AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Race To Buy Warner Bros. May Come Down To Relationship
Netflix showing strong interest in WBD’s assets, including making a mostly cash offer to acquire them, coincided with reports that the White House had antitrust concerns, while Comcast, which also submitted a bid, still has to deal with the challenge that President Donald Trump loathes CEO Brian Roberts. – The Wrap (MSN)
- By The Numbers: How Arts Organizations Have Fared In The Past Six Years
Performing arts organizations experienced sharper drops in revenue and staffing in 2024 than museums or community organizations. – SMU Cultural Data
- When Our Machines Become Sentient, Will We Notice?
If an AI system were sentient, then the alignment paradigm, whereby AI activities are circumscribed entirely by human goals, becomes untenable. It would be ethically impermissible to subject the interests of a sentient AI system to human-defined goals. – 3 Quarks Daily
- Choreographer Tere O’Connor Explains His Famously Baffling Dances
“As with other artistic attempts to track the mind more accurately — like the stream-of-consciousness of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce — O’Connor’s coexistence-of-everything choreography can appear off-putting and abstruse. But O’Connor isn’t trying to be difficult, he said.” – The New York Times
- How Civilizations Collapse
Today the conditions for apocalypticism—gaping inequality, pandemics, rapid technological development—are amply present. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that, over the past several years, a number of scholars and political figures have warned of a coming collapse, by which they tend to mean the destruction of the basic elements of society. – The Atlantic (MSN)
ISSUES
- Baby Jesus Is Stolen Amid Controversy Over Creche At Brussels’ Main Christmas Market
The Nativity scene by artist Victoria-Maria Geyer (herself a practicing Catholic) is the first new one on the Grand-Place in 25 years, and she made the human figures without faces so that people of any background could identify with them. Alas, that’s not how the assemblage was received. – Euronews
- Britain’s National Gallery Is Making A Billion-Dollar Move Into Modern And Contemporary Art
In London, until now, post-1900 Western art was Tate territory, but the National has launched “Project Domani,” a £750 million ($998 million) plan to build a new wing for the gallery and set up an endowment to acquire and care for post-1900 art. – The Times (UK)
- A New Contemporary Art Prize Is The UK’s Largest — £200,000
“The Serpentine x FLAG Art Foundation Prize, as it will be called, will be awarded every other year to an international artist who will receive £200,000 ($265,000), as well as an exhibition and programming at both institutions and an accompanying catalog.” – ARTnews
- Christopher Knight Reflects On His Career At The LA Times
Sprawl is usually cast as an L.A. negative, but it was good for art. The horizontal city is just too big to fully gentrify; there was always another neighborhood where an artist could find studio space, or a gallery could open up shop. And they did. – Los Angeles Times
- Reddit Forum r/Art Goes Completely Off The Rails (And, For Now, Offline)
The subreddit, on which thousands of artists post images of their work, has strict rules against anything resembling marketing, sales or self-promotion. When one artist violated that rule (inadvertently, he says) with the words “prints available,” a moderator banned him and deleted seven years of his posts. Then things really went sideways. – Artnet
MEDIA
- By The Numbers: How Arts Organizations Have Fared In The Past Six Years
Performing arts organizations experienced sharper drops in revenue and staffing in 2024 than museums or community organizations. – SMU Cultural Data
- This Major New Arts Center Is Almost Finished, On Time And On Budget. Even So, It May Not Open.
Kanal, on the edge of central Brussels, will feature a large museum, multiple performance venues, and an architecture center. It’s 95% complete and scheduled to open this time next year. Yet, thanks to widely expected budget cuts and a particularly Belgian kind of political dysfunction, Kanal’s prospects are in doubt. – The Guardian
- Russia Prepares To Declare Pussy Riot An “Extremist” Organization
“Russia’s prosecutor general opened a case against the feminist art group on Friday, November 28. The ‘extremist’ label, commonly deployed by the government as justification for stifling political opposition, would officially ban the collective’s activities in Russia.” – Hyperallergic
- Why We Need Systemic Support For Arts And Humanities
Arts and humanities scholarship is not an ornament, it is the record of what human minds have made, imagined and endured. To let those worlds fall quiet is to diminish what it means to be human. – Arts Professional
- Clueless Colleges Are Preparing To Harm Their Students In The Name Of ‘Preparing’ Them For A World Of AI
“Based on the available evidence, the skills that future graduates will most need in the AI era—creative thinking, the capacity to learn new things, flexible modes of analysis—are precisely those that are likely to be eroded by inserting AI into the educational process.” – The Atlantic
MUSIC
- Why Close Reading Is Having A Moment
I learned about close reading when I asked them to take their own thinking seriously—to take themselves seriously. Doing so, I found, forced me to take my job more seriously. – Boston Review
- How A “Broken” Reader Learned To Loving Reading Again
It took weeks for me to realize that I was a broken reader. I assumed I’d just had a streak of bad luck in the Dept. of Picking. I started taking fewer chances. I bought only books that looked like books I would buy. This backfired in a kind of horror-movie sequence. – The New York Times
- Australia’s Leading Dictionary Names “AI Slop” 2025 Word Of The Year
“The Macquarie Dictionary dubbed the term the epitome of 2025 linguistics, with a committee of word experts saying the outcome embodies the word of the year’s general theme of reflecting ‘a major aspect of society or societal change throughout the year’.” – The Guardian
- What Will This French City Do If Its Famous Comic Book Festival Fails?
