AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Yorgos Lanthimos Is Directing Super Bowl Commercials
Yes, the filmmaker behind The Lobster, The Favourite, Poor Things and Bugonia has made ads for Squarespace (the website-building platform) and Grubhub to air during Super Bowl LX. The Grubhub spot is untitled, but the Squarespace commercial is titled Unavailable, and, of course, it stars Emma Stone. – The Hollywood Reporter
- 100 Years Ago The BBC Built Itself Around The Arts. Now?
The vanishingly rare presentations of stage work, whether dance, opera or theatre, are invariably acquisitions from cultural organisations that provided most of the funding and all of the production expertise. – The Conversation
- Why Ralph Fiennes Decided To Direct An Opera
Not just any opera, mind you: the story is one to which he has a long connection: the Pushkin/Tchaikovsky Eugene Onegin. The person who invited Fiennes is his longtime friend Semyon Bychkov, and the production is at the company where Bychkov was just appointed music director, the Paris Opera. – Prospect
- Why The World Seems Obsessed By Consciousness Lately
Intelligence and consciousness are different things. Intelligence is mainly about doing: solving a crossword puzzle, assembling some furniture, navigating a tricky family situation, walking to the shop — all involve intelligent behavior of some kind. – Noema
- Study: AI Models Beat Humans On “Average” Creativity. Still Not On “Radical” Creativity
A massive new study comparing more than 100,000 people with today’s most advanced AI systems delivers a surprising result: generative AI can now beat the average human on certain creativity tests. – Science Daily
ISSUES
- 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!)
- Studio Museum In Harlem Closed Through Next Week Due To “Sprinkler Emergency”
Last Saturday, as museum staff were preparing the building for the winter storm, a sprinkler malfunction caused water to pour from a ceiling near the gift shop. The building was evacuated and closed for this week, but full repairs will require one additional week. – ARTnews
- Report: Financial Pressure Have Museums Rethinking Strategies
Over 50% of the AAM survey’s respondents reported fewer visitors than in 2019 and 29% reported “declines tied to weakened travel and tourism and/or economic uncertainty”. This, of course, varies hugely from state to state. – The Art Newspaper
- Thieves Steal The Entire Collection Of Silver From A Silver Museum
Before dawn last Wednesday, two men broke into the Silver Museum in the Dutch city of Doesburg and stole every piece there except a few ceramic items on temporary display. – ARTnews
- Philadelphia Sues Trump Over Removal Of Memorial Of Enslaved People
Workers on Thursday removed the exhibit, which included biographical details about the nine people enslaved by the Washingtons at the presidential mansion. Just their names — Austin, Paris, Hercules, Christopher Sheels, Richmond, Giles, Oney Judge, Moll and Joe — remain engraved into a cement wall. – Bucks County Beacon
MEDIA
- Cash-Strapped Vienna Cuts Its Arts Funding
While the reductions aren’t as severe as in Berlin (€130 million) or France (€150 million), the Austrian capital has withdrawn €5 million from several theaters, including the award-winning Theater an der Wien, €250,000 from the Vienna Philharmonic’s Summer Night Concert, and €1.3 million from the Wien Museum. – The New York Times
- Trump Tries To Shift Blame For “Massive Deficit” At Kennedy Center
He posted on Truth Social, referring to cascading cancellations and plummeting ticket sales, “People don’t realize that The Trump Kennedy Center suffered massive deficits for many years and, like everything else, I merely came in to save it and, if possible, make it far better than ever before!” – The Daily Beast
- National Parks Pull Historical Signs And Displays To Comply With New Trump Directives
Trump officials have ordered national parks to remove dozens of signs and displays related to climate change, environmental protection and settlers’ mistreatment of Native Americans in a renewed push to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order on “restoring truth and sanity to American history.” – Washington Post
- Understanding The Trade In Culture Between The US And Canada
In 2023, the United States accounts for roughly two-thirds of all cultural exports ($18.1 billion, or 67%) and imports ($22.2 billion, or 62%). Canada had a $4.2 billion trade deficit with the USA in 2023. – Statistical Insights on the Arts
- The UK Has Announced £1.5B Investment In The Arts. So…
A £1.5 billion investment is welcome news for a sector buffeted by years of austerity and inflation (not to mention the long tail of pandemic shutdowns). But the devil is in the detail, as ever, and the wider context: definitions of “infrastructure” beyond the landmarks, and its relationship to cultural workers. – The Conversation
MUSIC
- 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
- Colorado School District Drops Its Appeal Of Order To Reverse Book Bans
“Defendants in Crookshanks v. Elizabeth (Colo.) School District, who had appealed to the 10th Circuit after a federal judge ordered the district to restore 19 censored books, motioned to dismiss their own appeal on January 20. A three-judge panel had been scheduled to hear oral argument on January 23.” – Publishers Weekly
- How Anthropic Scanned And Destroyed Millions Of Books Into Its AI Model
Within about a year, according to the filings, the company had spent tens of millions of dollars to acquire and slice the spines off millions of books, before scanning their pages to feed more knowledge into the AI models behind products such as its popular chatbot Claude. – Washington Post
- What The New California Version Of The New York Post Is After
Says Nick Papps, founding editor-in-chief of the Murdoch tabloid California Post, “We’ll have the wit of the New York Post headlines, which is really important to it. … We want to be disruptors. We want to challenge status quos. We want to shake things up.” – TheWrap (MSN)
- Legal Teams Across The US Organize To Fight School And Library Book Bans
“Across America, publishers, libraries, and literary organizations are building a formidable litigation slate to ensure the availability of books in public and school libraries.” – Publishers Weekly
PEOPLE
- Yorgos Lanthimos Is Directing Super Bowl Commercials
Yes, the filmmaker behind The Lobster, The Favourite, Poor Things and Bugonia has made ads for Squarespace (the website-building platform) and Grubhub to air during Super Bowl LX. The Grubhub spot is untitled, but the Squarespace commercial is titled Unavailable, and, of course, it stars Emma Stone. – The Hollywood Reporter
- 100 Years Ago The BBC Built Itself Around The Arts. Now?
