AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- How “The New Yorker Story” Became A Genre
“I hadn’t investigated this term in depth, but I understood it to mean ‘a short story that is meandering, plotless, and slight — full of middle-class people discussing their relentlessly banal problems.’ … But they were also good!” Those characteristics were deliberately shaped by the different preferences of two key editors. – Woman of Letters
- Lessons From The Aztecs: Rule By Coercion Never Works
The Aztec empire did not fall because it lacked capability. It collapsed because it accumulated too many adversaries who resented its dominance. This is a historical episode the US president, Donald Trump, should take notice of as his rift with traditional US allies deepens. – The Conversation
- The Real Oral History Of The Sundance Festival In Park City
“The sweetest, spiciest and most shocking Sundance stories are ones you don’t hear at Q&As inside the Eccles or Egyptian. … Who better to rewind the times than a group of filmmakers who had their lives changed by what went down during America’s most consequential gathering of independent film insiders?” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Perversely — AI Is Proving The Uniqueness Of Our Creativity
A great human artist, we’d like to believe, amplifies and defends the exceptionalist spirit of our species but, in an echo of the anxieties that haunted early photography, a demonised version of AI threatens to steal away our souls. – Aeon
- Painter Bob Ross, Public Media Rock Star
His painting are being sold to benefit public television. The latest, Change of Seasons (1990) led the sale, bringing in $787,900, more than 13 times its $60,000 high estimate. – Artnet
ISSUES
- San Francisco Has A Public Space Ripe For Becoming The Next High Line
“The second-level promenade of the Embarcadero Center is one of the more scenic, beautifully landscaped, well-maintained spaces in San Francisco. … Yet despite its charms, the Embarcadero Center is also one of San Francisco’s most-underutilized spaces. … (It) can and should be our High Line — only better.” – San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
- To Wall-Text Or Not-To-Wall-Text
“It feels more important than ever to invite multiple voices into the museum space. There isn’t one perfect solution for all visitors, but we strive to offer a variety of access points—whether it’s traditional labels, guided gallery conversations or prompts to spark reflection and dialogue.” – The Art Newspaper
- James Rondeau Is Ready To Beef Up The Art Institute Of Chicago (And Let’s Just Forget About That Airplane Incident, Okay?)
As some other American museums struggle, the Institute is doing very well under Rondeau’s leadership (notwithstanding the medication-and-alcohol-fueled disrobing during a commercial flight last April). He’s now pushing for an expansion, saying the museum needs more display space. – WBEZ (Chicago)
- Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston Resorts To Layoffs
“The MFA faces ‘an unsustainable deficit that we have committed to resolve,’ (an) email to employees stated. … The institution said in a statement to WBUR it plans to reduce 6.3% of its workforce. More than 30 museum positions will be affected.” – WBUR (Boston)
- With Little Warning, SFMOMA “Pauses” Its Free First Thursday Program
“Free First Thursday, which waives the general admission fee for all Bay Area residents from 4-8 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month, has been temporarily halted starting in February. … No return date has been set, but SFMOMA plans to announce a new program series in the summer.” – San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)
MEDIA
- Why More Professors Are Making Their Students Read On Paper
“The English classroom is increasingly a kind of special place where it’s still possible to converse without the screen. AI only seems to make it more imperative to make sure that students are having a direct experience with the text.” – Yale Daily News
- Why Small Liberal Arts Colleges Are The Education Of Choice
At a small liberal-arts college, where a cohort may number fewer than 500 people, admissions officers can also take a stronger hand in assembling a group of students who match the institution’s culture and its vibe while also having very different backgrounds. – The Atlantic
- When Students Are “Customers” Education Suffers
Over the past 15 to 20 years, declining numbers of college-age Americans and a seemingly endless rise in tuition have brought about a shift in power. Students are now treated like customers who rarely have to hear information that upsets them — because schools need their money to survive. – The New York Times
- Kennedy Center VP Of Artistic Planning, Resigns After Being On The Job Two Weeks
Kevin Couch, formerly the director of programming for ATG Entertainment, a British theater company, is the latest in a string of resignations and show cancellations since President Trump purged the center’s board and made himself chairman last year. – The New York Times
- Kennedy Center Fires Senior Director Of Artistic Operations
Sarah Kramer “(had) spent the past decade rising through the ranks of the once-venerated cultural institution. She started as an assistant manager for special programming in 2016. Over the years, she was promoted to assistant manager, then manager for programming, then director, and finally senior director of artistic operations.” – The Daily Beast
MUSIC
- How “The New Yorker Story” Became A Genre
“I hadn’t investigated this term in depth, but I understood it to mean ‘a short story that is meandering, plotless, and slight — full of middle-class people discussing their relentlessly banal problems.’ … But they were also good!” Those characteristics were deliberately shaped by the different preferences of two key editors. – Woman of Letters
- How Did The Iconic “Infinite Jest” Become A Punchline?
