AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Kennedy Center Honors Moving to an Arena
This Week’s Highlights:
The Kennedy Center’s board voted last month to close its building, and this week the center said the Honors will be held December 7 at Capital One Arena instead (AP). A Washington Post analysis found ticket sales on pace to fall by two-thirds, donations down 40% in four months, and a development staff cut from 96 to 14 (The Washington Post). And on Monday Utah Republican Mike Lee blocked a bill co-sponsored by his colleague Lisa Murkowski barring demolition of a congressional memorial without Congress’s approval (CNN).
The Nashville Symphony suspended its season effective October 18, furloughing all 77 musicians and half its staff against a $10 million deficit (The Tennessean). The Cleveland Orchestra’s players, backed by a $329 million endowment, struck for three days and won 5% annual raises and a rule that the music director can’t hire anyone the audition committee’s majority hasn’t approved (Ideastream).
The Third Circuit Federal Court held that Ross Intelligence, a legal-research startup, can’t claim fair use for training its AI on Westlaw’s editorial headnotes, the first appeals ruling of its kind (Nieman Lab).
Banned Books Week begins Sunday, and Seattle Public Library’s Books Unbanned, an e-card for readers 13 to 26 anywhere in the country, has passed 1.1 million checkouts on nearly $900,000 in donations (KOMO). Xander Parish, the first British principal at the Mariinsky Ballet, opens the Nouveaux Ballets Russes in Florence on March 14 with a Swan Lake set in Belle Époque Paris (Pointe).
We collected handfuls of stories this week. You can see all of them below, organized by topic.
See you next week.
Doug
- Roberto Kalb shares key strategies to incorporate diversity into casting
Roberto Kalb, Music Director of Detroit Opera, shares his philosophy of incorporating diversity into casting and programming.
- Kennedy Center Honors To Be Moved To An Arena
The 49th annual awards are set to take place at Washington’s downtown arena, a Kennedy Center spokesperson said Friday. Few other details were immediately available, and an explanation for the change wasn’t given. – AP (Yahoo)
- What Laurie Anderson Knows Now That She Wishes She’d Known At Age 18
Nothing, actually. “No, I’m happy with what I knew then and what I didn’t know, and I was glad to get a chance to be an idiot. … You know, I don’t mind making these blunders. I learned a lot through blunders.” – The Nerve (UK)
- What’s Behind The Amazing Starchitect Building Boom In… Albania?
Sixty top architecture firms from around the world have mooted 500 eye-catching projects across Albania, sparking fury and protests. – The Guardian
ISSUES
- What’s Behind The Amazing Starchitect Building Boom In… Albania?
Sixty top architecture firms from around the world have mooted 500 eye-catching projects across Albania, sparking fury and protests. – The Guardian
- Calder Sculpture (His Last Work) Is Restored To US Senate Office Building
The piece was the only one created by Calder to have a separate stabile and a mobile. Set against Hart’s white marble walls and filling nearly the entire nine-story atrium, it was the kind of avant-garde, modern sculpture that defined Calder’s final works. – The New York Times
- Trump Explores Landmarking The Oval Office So Future Presidents Can’t Reverse His Changes
In the Time interview, the president said he was exploring the possibility of a new federal designation for the Oval Office, which he suggested could protect the office from being torn down and preserve his changes to it. – Washington Post
- Wave Of Robberies Has Europe’s Museums Wondering What Is And Isn’t Worth Displaying
“Replicas have long been used by museums when originals are too fragile, valuable or difficult to travel, and the recent spate of thefts has encouraged some to consider this practice more widely. … Visitors are finding more stand-ins and, in some cases, an empty space where a treasure used to be.” – BBC (Yahoo!)
- After 11 Years, Spain’s Spectacular Royal Museums At El Escorial Have Reopened
El Escorial, the largest building erected anywhere during the Renaissance, was both a monastery and a royal palace; since the 1960s, the compound 45 miles northwest of Madrid has housed museums of painting and of architecture. In 2015 those museums were closed for updating; only now can the public visit again. – Art in Context
MEDIA
- Kennedy Center Honors To Be Moved To An Arena
The 49th annual awards are set to take place at Washington’s downtown arena, a Kennedy Center spokesperson said Friday. Few other details were immediately available, and an explanation for the change wasn’t given. – AP (Yahoo)
- Court Upholds Thomson Reuters’ Landmark AI Copyright Win
The ruling marks the first federal appeals case to reject a fair use argument for using publisher content, without permission or compensation, to train a commercial AI product. – NiemanLab
- One Third Of Britain’s Arts Centres Have “No Financial Cushion”: Report
“Drawing on financial data and member surveys of more than 131 arts centres, the report concludes that … one third of arts centres across the UK have ‘little or no financial cushion’ with which to absorb further increases in costs, reductions in funding or unexpected expenditure.” – The Stage
- After 40 Years, Segerstrom Center Is Thriving, Bringing L.A.-Level Performing Arts To Orange County
Building a Lincoln Center-style multi-venue arts center in a county that was a byword for conservative suburbia seemed improbable in 1986, but philanthropist Henry Segerstrom pulled it off. Now, after getting hit hard by the pandemic, the complex is back on track, with a $14.6 million surplus last year. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
- Can Trump Really Demolish The Kennedy Center?
