fall. That raised the ire of the trade union Sudd Cobas, which organized the protest.” - ARTnews

Walking through Frieze London’s carpeted aisles in October, a long-developed hunch was confirmed emphatically: we are amid a deluge of bad painting. - The Art Newspaper

It’s probably the busiest building downtown. But the area’s residents have voted down two library bonds. What’s next? - Oregon ArtsWatch

The professor is Justin McDaniel, chair of the religious studies department at Penn. The class meets once a week for seven-to-eight hours, reading one book cover-to-cover in complete silence, then discuss it. No phones, of course. - New York Magazine

More than 32,000 manuscripts were transcribed in the space of a few months. - Inria

My entire collection of something like 4,000 volumes, acquired one by one over all those decades, had turned to smoke and ash in the Palisades Fire. The question before me was not just about this particular book, but about whether it made sense, in my late 70s, to begin collecting all over again. -...

The estate of the author of Slaughterhouse-Five (one of the banned books) joins three (living) novelists and two anonymous high school students as plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU of Utah, in a complaint challenging the state’s “sensitive material review” law. - Publishers Weekly

Contest-winning AI novel loses physical publication and manga adaptation after guidelines were updated to ban AI-generated works. - Automation

“Everything we now know as ‘Hollywood,’ ... the global ‘dream machine’ with all its enduring art, complicated mythology and current anxieties, began under a cedar-shingled roof where DeMille set up in a tiny corner office and actors changed costumes in horse stalls.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)

For one thing, “Warner Bros. will swear there was absolutely no calculation involved in running One Battle After Another as a Comedy at the Globes. If so, the field just happened to shake out awfully nice for the presumed Oscar front-runner.” - Vulture

With Congress’s defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and its subsequent dissolution this week, WABE in Atlanta and jazz station WCLK-FM have seen the loss of about 13% of their budgets, while Georgia Public Broadcasting has now lost 11%. - Inside Radio

And this project — Jafar Panahi’s Cannes-winning It Was Just an Accident — was extra-sensitive, since it’s about torture victims hunting down a man they think was their interrogator. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

"We are deeply concerned that this acquisition of Warner Bros. by Netflix will have a direct and irreversible negative impact on movie theaters around the world,” Cinema United, the largest trade organization representing exhibitors, said. - The Hollywood Reporter

Effectively, in only three years, the Warner Bros. Discovery merger has validated nearly all the concerns that critics of “market first” policymaking have warned about for years. Once it had a dominant market share, the company started providing less and charging more. - The Conversation

“The court conflict involves Dance Theatre of Harlem; its former archivist, Judy Tyrus; and ChromaDiverse, a nonprofit Tyrus founded to preserve the records of performing arts groups. Dance Theatre of Harlem has accused the heirs of their one-time photographer of illegally donating 16 boxes of archival materials to Tyrus’s organization.” - Gothamist

That lack of recognition has real consequences. Across Europe, most public heritage funding is absorbed by monuments, libraries and museums. Dance, which exists only in the moment of its performance, is rarely included. - Horizon

“A former Richmond Ballet student is suing the performance organization for $11.5 million, alleging sexual, emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of staff members during her eight years (there). The 85-page complaint … is the third lawsuit filed by a former student … in the past five years.” - WTVR (Richmond)

“Georgian dance is an art of outrageous virtuosity and athleticism, often meant to indicate prowess at war and in the hunt. The dances are characterized by fiery leaps, sudden drops to the knees, swordplay, spinning jumps and men dancing on the tips of their toes.” - The New York Times

One study found that people who danced frequently (more than once a week) had a 76 percent lower risk of dementia than those who did so rarely. - Washington Post

“The New York Times invited cast members of American Street Dancer to demonstrate the fundamentals of Detroit Jit, Chicago Footwork and Philly GQ.” - The New York Times

In the movie Kokuho, a epic covering five decades in the life of a fictional kabuki actor, we see the traditional theater slowly fade from Japanese popular culture. In real life, interest in kabuki has fallen, especially since COVID. Now there’s hope that the film’s success could attract new fans to the genre. -...

Mind you, this script wasn’t just spit out by a bot after one prompt. The French AI collective Obvious spent two years developing the script with the Théâtre Molière Sorbonne: training the software on the playwright’s structure and themes, then producing new drafts after feedback from scholars and actors. - The New York Times

“In the re-envisioned Fantasticks, the central romantic pair – traditionally Matt and Luisa – are now Matt and Lewis, reinterpreting the story’s ‘allegory of love, longing, and reconciliation through a gay lens,’ according to producers. The show’s original pair of fathers, who secretly orchestrate the clandestine love affair between their children, are now mothers.” -...

“If I step back and think about what unites the shows, it’s probably they’re all trying to be joy-forward experiences and shows where the audience is acknowledged,” says Alex Timbers, now 47. - AP News

Sandy Shinner, 75, will step down in May from the widely-admired Off-Loop company, which she has run for 13 years. She will remain a member of the group’s ensemble. - Chicago Tribune (Yahoo!)

“Shepard would astonishingly make his mark as an avant-garde playwright on the downtown scene with only a few months of networking and no production to his name. … ‘New York was like that in the Sixties,’ he said later. ‘You could write a one-act play and start doing it the next day.’” - Literary...

“After his breakout role as Pablo Escobar 10 years ago on Netflix’s Narcos, Moura frustrated his agents by turning down many of the high-profile, lucrative projects that came his way.” Then? The Secret Agent came along. - The New York Times

And she pays the book, at least, back with a reread every few years. - The New York Times

"Graham … died in 1991 at 96. Tensions between her company and Protas then simmered for a decade before boiling over in a court fight starting in 2001, after which performances by her dancers all but ended for two years. To (his) critics, … he was ‘the most reviled man in dance.’” - The New York...

Less than 24 hours after the horrifying shooting of a woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis, merchandise related to the slain U.S. citizen is already proliferating on e-commerce shopping sites, including on Amazon and Etsy. - Fast Company

The bio from a now-private Instagram account belonging to Good describes her as a “Poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado; experiencing Minneapolis, MN.”  - LitHub

In his primary career, he ran agencies BBDO Worldwide and Omnicon. As the Met’s general manager, he erased the company’s big deficits and stabilized operations; he also served twice as board chairman. As chair of Lincoln Center, he established peace among feuding resident organizations and set big projects in motion. - The New York...