AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Rarely-Seen Leonardo Da Vinci Mural In Milan Opened To Public For Winter Olympics
For just over five weeks, from February 7 to March 14, visitors will be allowed to climb the towering 20-foot scaffold inside the Sforza Castle’s Sala delle Asse to view conservators at work on a vast, unfinished wall and ceiling painting by Leonardo hidden for centuries. – Artnet
- Snubs In This Year’s Oscar Nominations
The overlooking of the Good Witch was truly Wicked. Then again, crowd pleaser Wicked: For Good got basically nothing overall, so maybe it’s time to reconsider that shunned Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film category …just sayin’. – Deadline
- Napa Art Museum Selling Its Estate Because Of Financial Pressures
The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa has listed its 217-acre estate for $10.9 million, less than a year after announcing a plan to boost revenue through event rentals. – San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
- La Scala Finished 2025 With Record Box Office
La Scala closed 2025 with record ticket sales of over €40 million (+7.3% compared to 2024). Added to this is the record revenue of the La Scala Theatre Museum, which reached €3.4 million. – Gramilano
- Hollywood’s “Woke” Era Has Emphatically Ended
For anyone fantasizing about Hollywood as some liberal bulwark, though, the 2024 election brought that idea to an abrupt halt. The industry’s era of progressive sincerity, and much of its wariness toward conservative-coded content, has evaporated. – The New York Times
ISSUES
- Rarely-Seen Leonardo Da Vinci Mural In Milan Opened To Public For Winter Olympics
For just over five weeks, from February 7 to March 14, visitors will be allowed to climb the towering 20-foot scaffold inside the Sforza Castle’s Sala delle Asse to view conservators at work on a vast, unfinished wall and ceiling painting by Leonardo hidden for centuries. – Artnet
- Napa Art Museum Selling Its Estate Because Of Financial Pressures
The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa has listed its 217-acre estate for $10.9 million, less than a year after announcing a plan to boost revenue through event rentals. – San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
- Will The Met Opera Sell Its Chagalls?
New York’s Metropolitan Opera is facing a serious financial crunch, and may sell two beloved Marc Chagall murals to help fill the gap—but if it does, it will leave them in place. Sotheby’s valued the artworks at a total of $55 million. – ARTnews
- World’s Oldest Known Cave Art Discovered In Indonesia
“One hand stencil was dated to at least 67,800 years ago, making it the oldest securely dated cave art found anywhere. This is at least 15,000 years older than the rock art we had previously dated in this region, and more than 30,000 years older than the oldest cave art found in France.” – The Conversation
- There’s More Footage Of The Jewelry Robbery At The Louvre — And It Looks Pretty Bad
“The two perpetrators can be seen wearing balaclavas and using disc cutters to slice open display cases. The theft takes place under the watch of staff members who were not able to intervene.” – Artnet
MEDIA
- Hundreds Of Artists Warn About AI Slop
Around 800 artists, writers, actors, and musicians signed on to a new campaign against what they call “theft at a grand scale” by AI companies. The signatories call the campaign “Stealing Isn’t Innovation.” – The Verge
- Trump Administration Just Won’t Let Its Court Fight Against Institute Of Museums And Library Services Go
“Although the IMLS restored discretionary grant funding in December and just last week reopened to grant proposals for FY 2026 — in compliance with a November court order — defendants in State of Rhode Island v. Trump have filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.” – Publishers Weekly
- UK Government Announces £1.5 Billion In Arts Funding
Around half of the package, £760 million, will go to museums, mostly for infrastructure needs. £425 million will go to support some 300 performance venues, £230 million to maintain churches and heritage buildings, £27.5 million to upgrading libraries, and £80 million over four years to National Portfolio Organisations. – Press Association (UK) (Yahoo!)
