AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- The Art that Lasts
This Week’s Highlights:
Many stories this week about what creativity actually is and what it’s worth. Fast Company declared that we’ve entered “the imagination era,” where creativity is the currency (Fast Company); employers say they can’t find enough people with creative skills (The Conversation); the New Yorker asked whether it matters that a chatbot wrote a prize-winning story (The New Yorker). The Yale Review pushed from the other side, wondering whether the century so far has been a creative blank space (Yale Review).
David Hockney’s death at 88 was a kind of answer (Artnet). His whole life was an argument for looking harder, for the eye over the easy image. A century on, Martha Graham’s vision still matters intensely (The New York Times).
We’ve been watching craft and science circle each other: a new method for spotting counterfeit Van Goghs (Artnet), a carbon-fiber violin sharing a stage with a Stradivari (The Strad), and Gaudí’s Sagrada Família standing tall with no flying buttresses (BBC).
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
- Sterling Elliott talks about the role arts organizations play in a journey toward leadership
Sterling Elliott, Sphinx Artist & Cellist, shares the role arts organizations and family played in his journey to leadership.
- Hockney’s Whole Life Was An Argument
Good Morning,
David Hockney died at 88 (AP), and the argument that ran through his seventy-year career is one we’re still having: a new tool — the Polaroid, the fax machine, the iPad — is an invitation, not a threat. He drew with whatever was at hand.
That argument runs through the rest of today’s stories. A landmark German court ruled Google liable for what its AI Overviews assert (The Decoder) — the first real test of whether a machine can be held to account for answers it invents (and gets wrong). The Walrus, meanwhile, pleads to bring back the gatekeepers (The Walrus) as a means of sorting out culture with values, even as BookTok keeps minting the authors the old gatekeepers passed over (Yahoo).
So what does an algorithm with no gatekeeper actually feed us? Spotify’s biggest hits are now from the 1970s and ’80s (WSJ) — infinite access curdled into nostalgia, the past outdrawing the present for our attention. Spotify did fix one thing: it killed the disco-ball app icon everyone loathed (Variety).
And lastly — not because it’s less important, but the Kennedy Center saga drags on. Washington National Opera sues the Kennedy Center over a $17M endowment the Center has kept and which belongs to the opera company (The Hill) . And the Atlantic argues that the Kennedy Center is a metaphor or at least a cautionary tale about the difficulties of de-Trumpifying after he’s moved on. It’s a long way back (The Atlantic).
All of our stories below.
Doug
- Why Gustav Mahler’s New York Career Was a “Failure”
- What Virgil Thought About Bees
“(The Latin poet) recognized that bees had what we might call social being — co-dependent, organized, enterprising — and he praised them for having all the virtues of a Roman citizen: industrious, hardworking, loyal, and (willing) to die to defend the colony.” – Literary Hub
ISSUES
- Why Impressionists Were So Fascinated With Gardens
One answer lies in the sheer ubiquity and sensory intensity of gardens by the second half of the 19th century, when impressionism came into being. Social change that made leisure gardens accessible to all (no longer just kings and aristocrats). – The Conversation
- Cleveland Museum Of Art Launches $600M Campaign To Sustain Its Future
“Visitors rightly expect exceptional exhibitions, meaningful educational experiences, digital access, welcoming spaces, and opportunities for deeper engagement. Those expectations require sustained investment. That challenge is particularly significant for an institution that remains committed to free general admission for all.” – ARTnews
- Scientists May Have Discovered A New Way To Spot Counterfeit Van Goghs
“By analyzing the surfaces of eight Vincent van Gogh paintings, surface metrology indeed confirmed the veracity of one long-contested but recently confirmed Van Gogh specimen — and correctly flagged another that’s been debunked.” – Artnet
- Why Pace Gallery Imploded
According to several people familiar with the call, Glimcher spent much of the meeting explaining why Pace had reached this point. The gallery had grown too large. Costs had risen too high. The model no longer worked. – ARTnews
- Survey: Nearly Half Of Mid-Career Women Are Considering Leaving The Arts
While the inaugural survey revealed gaps in leadership roles and pay for women, this edition offers a more detailed picture of the structural pressures determining who is—and, crucially, who isn’t—able to build a sustainable long-term career in the arts. – Artnet
MEDIA
- Kennedy Center As De-Trumpification Warning
Trump’s threat to walk away from the Kennedy Center suggests an additional danger: He could lose interest and doze off, as if at yet another Cabinet meeting or NBA Finals game, leaving parts of the government to fend for themselves. – The Atlantic
- Trump Kennedy Center Board Appeals Judge’s Order On Removing Trump’s Name
The board voted Thursday to seek a stay of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s May 29 ruling that said Trump’s name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center. – NPR
- International African-American Museum Institutes Rolling Furloughs For All Employees
Just under three years after opening, the museum on Charleston’s waterfront is facing financial troubles severe enough that all staffers, including senior executives, are taking mandatory 20-day unpaid furloughs on a staggered schedule from July through December. The IAAM will remain open throughout this period. – WCIV (Charleston)
- Demand For Workers With Creative Skills Is Growing
Nearly 50% of employers are looking to expand their workforce in the next three to five years. Video games, music, design and fashion were particularly expecting to grow over that time. – The Conversation
- San Diego Mayor’s Budget Eliminates Arts Funding. This New Plan Restores Over 90% Of It.