The legal fight over Mr. Trump’s takeover of the center has revolved largely around one important statute, first passed by Congress in 1958. It established a National Cultural Center and then was amended in 1964 to dedicate the institution to President Kennedy after his assassination. – The New York Times
MUSIC
- Is Writing Really The Best Way To Learn?
Writing can be useful cognitive scaffolding for memory and self-regulated learning, but the notion that it is the best process for developing thinking skills is a fairly recent idea, traceable to the 1970s writing-across-the-curriculum movement. – The New York Times
- Seattle Public Library Program To Make Banned Books Available Anywhere Hits 1M Checkouts
Books Unbanned is designed to give young people multiple ways to access digital books regardless of where they live or what their local library can provide. The library said some participants sign up because their local libraries have been censored or underfunded. – KOMO Seattle
- That French Novel With The Plagiarism Accusation? It’s Now Number One On France’s Bestseller List
Haitian-Canadian novelist Thélyson Orélien’s C’était ça ou mourir (It Was Either That Or Die) was France’s literary sensation of the fall when another author claimed that Orélien used AI to write the novel. The Prix Goncourt removed the book from contention, but nevertheless, it’s currently the bestselling novel in France. – Rolling Stone
- What Librarians Want To Tell Their Fellow Americans About Libraries
“We spoke with dozens of librarians at the A.L.A. conference this summer. They came from rural towns and major cities, elementary schools and universities, local branches and big government agencies. … They want you to know about book bans and budget cuts, but also about career counseling and pop-up medical clinics.” – The New York Times
- How Haiku Became Hungarian
A foreign poetic form becomes local not when writers reproduce its original conventions faithfully, but when they discover what the form can do in a new language. In Hungary, Japanese short poetry encountered a literary environment already fluent in irony, epigrammatic compression, linguistic play, and knowing when to leave things out. – Asymptote
PEOPLE
- Kennedy Center Honors Moving to an Arena
This Week’s Highlights:
The Kennedy Center’s board voted last month to close its building, and this week the center said the Honors will be held December 7 at Capital One Arena instead (AP). A Washington Post analysis found ticket sales on pace to fall by two-thirds, donations down 40% in four months, and a development staff cut from 96 to 14 (The Washington Post). And on Monday Utah Republican Mike Lee blocked a bill co-sponsored by his colleague Lisa Murkowski barring demolition of a congressional memorial without Congress’s approval (CNN).
The Nashville Symphony suspended its season effective October 18, furloughing all 77 musicians and half its staff against a $10 million deficit (The Tennessean). The Cleveland Orchestra’s players, backed by a $329 million endowment, struck for three days and won 5% annual raises and a rule that the music director can’t hire anyone the audition committee’s majority hasn’t approved (Ideastream).
The Third Circuit Federal Court held that Ross Intelligence, a legal-research startup, can’t claim fair use for training its AI on Westlaw’s editorial headnotes, the first appeals ruling of its kind (Nieman Lab).
Banned Books Week begins Sunday, and Seattle Public Library’s Books Unbanned, an e-card for readers 13 to 26 anywhere in the country, has passed 1.1 million checkouts on nearly $900,000 in donations (KOMO). Xander Parish, the first British principal at the Mariinsky Ballet, opens the Nouveaux Ballets Russes in Florence on March 14 with a Swan Lake set in Belle Époque Paris (Pointe).
We collected handfuls of stories this week. You can see all of them below, organized by topic.
See you next week.
Doug
- Roberto Kalb shares key strategies to incorporate diversity into casting
Roberto Kalb, Music Director of Detroit Opera, shares his philosophy of incorporating diversity into casting and programming.
