AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- The education is only worth what you earn?
Good morning. Here are this week’s highlights:
In Washington, the Education Department moved to cancel student loans for nearly every college arts program and to judge schools by their graduates’ earnings (The New York Times) — a logic that values an arts education purely by what its graduates later earn. Meanwhile, a loose symposium of writers spent the week worrying the opposite question: what is the human part of creative work actually worth, given that it’s the one part a machine can’t reproduce?
Neuroscience suggests “semantic knowledge” — the internal map of how concepts connect — is the precondition for genuine invention, and it’s what no AI model possesses (Neuroscience News). But how can you tell whether something has been written by AI? The Atlantic proposes that it’s the absence of human friction: prose that’s too clean, too even, “simultaneously breezy and grandiose” (The Atlantic). And as computers increasingly talk to computers, another writer asks whether we’re quietly surrendering our autonomy — typing into the box and waiting (The Atlantic).
So we’re working out how to define and defend the irreducibly human contribution to art and creativity at the precise moment our government is reclassifying it as a bad financial bet. One side measures art by its earnings; the other suspects the value was never in the output at all.
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
Doug
- Andrew Joslyn talks about the unique impact of relevant programming for orchestras
Andrew Joslyn, Associate Director of Popular Programming at the Seattle Symphony, shares the unique impact of relevant programming in building community.
- Meet One Of The American Revolution’s Leading Composers, William Billings
The self-taught composer, who lived in Boston during the revolution years, published six books of music, with over 340 choral works. In addition to the Psalm settings and fuguing tunes he’s remembered for today, he wrote what may be America’s first protest song — in response to the Boston Massacre of 1770. – The Conversation
- YouTubers Invade This Summer’s Movie Theatre Screens
- Lucinda Childs On How She Keeps Her Working Pace After More Than 50 Years
“I just feel fortunate. I’m still running around and everybody keeps reminding me that I’m 85. I don’t think about that so much. I do work every day. I work out every day. … It’s the first thing I do and that sort of keeps me together physically.” – The Brooklyn Rail
ISSUES
- Archaeologists Are Discovering Centuries’ Worth Of Paris History Underneath Notre-Dame
“Among the hundreds of objects already found: a fourth-century coin stamped with the face of the Emperor Constantine, and shards of medieval pottery painted on the inside with marks no expert has yet deciphered — like a modern Da Vinci Code.” – AP
- Miami’s Bass Museum Of Art Creates New Artistic Director Position, Hires Philippe Vergne
“Philippe Vergne, the former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Dia Art Foundation in New York, has been named to the newly created position of Artistic Director and Chief Curator and will work alongside Executive Director Silvia Karman Cubiña … as her ‘thought partner’.” – The Miami Herald (MSN)
- Pace Gallery Cuts 50 Artists, 50 Staff
“The whole art gallery art system became too big, too commercial, too impersonal and too corporate,” Marc Glimcher, the chief executive, said in an interview this week. – The New York Times
- Why Trump’s Arch Is So Wrong
Triumphal arches are thuggish. They’re the architectural equivalent of a domestic abuser standing, arms crossed, legs athwart, in front of the bedroom door. I prefer the democratic, American tradition of modest, respectful, open-air monuments. – The Atlantic
- Monet Heirs Case Against Wildenstein Allowed To Continue
The complex case revolves around a 2004 transaction, in which Monet’s great-nephew agreed to relinquish a rare Monet painting depicting the artist’s father, Adolphe, to the internationally renowned Wildenstein gallery, in exchange for several paintings of lesser value. – ARTnews
MEDIA
- There’s A Big Need For Creative Talent In The Age Of AI
Our survey found that 79% of Americans believe that cities investing in colleges dedicated to the creative industry will be more successful economically in the future than those that do not. – Fast Company
- Kennedy Center Staff Told To Remove Trump’s Name From Everything
“(An internal) memo states staffers must immediately change email signatures, letterhead, and other documents ‘to reflect the name as ‘The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,’ or ‘Kennedy Center.’’ This also includes voicemails, social media accounts and press releases.” – Politico