The vanishingly rare presentations of stage work, whether dance, opera or theatre, are invariably acquisitions from cultural organisations that provided most of the funding and all of the production expertise. – The Conversation
- Why Ralph Fiennes Decided To Direct An Opera
Not just any opera, mind you: the story is one to which he has a long connection: the Pushkin/Tchaikovsky Eugene Onegin. The person who invited Fiennes is his longtime friend Semyon Bychkov, and the production is at the company where Bychkov was just appointed music director, the Paris Opera. – Prospect
- Why The World Seems Obsessed By Consciousness Lately
Intelligence and consciousness are different things. Intelligence is mainly about doing: solving a crossword puzzle, assembling some furniture, navigating a tricky family situation, walking to the shop — all involve intelligent behavior of some kind. – Noema
- Study: AI Models Beat Humans On “Average” Creativity. Still Not On “Radical” Creativity
A massive new study comparing more than 100,000 people with today’s most advanced AI systems delivers a surprising result: generative AI can now beat the average human on certain creativity tests. – Science Daily
PEOPLE
- Yorgos Lanthimos Is Directing Super Bowl Commercials
Yes, the filmmaker behind The Lobster, The Favourite, Poor Things and Bugonia has made ads for Squarespace (the website-building platform) and Grubhub to air during Super Bowl LX. The Grubhub spot is untitled, but the Squarespace commercial is titled Unavailable, and, of course, it stars Emma Stone. – The Hollywood Reporter
- 100 Years Ago The BBC Built Itself Around The Arts. Now?
The vanishingly rare presentations of stage work, whether dance, opera or theatre, are invariably acquisitions from cultural organisations that provided most of the funding and all of the production expertise. – The Conversation
- Why Ralph Fiennes Decided To Direct An Opera
Not just any opera, mind you: the story is one to which he has a long connection: the Pushkin/Tchaikovsky Eugene Onegin. The person who invited Fiennes is his longtime friend Semyon Bychkov, and the production is at the company where Bychkov was just appointed music director, the Paris Opera. – Prospect
- Why The World Seems Obsessed By Consciousness Lately
Intelligence and consciousness are different things. Intelligence is mainly about doing: solving a crossword puzzle, assembling some furniture, navigating a tricky family situation, walking to the shop — all involve intelligent behavior of some kind. – Noema
- Study: AI Models Beat Humans On “Average” Creativity. Still Not On “Radical” Creativity
A massive new study comparing more than 100,000 people with today’s most advanced AI systems delivers a surprising result: generative AI can now beat the average human on certain creativity tests. – Science Daily
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Why The World Seems Obsessed By Consciousness Lately
Intelligence and consciousness are different things. Intelligence is mainly about doing: solving a crossword puzzle, assembling some furniture, navigating a tricky family situation, walking to the shop — all involve intelligent behavior of some kind. – Noema
- Study: AI Models Beat Humans On “Average” Creativity. Still Not On “Radical” Creativity
A massive new study comparing more than 100,000 people with today’s most advanced AI systems delivers a surprising result: generative AI can now beat the average human on certain creativity tests. – Science Daily
- Too Much Free Speech?
The First Amendment ignores the harms that speech inflicts. It is dangerous, in other words, not for the threat it poses to power, but for the harms it inflicts on the vulnerable. – The Nation
- How Cultural Outsiders Overcome Their Outsiderness
Cultural outsiders experience being an outsider as synonymous with being deficient. Eager to ‘fit in’, and to avoid feeling inferior, they seek validation from outside to feel good about themselves, focus on achievement, and rigidly conform to societal expectations. – Psyche
- Study: AI “Creativity” Leads To Cultural Stagnation
The researchers called the outcomes “visual elevator music” – pleasant and polished, yet devoid of any real meaning. – The Conversation