- Kennedy Center Honors To Be Moved To An Arena
The 49th annual awards are set to take place at Washington’s downtown arena, a Kennedy Center spokesperson said Friday. Few other details were immediately available, and an explanation for the change wasn’t given. – AP (Yahoo)
- What Laurie Anderson Knows Now That She Wishes She’d Known At Age 18
Nothing, actually. “No, I’m happy with what I knew then and what I didn’t know, and I was glad to get a chance to be an idiot. … You know, I don’t mind making these blunders. I learned a lot through blunders.” – The Nerve (UK)
- What’s Behind The Amazing Starchitect Building Boom In… Albania?
Sixty top architecture firms from around the world have mooted 500 eye-catching projects across Albania, sparking fury and protests. – The Guardian
PEOPLE
- Kennedy Center Honors Moving to an Arena
This Week’s Highlights:
The Kennedy Center’s board voted last month to close its building, and this week the center said the Honors will be held December 7 at Capital One Arena instead (AP). A Washington Post analysis found ticket sales on pace to fall by two-thirds, donations down 40% in four months, and a development staff cut from 96 to 14 (The Washington Post). And on Monday Utah Republican Mike Lee blocked a bill co-sponsored by his colleague Lisa Murkowski barring demolition of a congressional memorial without Congress’s approval (CNN).
The Nashville Symphony suspended its season effective October 18, furloughing all 77 musicians and half its staff against a $10 million deficit (The Tennessean). The Cleveland Orchestra’s players, backed by a $329 million endowment, struck for three days and won 5% annual raises and a rule that the music director can’t hire anyone the audition committee’s majority hasn’t approved (Ideastream).
The Third Circuit Federal Court held that Ross Intelligence, a legal-research startup, can’t claim fair use for training its AI on Westlaw’s editorial headnotes, the first appeals ruling of its kind (Nieman Lab).
Banned Books Week begins Sunday, and Seattle Public Library’s Books Unbanned, an e-card for readers 13 to 26 anywhere in the country, has passed 1.1 million checkouts on nearly $900,000 in donations (KOMO). Xander Parish, the first British principal at the Mariinsky Ballet, opens the Nouveaux Ballets Russes in Florence on March 14 with a Swan Lake set in Belle Époque Paris (Pointe).
We collected handfuls of stories this week. You can see all of them below, organized by topic.
See you next week.
Doug
- Roberto Kalb shares key strategies to incorporate diversity into casting
Roberto Kalb, Music Director of Detroit Opera, shares his philosophy of incorporating diversity into casting and programming.
- Kennedy Center Honors To Be Moved To An Arena
The 49th annual awards are set to take place at Washington’s downtown arena, a Kennedy Center spokesperson said Friday. Few other details were immediately available, and an explanation for the change wasn’t given. – AP (Yahoo)
- What Laurie Anderson Knows Now That She Wishes She’d Known At Age 18
Nothing, actually. “No, I’m happy with what I knew then and what I didn’t know, and I was glad to get a chance to be an idiot. … You know, I don’t mind making these blunders. I learned a lot through blunders.” – The Nerve (UK)
- What’s Behind The Amazing Starchitect Building Boom In… Albania?
Sixty top architecture firms from around the world have mooted 500 eye-catching projects across Albania, sparking fury and protests. – The Guardian
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Let’s Get Real: Intelligence Is About More Than Optimization
That slide from engineering model to human anthropology is easy to miss. We begin by saying: this is how machines work. Then, almost without noticing, we say: this is what intelligence is. And then, more dangerously still: perhaps this is what we are. – Aeon
- An Alternative Explanation Of Consciousness
Antonio Damasio argues, we “possess the celebrated gift of consciousness because of the continued presence and abundance of your homeostatic feelings.” According to Damasio, the conventional theories of consciousness have it backwards. – Undark
- Staying Human In The Age Of AI
The first step to building a better future is to acknowledge the reality of today. AI is not going away, and it is immensely capable across a wide range of domains. According to a recent Stanford study, 88% of organizations are using AI and the number is growing. – Think Like a Game Designer
- By Biological Definition, AI Is Life
There is nothing artificial about systems built from real atoms, powered by real electricity, running in real machines. The systems reproduce, vary, adapt, undergo selection and gather energy from their environment. By any working definition that draws on biology rather than philosophy or religion, that is life. – Noema
- It’s Getting More And More Difficult To Tell What’s Real
Life on the internet has become, among other things, a test of patience and an experience of gruelling duration; the ad somehow continued for more than three minutes. A captive audience, it turns out, gets crude digital puppetry as its just deserts. – The New Yorker