The plan from City Council members and the Prebys Foundation will have the nonprofit provide $3 million in one-time replacement money, while the city shifts $6 million of hotel occupancy tax money from renovation of the Convention Center to fund arts and culture. – KPBS (San Diego)
MUSIC
- What Virgil Thought About Bees
“(The Latin poet) recognized that bees had what we might call social being — co-dependent, organized, enterprising — and he praised them for having all the virtues of a Roman citizen: industrious, hardworking, loyal, and (willing) to die to defend the colony.” – Literary Hub
- BookTok Is Turning Some Authors Into Bona Fide Stars, And Hollywood Is Noticing
“The streamers are newer. They don’t have established libraries of ‘80s and ‘90s movies to reboot, and yet they’re still looking for familiarity of titles. (Finding hot titles on BookTok to adapt is) one way to compete at an IP level.” – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
- U.S. Authors’ Incomes Are Down. New Study Looks At Why.
“(The Authors Guild research) found that only 25% of print books and e-books read in the past month were bought new or through a paid subscription. … Average author earnings, now pegged at about $10,000 annually, have declined about 42% since 2009, the year Kindles first entered the market.” – Publishers Weekly
- Collateral Damage From Trump’s Iran War: W.H. Smith, The Big Airport-Bookstore Chain
“The retailer, which operates 1,200 outlets globally in airports, railway stations and hospitals, … has already experienced a fall in revenues in its UK airport operation due to the conflict in the Middle East, (and) said North America had now also been affected.” – The Guardian
- Forgotten Manuscript By JRR Tolkien Found In Oxford Library
“The Lord of the Rings author’s translation of a medieval religious text from the early 13th century had lain forgotten in the Bodleian Libraries’ collections until now. His reworking of Sawles Warde, an early Middle English prose homily, which he titled Soul’s Ward …, is to be published for the first time.” – The Telegraph (UK)
PEOPLE
- The Art that Lasts
This Week’s Highlights:
Many stories this week about what creativity actually is and what it’s worth. Fast Company declared that we’ve entered “the imagination era,” where creativity is the currency (Fast Company); employers say they can’t find enough people with creative skills (The Conversation); the New Yorker asked whether it matters that a chatbot wrote a prize-winning story (The New Yorker). The Yale Review pushed from the other side, wondering whether the century so far has been a creative blank space (Yale Review).
David Hockney’s death at 88 was a kind of answer (Artnet). His whole life was an argument for looking harder, for the eye over the easy image. A century on, Martha Graham’s vision still matters intensely (The New York Times).
We’ve been watching craft and science circle each other: a new method for spotting counterfeit Van Goghs (Artnet), a carbon-fiber violin sharing a stage with a Stradivari (The Strad), and Gaudí’s Sagrada Família standing tall with no flying buttresses (BBC).
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
- Sterling Elliott talks about the role arts organizations play in a journey toward leadership
Sterling Elliott, Sphinx Artist & Cellist, shares the role arts organizations and family played in his journey to leadership.
- Hockney’s Whole Life Was An Argument
Good Morning,
David Hockney died at 88 (AP), and the argument that ran through his seventy-year career is one we’re still having: a new tool — the Polaroid, the fax machine, the iPad — is an invitation, not a threat. He drew with whatever was at hand.
That argument runs through the rest of today’s stories. A landmark German court ruled Google liable for what its AI Overviews assert (The Decoder) — the first real test of whether a machine can be held to account for answers it invents (and gets wrong). The Walrus, meanwhile, pleads to bring back the gatekeepers (The Walrus) as a means of sorting out culture with values, even as BookTok keeps minting the authors the old gatekeepers passed over (Yahoo).
So what does an algorithm with no gatekeeper actually feed us? Spotify’s biggest hits are now from the 1970s and ’80s (WSJ) — infinite access curdled into nostalgia, the past outdrawing the present for our attention. Spotify did fix one thing: it killed the disco-ball app icon everyone loathed (Variety).
And lastly — not because it’s less important, but the Kennedy Center saga drags on. Washington National Opera sues the Kennedy Center over a $17M endowment the Center has kept and which belongs to the opera company (The Hill) . And the Atlantic argues that the Kennedy Center is a metaphor or at least a cautionary tale about the difficulties of de-Trumpifying after he’s moved on. It’s a long way back (The Atlantic).