The occasion is a moment to ask how a novel that mourns addiction and venerates humility and patience became a glib cultural punch line, routinely subjected to the word “performative” in its most damning sense. – The New Yorker
- Minneapolis Bookshop Becomes Famous After ICE Murders
Greg Ketter became a social media phenomenon over the weekend, when MS Now aired a video of him pacing half a block away from where Alex J. Pretti had been murdered by agents an hour earlier, cursing the 50-100 armed ICE agents keeping the crowd back. – Publishers Weekly
- With Adelaide Writers’ Week Cancelled, A Grassroots Festival Is Popping Up Instead
“Constellations – also jokingly dubbed ‘Not Writers’ Week’ – is being put on by “a loose coalition” of writers and publishers and the support of not-for-profit Writers SA, with dozens of free events to be staged from 28 February to 5 March.” – The Guardian
- A Marathon Moby Dick As A “Radical Act”
Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, published in 1851. Let’s consider it. Is there another book at once so good and so bad, so thrilling and so boring, so authentic to the currents of the soul and so hideously contrived, so stunningly patrolled by dreamlike visions and so crushed by its own intellectual baggage? – The Atlantic
PEOPLE
- How “The New Yorker Story” Became A Genre
“I hadn’t investigated this term in depth, but I understood it to mean ‘a short story that is meandering, plotless, and slight — full of middle-class people discussing their relentlessly banal problems.’ … But they were also good!” Those characteristics were deliberately shaped by the different preferences of two key editors. – Woman of Letters
- Lessons From The Aztecs: Rule By Coercion Never Works
The Aztec empire did not fall because it lacked capability. It collapsed because it accumulated too many adversaries who resented its dominance. This is a historical episode the US president, Donald Trump, should take notice of as his rift with traditional US allies deepens. – The Conversation
- The Real Oral History Of The Sundance Festival In Park City
“The sweetest, spiciest and most shocking Sundance stories are ones you don’t hear at Q&As inside the Eccles or Egyptian. … Who better to rewind the times than a group of filmmakers who had their lives changed by what went down during America’s most consequential gathering of independent film insiders?” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Perversely — AI Is Proving The Uniqueness Of Our Creativity
A great human artist, we’d like to believe, amplifies and defends the exceptionalist spirit of our species but, in an echo of the anxieties that haunted early photography, a demonised version of AI threatens to steal away our souls. – Aeon
- Painter Bob Ross, Public Media Rock Star
His painting are being sold to benefit public television. The latest, Change of Seasons (1990) led the sale, bringing in $787,900, more than 13 times its $60,000 high estimate. – Artnet
PEOPLE
- How “The New Yorker Story” Became A Genre
“I hadn’t investigated this term in depth, but I understood it to mean ‘a short story that is meandering, plotless, and slight — full of middle-class people discussing their relentlessly banal problems.’ … But they were also good!” Those characteristics were deliberately shaped by the different preferences of two key editors. – Woman of Letters
- Lessons From The Aztecs: Rule By Coercion Never Works
The Aztec empire did not fall because it lacked capability. It collapsed because it accumulated too many adversaries who resented its dominance. This is a historical episode the US president, Donald Trump, should take notice of as his rift with traditional US allies deepens. – The Conversation
- The Real Oral History Of The Sundance Festival In Park City
“The sweetest, spiciest and most shocking Sundance stories are ones you don’t hear at Q&As inside the Eccles or Egyptian. … Who better to rewind the times than a group of filmmakers who had their lives changed by what went down during America’s most consequential gathering of independent film insiders?” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Perversely — AI Is Proving The Uniqueness Of Our Creativity
A great human artist, we’d like to believe, amplifies and defends the exceptionalist spirit of our species but, in an echo of the anxieties that haunted early photography, a demonised version of AI threatens to steal away our souls. – Aeon
- Painter Bob Ross, Public Media Rock Star
His painting are being sold to benefit public television. The latest, Change of Seasons (1990) led the sale, bringing in $787,900, more than 13 times its $60,000 high estimate. – Artnet
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Lessons From The Aztecs: Rule By Coercion Never Works
The Aztec empire did not fall because it lacked capability. It collapsed because it accumulated too many adversaries who resented its dominance. This is a historical episode the US president, Donald Trump, should take notice of as his rift with traditional US allies deepens. – The Conversation
- Perversely — AI Is Proving The Uniqueness Of Our Creativity
A great human artist, we’d like to believe, amplifies and defends the exceptionalist spirit of our species but, in an echo of the anxieties that haunted early photography, a demonised version of AI threatens to steal away our souls. – Aeon
- Why Our Cities Need More Places Of Serenity
Perceptual psychologists have long studied what happens when people stare at uniform fields of colour without visual edges or contrasts. Sometimes, experiencing this kind of sensory deprivation can result in something known as the Ganzfeld effect: a response to a uniform field that causes the brain’s pattern recognition to work harder. – Psyche
- Why Liberal Arts Education May Be More Important In The Age Of AI
A machine will never possess the level of interpersonal skills needed to manage a team, to engage in civil discourse with individuals from different cultures and backgrounds, or to resolve messy human conflicts that resist logic. Judgment will never be AI’s strength. – US News
- We Used To Think That Our Brains Were Our Brains. Now We Know Different
Neuroplasticity therefore reframes the brain as neither rigid nor infinitely malleable, but as a living system shaped by experience, effort and time. – The Conversation