- The Crisis In Humanities? The Business Model Doesn’t Work
Fundamentally, the state of the humanities and liberal arts reveals a widening conflict over the “value” of higher education – with increasingly corporatized universities favoring market-driven metrics for evaluation, and proponents of humanistic education stressing that its worth to both individuals and society at large cannot be measured that way. – The Guardian
- So This Is Donald Trump’s “Golden Age of Culture” …
“Trolling and tackiness, often crossbred with left-coded pop songs and hot memes, have served to wish a new zeitgeist into existence. Consume only the output of MAGA’s multi-front media efforts, and you may come to feel that the country is coalescing into pep-rally unity on Trump’s behalf.” – The Atlantic (MSN)
MUSIC
- Unique, “Priceless” Medieval Manuscript Discovered In English School Library
The book is the only surviving complete original manuscript of Richard Rolle’s Emendatio vitae, written circa 1340. – BBC (MSN)
- Women-Centered Fantasy Is Fueling The Publishing Industry
Women are rewriting the rules of sword-and-sorcery, trading testosterone-fueled quests for romance-driven adventures. Publishers are discovering that dragons plus dating equals dollars—who knew female readers wanted both magic and meaningful relationships? — The Conversation
- Writers vs. Machines: The John Henry Complex Returns
ChatGPT has writers channeling their inner folk hero, hammer in hand. But as Stephen Marche notes, we’ve been dancing with technological muses long before algorithms—typewriters, anyone? — LitHub
- Maybe Listening To An Audiobook Really Is As Good As Reading A Print Book
“Is listening to a book while doing the dishes, walking the dog or drifting off to sleep really as valuable as sitting down to read it? For authors, the publishing trade and those encouraging reading and literacy, the answer is increasingly yes.” – The Guardian
- Alabama Library Board Cuts Funding To Library That Wouldn’t Remove “Handmaid’s Tale”
The Republican-run Alabama Public Library Service Board voted to withhold roughly $22,000 in state funding from the Fairhope Public Library, citing the library’s failure to comply with the board’s rules requiring books deemed “sexually explicit” be relocated to the adult section. – The Daily Beast
PEOPLE
- Rarely-Seen Leonardo Da Vinci Mural In Milan Opened To Public For Winter Olympics
For just over five weeks, from February 7 to March 14, visitors will be allowed to climb the towering 20-foot scaffold inside the Sforza Castle’s Sala delle Asse to view conservators at work on a vast, unfinished wall and ceiling painting by Leonardo hidden for centuries. – Artnet
- Snubs In This Year’s Oscar Nominations
The overlooking of the Good Witch was truly Wicked. Then again, crowd pleaser Wicked: For Good got basically nothing overall, so maybe it’s time to reconsider that shunned Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film category …just sayin’. – Deadline
- Napa Art Museum Selling Its Estate Because Of Financial Pressures
The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa has listed its 217-acre estate for $10.9 million, less than a year after announcing a plan to boost revenue through event rentals. – San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
- La Scala Finished 2025 With Record Box Office
La Scala closed 2025 with record ticket sales of over €40 million (+7.3% compared to 2024). Added to this is the record revenue of the La Scala Theatre Museum, which reached €3.4 million. – Gramilano
- Hollywood’s “Woke” Era Has Emphatically Ended
For anyone fantasizing about Hollywood as some liberal bulwark, though, the 2024 election brought that idea to an abrupt halt. The industry’s era of progressive sincerity, and much of its wariness toward conservative-coded content, has evaporated. – The New York Times
PEOPLE
- Rarely-Seen Leonardo Da Vinci Mural In Milan Opened To Public For Winter Olympics
For just over five weeks, from February 7 to March 14, visitors will be allowed to climb the towering 20-foot scaffold inside the Sforza Castle’s Sala delle Asse to view conservators at work on a vast, unfinished wall and ceiling painting by Leonardo hidden for centuries. – Artnet
- Snubs In This Year’s Oscar Nominations
The overlooking of the Good Witch was truly Wicked. Then again, crowd pleaser Wicked: For Good got basically nothing overall, so maybe it’s time to reconsider that shunned Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film category …just sayin’. – Deadline
- Napa Art Museum Selling Its Estate Because Of Financial Pressures
The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa has listed its 217-acre estate for $10.9 million, less than a year after announcing a plan to boost revenue through event rentals. – San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
- La Scala Finished 2025 With Record Box Office
La Scala closed 2025 with record ticket sales of over €40 million (+7.3% compared to 2024). Added to this is the record revenue of the La Scala Theatre Museum, which reached €3.4 million. – Gramilano
- Hollywood’s “Woke” Era Has Emphatically Ended
For anyone fantasizing about Hollywood as some liberal bulwark, though, the 2024 election brought that idea to an abrupt halt. The industry’s era of progressive sincerity, and much of its wariness toward conservative-coded content, has evaporated. – The New York Times
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Why Movies Launch And Music Drops
A key reason why it’s now more complicated to promote an album than, say, a theatrically released film, is the ephemeral, immaterial nature of contemporary music consumption. By comparison, most films that see a theatrical release maintain a predictable, streamlined promotional schedule. – The New Yorker
- How We Lost The Art Of Paying Attention
Most of us are by now familiar with the broad mechanisms of the “attention economy” – the hijacking and monetising of consumer attention through addictive channels. The ravages of this system are ever more apparent. – The Observer
- The Death Of The 20th Century Mono-Culture (And What It Means)
The implications for the battered-and-bruised entertainment industry are obvious. The impacts on our culture are just starting to fully materialize, but will be more significant. Instead of pulling us together, pop culture is another force dragging us apart. – The Wall Street Journal
- We Think Time Always Moves Forward. This Is A Relatively New Concept
This picture of time is not natural. Its roots stretch only to the 18th century, yet this notion has now entrenched itself so deeply in Western thought that it’s difficult to imagine time as anything else. And this new representation of time has affected all kinds of things, from our understanding of history to time travel. – Aeon
- What If AI Changes The Very Nature Of Our Attention?
What if the next wave of artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t designed to feed that addiction — but to fundamentally change it? What if the future of AI demands young people’s attention, curiosity, and creativity in ways we haven’t experienced before? – Big Think
