AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- “Avenue Q” Director On Reviving The Show For A New Generation
Jason Moore, who has restaged and updated the show for London: “Once I revisited, I was like, ‘Oh, right, we made this in our 20s,’ and it’s for people in their 20s. There’s now a whole generation of people who … know the show from a soundtrack, but never saw it.’” – People
- The Man Who Invented American Popular Song: Stephen Foster At 200
Born on July 4, 1826, Foster’s legacy is as influential, and as mixed, as that of his nation. Some of his songs were written for minstrel shows, but many of his lyrics were progressive for their time and place, and one key to their success was their ambiguity. – The Conversation
- Paris Opera’s Historic Theater Has Lead Poisoning
“Planned restoration work (at the Palais Garnier) that was supposed to take two years is now projected for five, with evaluation for the best method to extract the lead to be undertaken this summer.” – ARTnews
- New York City’s New Budget Has Record-High Arts Funding
“The city government will give $323.8 million to (the Department of Cultural Affairs), which administers public funding to arts institutions throughout the city. The appropriation marks a nearly 7% increase from last year’s then-record $299.6 million investment.” – Hyperallergic
- Robert Kimball, Broadway Treasure Hunter, Has Died At 86
“(He) often acted as a kind of Indiana Jones of song, as when he helped excavate a treasure trove of manuscripts by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and others that was found in a warehouse in Secaucus, N.J., in 1982. The hoard dated back to the advent of sound pictures.” – The New York Times
ISSUES
- Canadian Art Forger Used His Children In Scheme
Labeled Canada’s largest art fraud ever by investigators, the scheme has been the subject of a prolonged court battle that culminated last year in the conviction of Jeffrey Cowan, one of eight people arrested in 2023. He has been accused of taking part in an effort to sell 1,400 faked Morrisseau works. – ARTnews
- Nine-Hour Online Queues For Bayeux Tapestry Tickets At British Museum
“When tickets went on sale for the first time on Wednesday morning, … there were reports of 40,000 people queueing by mid-morning, with that figure ballooning to almost 80,000 by mid-afternoon.” – The Guardian
- It’s Expensive To Enter Australia’s Art Prize Competitions. But Hard To Give Them Up
In today’s landscape, prizes are no longer a nice little extra, or a back pat that arrives at the end of a long and successful career. They’re a serious part of the machinery. – ArtsHub
- DePaul Museum Just Closed. But Its Collection Will Stay On Campus
The DePaul Art Museum announcement came two months after the university laid off 114 full-time and part-time staff. Administrators referenced financial troubles due to a significant drop in international graduate student enrollment, increased demand for financial aid and the rising costs of benefits. – WBEZ
- Zelenskyy Suggests A Replacement For The Long-Toppled Lenin Monument In Kyiv
The statue of the father of the USSR was pulled down by demonstrators during the Euromaidan demonstrations in 2013; the pedestal has stood empty ever since. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has officially proposed that a bust of Ivan Mazepa, who led the Cossack state from 1687 to 1709, should go in that spot. – ARTnews
MEDIA
- New York City’s New Budget Has Record-High Arts Funding
“The city government will give $323.8 million to (the Department of Cultural Affairs), which administers public funding to arts institutions throughout the city. The appropriation marks a nearly 7% increase from last year’s then-record $299.6 million investment.” – Hyperallergic
- Paris Has Become Europe’s Nexus For Black Culture
“Paris draws together communities from west, central and north Africa, as well as the Caribbean, and its density creates the conditions for encounters that aren’t as easy to manufacture elsewhere. What distinguishes Paris from other diaspora hubs … is the granularity of African identity it sustains.” – The Guardian
- How To Open Up Elite Universities?