All of our stories below.
Doug
- Why Gustav Mahler’s New York Career Was a “Failure”
- What Virgil Thought About Bees
“(The Latin poet) recognized that bees had what we might call social being — co-dependent, organized, enterprising — and he praised them for having all the virtues of a Roman citizen: industrious, hardworking, loyal, and (willing) to die to defend the colony.” – Literary Hub
PEOPLE
- The Art that Lasts
This Week’s Highlights:
Many stories this week about what creativity actually is and what it’s worth. Fast Company declared that we’ve entered “the imagination era,” where creativity is the currency (Fast Company); employers say they can’t find enough people with creative skills (The Conversation); the New Yorker asked whether it matters that a chatbot wrote a prize-winning story (The New Yorker). The Yale Review pushed from the other side, wondering whether the century so far has been a creative blank space (Yale Review).
David Hockney’s death at 88 was a kind of answer (Artnet). His whole life was an argument for looking harder, for the eye over the easy image. A century on, Martha Graham’s vision still matters intensely (The New York Times).
We’ve been watching craft and science circle each other: a new method for spotting counterfeit Van Goghs (Artnet), a carbon-fiber violin sharing a stage with a Stradivari (The Strad), and Gaudí’s Sagrada Família standing tall with no flying buttresses (BBC).
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
- Sterling Elliott talks about the role arts organizations play in a journey toward leadership
Sterling Elliott, Sphinx Artist & Cellist, shares the role arts organizations and family played in his journey to leadership.
- Hockney’s Whole Life Was An Argument
Good Morning,
David Hockney died at 88 (AP), and the argument that ran through his seventy-year career is one we’re still having: a new tool — the Polaroid, the fax machine, the iPad — is an invitation, not a threat. He drew with whatever was at hand.
That argument runs through the rest of today’s stories. A landmark German court ruled Google liable for what its AI Overviews assert (The Decoder) — the first real test of whether a machine can be held to account for answers it invents (and gets wrong). The Walrus, meanwhile, pleads to bring back the gatekeepers (The Walrus) as a means of sorting out culture with values, even as BookTok keeps minting the authors the old gatekeepers passed over (Yahoo).
So what does an algorithm with no gatekeeper actually feed us? Spotify’s biggest hits are now from the 1970s and ’80s (WSJ) — infinite access curdled into nostalgia, the past outdrawing the present for our attention. Spotify did fix one thing: it killed the disco-ball app icon everyone loathed (Variety).
And lastly — not because it’s less important, but the Kennedy Center saga drags on. Washington National Opera sues the Kennedy Center over a $17M endowment the Center has kept and which belongs to the opera company (The Hill) . And the Atlantic argues that the Kennedy Center is a metaphor or at least a cautionary tale about the difficulties of de-Trumpifying after he’s moved on. It’s a long way back (The Atlantic).
All of our stories below.
Doug
- Why Gustav Mahler’s New York Career Was a “Failure”
- What Virgil Thought About Bees
“(The Latin poet) recognized that bees had what we might call social being — co-dependent, organized, enterprising — and he praised them for having all the virtues of a Roman citizen: industrious, hardworking, loyal, and (willing) to die to defend the colony.” – Literary Hub
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Please! Bring Back The Gatekeepers
Gatekeeper, here, doesn’t mean the patriarchal bogeyman of progressive fever dreams. It means the picky curator who maintains a necessary membrane between your half-formed, typo-addled thoughts and the wider world. It means the tastemaker who triages opinions and batters the better ones into readable form. – The Walrus
- The Great Divide: Creativity Before And After AI
On one side are texts produced before the arrival of generative LLMs. On the other, everything that has followed—texts that might still be useful, even compelling, but that will always face a lingering suspicion of not being entirely human, of having been smoothed by systems trained to predict the word that comes next. – LA Review of Books
- Has The 21st Century Been A Creative Blank Space?
The years from 2000 to 2025 as a period of creative emptiness and stagnation so intractable that it will be remembered (or, rather, is being remembered, through the anticipation of remembrance) as voided time, a dark age. – Yale Review
- If It’s Art And People Like It, Then…
Our reigning cultural ideology has been poptimism—the idea that if a lot of people like a work of art, then it has to be good. Now sloptimism, which holds that if there’s a lot of art out there and people are engaging with it then how bad can it be? – The New Yorker
- How Good Is AI At Spotting Talent? Soccer Teams Are Working On It
For decades, the beautiful game depended on the human eye: a scout on the sideline, attentively watching, waiting for that something special. That process, however, is becoming increasingly data-driven. – The Conversation