- All 11 Edinburgh Festivals Propose A Common Ticket Platform
The festivals involved in the plan, including the main international festival, will soon invite bidders to investigate how to merge the ticketing operations and data of all 11 events, which in 2024 sold nearly 4m tickets in total. Others include the book festival and the film festival. – The Guardian
- Colorado Passes Landmark Law: Artists Can Now Protect Their Rights By Becoming Corporations
“Senate Bill 133 creates Colorado Artist Companies, or A Corps, a new subset of limited liability corporations that guides artists through the complexities of setting up a business while ensuring they retain creative control over their work, which can include everything from songs, paintings and poems, to less obvious output, like creative coursework.” – The Colorado Sun
- The New School Makes Some Painful Cuts
The New School will employ 65 fewer full-time faculty members in the fall than it did last year, Kessler said. Based on the most recent federal data, that reduction would amount to roughly 36 percent of its 2024 full-time faculty work force. – Chronicle of Higher Education
MUSIC
- Literary Arts Fund Awards Its First-Ever Grants — $7.7 Million Worth
“Among 40 organizations in 19 states, (the) recipients of grants ranging from $40,000 to $500,000 include the National Book Foundation, which oversees the National Book Awards; the North Carolina Writers’ Network; Graywolf Press, Copper Canyon Press and other publishers; and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.” – AP
- A Frequent Book-Prize Juror Explains How These Awards Actually Work
Rebecca Makkai has judged six major awards in the past eight years (a pace she does not recommend), and she shares some things she’s learned that she thinks most people don’t realize. For instance, she explains, the process is both purer and more random than you’d guess. – SubMakk
- A Story Of Gay Life In Early America
The two women lived openly as a same-sex couple from 1807 to 1851 in Weybridge, VT, where they ran a successful tailoring business. Despite some local misgivings, they were largely accepted. Neighborhood children apprenticed with them, and Sylvia served as a deacon in the local Congregational Church. – ArtsFuse
- A New Wave Of Women’s Ragebait Lit
“These books may have inspired more than their share of hot takes … but the conversations around them allow us to question where we are and what our feminist ideals have become … (now that) so many of the problems that felt like they were somehow close to being solved … have become drastically worse.” – Harper’s Bazaar
- Minnesota Star Tribune To Cut 65 Jobs, Explore Going Fully Nonprofit
“The Star Tribune employs 495 people and cuts will be made across every department. The newsroom has just under 200 journalists and will decline to 175 while remaining one of the largest between the coasts. Just last year, 125 employees were laid off when the company … closed its … printing plant.” – The Minnesota Star Tribune
PEOPLE
- The education is only worth what you earn?
Good morning. Here are this week’s highlights:
In Washington, the Education Department moved to cancel student loans for nearly every college arts program and to judge schools by their graduates’ earnings (The New York Times) — a logic that values an arts education purely by what its graduates later earn. Meanwhile, a loose symposium of writers spent the week worrying the opposite question: what is the human part of creative work actually worth, given that it’s the one part a machine can’t reproduce?
Neuroscience suggests “semantic knowledge” — the internal map of how concepts connect — is the precondition for genuine invention, and it’s what no AI model possesses (Neuroscience News). But how can you tell whether something has been written by AI? The Atlantic proposes that it’s the absence of human friction: prose that’s too clean, too even, “simultaneously breezy and grandiose” (The Atlantic). And as computers increasingly talk to computers, another writer asks whether we’re quietly surrendering our autonomy — typing into the box and waiting (The Atlantic).
So we’re working out how to define and defend the irreducibly human contribution to art and creativity at the precise moment our government is reclassifying it as a bad financial bet. One side measures art by its earnings; the other suspects the value was never in the output at all.
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
Doug
- Andrew Joslyn talks about the unique impact of relevant programming for orchestras
Andrew Joslyn, Associate Director of Popular Programming at the Seattle Symphony, shares the unique impact of relevant programming in building community.