Angoulême is where graphic novels and comic books are normally celebrated in a huge festival each year. But maybe not in 2026. “Criticized for financial opacity, harsh management style and the firing of an employee who had filed a rape complaint, the company 9e Art + has found itself cornered on all sides.” – Le Monde English (Archive Today)
- The Oxford Word Of The Year Is Probably Something You Experience Every Day
You know what clickbait is, right? Well, the word of the year is its anger-fueled cousin, rage bait, “manipulative tactics used to drive engagement online, with usage of it increasing threefold in the last 12 months.” – BBC
PEOPLE
- Race To Buy Warner Bros. May Come Down To Relationship
Netflix showing strong interest in WBD’s assets, including making a mostly cash offer to acquire them, coincided with reports that the White House had antitrust concerns, while Comcast, which also submitted a bid, still has to deal with the challenge that President Donald Trump loathes CEO Brian Roberts. – The Wrap (MSN)
- By The Numbers: How Arts Organizations Have Fared In The Past Six Years
Performing arts organizations experienced sharper drops in revenue and staffing in 2024 than museums or community organizations. – SMU Cultural Data
- When Our Machines Become Sentient, Will We Notice?
If an AI system were sentient, then the alignment paradigm, whereby AI activities are circumscribed entirely by human goals, becomes untenable. It would be ethically impermissible to subject the interests of a sentient AI system to human-defined goals. – 3 Quarks Daily
- Choreographer Tere O’Connor Explains His Famously Baffling Dances
“As with other artistic attempts to track the mind more accurately — like the stream-of-consciousness of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce — O’Connor’s coexistence-of-everything choreography can appear off-putting and abstruse. But O’Connor isn’t trying to be difficult, he said.” – The New York Times
- How Civilizations Collapse
Today the conditions for apocalypticism—gaping inequality, pandemics, rapid technological development—are amply present. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that, over the past several years, a number of scholars and political figures have warned of a coming collapse, by which they tend to mean the destruction of the basic elements of society. – The Atlantic (MSN)
PEOPLE
- Race To Buy Warner Bros. May Come Down To Relationship
Netflix showing strong interest in WBD’s assets, including making a mostly cash offer to acquire them, coincided with reports that the White House had antitrust concerns, while Comcast, which also submitted a bid, still has to deal with the challenge that President Donald Trump loathes CEO Brian Roberts. – The Wrap (MSN)
- By The Numbers: How Arts Organizations Have Fared In The Past Six Years
Performing arts organizations experienced sharper drops in revenue and staffing in 2024 than museums or community organizations. – SMU Cultural Data
- When Our Machines Become Sentient, Will We Notice?
If an AI system were sentient, then the alignment paradigm, whereby AI activities are circumscribed entirely by human goals, becomes untenable. It would be ethically impermissible to subject the interests of a sentient AI system to human-defined goals. – 3 Quarks Daily
- Choreographer Tere O’Connor Explains His Famously Baffling Dances
“As with other artistic attempts to track the mind more accurately — like the stream-of-consciousness of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce — O’Connor’s coexistence-of-everything choreography can appear off-putting and abstruse. But O’Connor isn’t trying to be difficult, he said.” – The New York Times
- How Civilizations Collapse
Today the conditions for apocalypticism—gaping inequality, pandemics, rapid technological development—are amply present. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that, over the past several years, a number of scholars and political figures have warned of a coming collapse, by which they tend to mean the destruction of the basic elements of society. – The Atlantic (MSN)
THEATRE
VISUAL
- When Our Machines Become Sentient, Will We Notice?
If an AI system were sentient, then the alignment paradigm, whereby AI activities are circumscribed entirely by human goals, becomes untenable. It would be ethically impermissible to subject the interests of a sentient AI system to human-defined goals. – 3 Quarks Daily
- How Civilizations Collapse
Today the conditions for apocalypticism—gaping inequality, pandemics, rapid technological development—are amply present. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that, over the past several years, a number of scholars and political figures have warned of a coming collapse, by which they tend to mean the destruction of the basic elements of society. – The Atlantic (MSN)
- Cliches Have Gotten A Bad Rap
While I agree that leaning on a cliché might be a prosaic get-out-of-jail-free card, I do think they get a bad rap. The general criticism is that clichés are lazy, which I can understand. Yet sometimes I feel like this feedback itself is lazy or one-dimensional. – Sydney Review of Books
- Have We Given Liberal Arts Institutions Too Much Credit?
While liberal arts institutions do have intrinsic value, that doesn’t mean they are entitled to be socially favoured or economically exceptional for ever. A particularly stubborn myth is that liberal arts education has a monopoly on cultivating critical thinking. – The Guardian
- Why Perfectionism Is Killing Our Culture
This fetishization of perfection might not be surprising, but that doesn’t make it any less damaging. You cannot learn or grow while trying to appear as if you have everything figured out. You cannot talk to God by trying to avoid doing something wrong. Perfection is stagnation. – The New York Times