It seems possible to push wealthy colleges like Princeton to enroll more working- and middle-class students. They surely need that push, because our most prestigious universities enroll a larger share of rich students now than they did in the 1980s. – The New York Times
- A New Kennedy Center Mystery
For weeks, a tarp obscuring the facade of the John F. Kennedy Center has baffled observers, prompting speculation about the Washington, D.C., arts complex following the court-ordered removal of the president’s name. But recent court filings have raised a new mystery beyond the canvas. – The Atlantic
- The Think Tank Leading Trump’s War On Education
The think tank has crafted model legislation to remake colleges and universities as race-blind institutions, fueled the campaign to oust Claudine Gay as president of Harvard, and turned City Journal, its quarterly magazine, into a platform for attacking diversity programs, grade inflation, and university presidents’ capitulation to the demands of left-leaning students and faculty. – Chronicle of Higher Education
MUSIC
- How Book Prizes Really Work
In every prize I’ve ever judged or heard firsthand reports of, everything else is up to the judges and their idiosyncrasies. There’s no input from anyone else. The heads of these organizations often learn the winner at the same moment the rest of the world does. – Rebecca Makkai
- How A Self-Published Book Became A Mega Bestseller
Theo of Golden is one of the bestselling books currently making all the lists right now, but its beginnings are a little unorthodox. It was written by a 70-year-old former judge who first went the self-publishing route before having his book distributed by a top-five publisher. – Book Riot
- Short Story Critics Thought Was Written By AI Wins Overall Commonwealth Prize
“Jamir Nazir’s story ‘The Serpent in the Grove’ went viral after being named as a regional winner in mid-May, with critics on X and Bluesky claiming it showed ‘obvious markers’ of AI use. … Nazir will receive an additional £2,500 on top of the £2,500 he won for being named the Caribbean winner last month.” – The Guardian
- International Booker Prize Doubles Its Award Money And Changes Its Name
“The prize, which honors translated fiction and this year celebrates its 10th anniversary, will be renamed the Bukhman International Booker Prize,” with the top award raised from £50,000 to £100,000 (roughly $66,000 to $132,000), split equally between the winning author and translator. – Publishers Weekly
- Former Facebook Exec Sues Meta For Trying To Suppress Her Memoir
Sarah Wynn-Williams, who was director of global public policy at Facebook from 2011 until her firing in 2017, argues in her suit that the non-disparagement clause in her severance agreement and the arbitration order barring her from promoting her book, Careless People, are invalid. – AP
PEOPLE
- “Avenue Q” Director On Reviving The Show For A New Generation
Jason Moore, who has restaged and updated the show for London: “Once I revisited, I was like, ‘Oh, right, we made this in our 20s,’ and it’s for people in their 20s. There’s now a whole generation of people who … know the show from a soundtrack, but never saw it.’” – People
- The Man Who Invented American Popular Song: Stephen Foster At 200
Born on July 4, 1826, Foster’s legacy is as influential, and as mixed, as that of his nation. Some of his songs were written for minstrel shows, but many of his lyrics were progressive for their time and place, and one key to their success was their ambiguity. – The Conversation
- Paris Opera’s Historic Theater Has Lead Poisoning
“Planned restoration work (at the Palais Garnier) that was supposed to take two years is now projected for five, with evaluation for the best method to extract the lead to be undertaken this summer.” – ARTnews
- New York City’s New Budget Has Record-High Arts Funding
“The city government will give $323.8 million to (the Department of Cultural Affairs), which administers public funding to arts institutions throughout the city. The appropriation marks a nearly 7% increase from last year’s then-record $299.6 million investment.” – Hyperallergic
- Robert Kimball, Broadway Treasure Hunter, Has Died At 86
“(He) often acted as a kind of Indiana Jones of song, as when he helped excavate a treasure trove of manuscripts by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and others that was found in a warehouse in Secaucus, N.J., in 1982. The hoard dated back to the advent of sound pictures.” – The New York Times
PEOPLE
- “Avenue Q” Director On Reviving The Show For A New Generation
Jason Moore, who has restaged and updated the show for London: “Once I revisited, I was like, ‘Oh, right, we made this in our 20s,’ and it’s for people in their 20s. There’s now a whole generation of people who … know the show from a soundtrack, but never saw it.’” – People
- The Man Who Invented American Popular Song: Stephen Foster At 200
Born on July 4, 1826, Foster’s legacy is as influential, and as mixed, as that of his nation. Some of his songs were written for minstrel shows, but many of his lyrics were progressive for their time and place, and one key to their success was their ambiguity. – The Conversation
- Paris Opera’s Historic Theater Has Lead Poisoning
“Planned restoration work (at the Palais Garnier) that was supposed to take two years is now projected for five, with evaluation for the best method to extract the lead to be undertaken this summer.” – ARTnews
- New York City’s New Budget Has Record-High Arts Funding
“The city government will give $323.8 million to (the Department of Cultural Affairs), which administers public funding to arts institutions throughout the city. The appropriation marks a nearly 7% increase from last year’s then-record $299.6 million investment.” – Hyperallergic
- Robert Kimball, Broadway Treasure Hunter, Has Died At 86
“(He) often acted as a kind of Indiana Jones of song, as when he helped excavate a treasure trove of manuscripts by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and others that was found in a warehouse in Secaucus, N.J., in 1982. The hoard dated back to the advent of sound pictures.” – The New York Times
THEATRE
VISUAL
- The Wrong Way To Criticize The Humanities
This poorly argued case that it may be time to restrain the principles of academic freedom and faculty autonomy is not helping the situation. – Boston Review
- Do We Have A Facts Problem Or An Interpretation-Of-Facts Problem?
Citizens can agree on verifiable facts and still inhabit different worlds, because facts do not interpret themselves. To see why, we need to look beyond narrow factual disagreements to the competing systems of interpretation through which people select, categorize, frame, connect, explain, and narrate facts. – Persuasion
- Why It’s So Difficult To Calculate Benefits And Costs Of Technology Innovation
When a tool reliably performs a cognitive operation, the internal capacity for that operation tends to weaken with disuse. People who know they can look up something on Google develop weaker memory for the information itself, and habitual GPS users show measurable decline in hippocampal-dependent spatial navigation. – Aeon
- Why Leisure Is A Tough Gig
Give people an hour with nothing scheduled, and many fill it with thoughts of to-dos: the unanswered email, the errand that’s been put off, the project due next week. Free time is sometimes less a chance to rest than an opportunity to take inventory of our obligations. – The Atlantic
- Does Listening To Music While You Work Help You Focus?
Researchers generally agree that the relationship between music and learning is complex. The effects of music on studying and other cognitively demanding tasks appear to depend on the type of task performed, the kind of music and the students themselves. – The Conversation