- Meet One Of The American Revolution’s Leading Composers, William Billings
The self-taught composer, who lived in Boston during the revolution years, published six books of music, with over 340 choral works. In addition to the Psalm settings and fuguing tunes he’s remembered for today, he wrote what may be America’s first protest song — in response to the Boston Massacre of 1770. – The Conversation
- YouTubers Invade This Summer’s Movie Theatre Screens
- Lucinda Childs On How She Keeps Her Working Pace After More Than 50 Years
“I just feel fortunate. I’m still running around and everybody keeps reminding me that I’m 85. I don’t think about that so much. I do work every day. I work out every day. … It’s the first thing I do and that sort of keeps me together physically.” – The Brooklyn Rail
PEOPLE
- The education is only worth what you earn?
Good morning. Here are this week’s highlights:
In Washington, the Education Department moved to cancel student loans for nearly every college arts program and to judge schools by their graduates’ earnings (The New York Times) — a logic that values an arts education purely by what its graduates later earn. Meanwhile, a loose symposium of writers spent the week worrying the opposite question: what is the human part of creative work actually worth, given that it’s the one part a machine can’t reproduce?
Neuroscience suggests “semantic knowledge” — the internal map of how concepts connect — is the precondition for genuine invention, and it’s what no AI model possesses (Neuroscience News). But how can you tell whether something has been written by AI? The Atlantic proposes that it’s the absence of human friction: prose that’s too clean, too even, “simultaneously breezy and grandiose” (The Atlantic). And as computers increasingly talk to computers, another writer asks whether we’re quietly surrendering our autonomy — typing into the box and waiting (The Atlantic).
So we’re working out how to define and defend the irreducibly human contribution to art and creativity at the precise moment our government is reclassifying it as a bad financial bet. One side measures art by its earnings; the other suspects the value was never in the output at all.
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
Doug
- Andrew Joslyn talks about the unique impact of relevant programming for orchestras
Andrew Joslyn, Associate Director of Popular Programming at the Seattle Symphony, shares the unique impact of relevant programming in building community.
- Meet One Of The American Revolution’s Leading Composers, William Billings
The self-taught composer, who lived in Boston during the revolution years, published six books of music, with over 340 choral works. In addition to the Psalm settings and fuguing tunes he’s remembered for today, he wrote what may be America’s first protest song — in response to the Boston Massacre of 1770. – The Conversation
- YouTubers Invade This Summer’s Movie Theatre Screens
- Lucinda Childs On How She Keeps Her Working Pace After More Than 50 Years
“I just feel fortunate. I’m still running around and everybody keeps reminding me that I’m 85. I don’t think about that so much. I do work every day. I work out every day. … It’s the first thing I do and that sort of keeps me together physically.” – The Brooklyn Rail
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Good AI? Model Proposes Thousands Of Designs, Test Them, Then Adapts
The AI model proposed study designs, and robots carried them out and fed the data back to the model for the next round. Humans set the goal, and the machines did much of the work in the lab, cutting the cost of producing a desired protein by 40 percent. – Singularity Hub
- Lessons From The Enhanced Games
Trying to break world records remains a high-risk, high-reward strategy for Enhanced. The event proved that breaking records is incredibly difficult, even with PEDs and technological enhancements such as swimming supersuits, both banned in traditional sport. – The Conversation
- If You Don’t Use AI It’s Tough To Spot AI
One of the problems with AI use seeping out of business and science writing and into the ‘literary’ world is that literary editors may be the worst equipped to identify AI writing. – London Review of Books
- Criticism In The Age Of AI: It’s Superfluous
The early parts of the story of how the humanities turned against “the human” are well told in two intellectual histories. – Hedgehog Review
- Are The Arts Simply Incompatible With Right Wing Government?
A belief that what is good will be paid for by consumers, and that the state should stand back and play as small a part as possible. Applying this to the arts means that they are not a public good but instead a sector that should be shaped by market principles, competition, and measurable returns. – The Big Idea
