AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Broadway’s Next Stage Comes With Lifeboat Drills
Good Morning,
Cruise lines have quietly become one of the largest employers of musical theatre performers, and they’ve stopped commissioning schlocky revues in favor of real productions (The Guardian).
The container keeps moving faster than the field’s map of it. Microdramas — vertical, two-minute, phone-native — are already spawning microsports (The Hollywood Reporter). And a Bay Area critic argues classical music is now underground music (San Francisco Classical Voice) — not an obituary, a repositioning. Underground scenes have workable economics, while mainstream-adjacent ones don’t.
Meanwhile Hollywood posted the biggest box office weekend in history on the strength of exactly two titles (Variety). Not hard to guess which.
Against all that, London’s Royal Ballet and Opera says it needs £60 million simply to keep its building open (The Times).
Also today: Mozart’s best librettist ended up an American, and his descendants are still here (The New York Times).
All of our stories below.
- Some Cruise Lines Are Shifting Onboard Entertainment From Schlocky Revues To Legit Theatre
Okay, they’re not doing Long Day’s Journey Into Night or Titus Andronicus; after all, the audience is on vacation. But cruises from the UK have started presenting professional productions like Come From Away and the RSC staging of The Constant Wife. Ambassador Cruise Line even has a playwriting competition. – The Guardian
- Are These The 25 Most Significant Sculptures Of The Modern Age?
To choose the 25 most important works of sculpture made since 1945, we asked a panel of experts to gather at the New York Times building in March. – The New York Times
- Torn To Shreds: The Writers Workshop
Joyce Carol Oates is known for her strict style. One of her students once described her crossing through the first several pages of a story and asking: “What’s the point?” I commiserated with him, but he looked at me and said: “No, that’s what I want. To be ripped to shreds.” – The Guardian
- You Know About Microdramas. Get Ready For Microsports.
“Brett Morris, the CEO of World 1, wants you to watch his ‘Microsports,’ which he describes as ‘entirely original sports where world titles are won or lost in 30 seconds.’” – The Hollywood Reporter
ISSUES
- Are These The 25 Most Significant Sculptures Of The Modern Age?
To choose the 25 most important works of sculpture made since 1945, we asked a panel of experts to gather at the New York Times building in March. – The New York Times
- Founding Donor Of Human Rights Museum Suspends Funding Over Palestinian Exhibition
She complained of a “lack of context” in the exhibition about the forced displacement of Palestinians during the creation of Israel, such as the omission of information about the Palestinian rejection of a state that was offered in the United Nations’ 1947 partition plan and about Jews displaced in Arab lands. – The Art Newspaper
- Why New York Historical Is Deliberately Displaying Copies In Its Latest Show
“This is because it was only as the exhibition — ‘Democracy Matters’ — was about to open on June 18 that the museum fully reckoned with the fact that windows in the new gallery would shower sunshine on some very light-sensitive artworks.” – The New York Times
- Hirshhorn Museum’s New Sculpture Garden Has Its Opening Date
“After a long period of being fenced off and closed to the public, a reflecting pool will soon be reopening after a major renovation. No, not that one. This reflecting pool is in the center of the Hirshhorn Museum’s sculpture garden, which will reopen Oct. 31.” – The Washington Post (MSN)
- There Are 35,000 Museums In The US. Here Is ARTnews’ List Of The Top 30
They’re spread out across the lower 48. – ARTnews
MEDIA
- A Small Arts Project Supporting Emerging Artists Hits A Home Run. What Can We Learn?
This innovative new venture is perhaps best described as a super-smart business strategy that could also be a blueprint for other entrepreneurs to ignite arts spaces in their own communities, boost social connectedness and give young, emerging artists some much-needed financial support. – ArtsHub
- Trump White House’s Proposed Budget Includes Funding Cuts And Staff Layoffs At Smithsonian
“For fiscal year 2027, the White House has proposed giving the Smithsonian $961.3 million in federal funding, roughly an 11% cut from the $1.08 billion Congress provided to it fiscal year 2026 and the institution’s lowest proposed funding level since at least 2020.” – ARTnews
- London’s Royal Ballet And Opera Says It Needs £60 Million Just To Keep Its Building Open
“The historic Covent Garden venue … has reported a ‘critical’ need to invest in its stage infrastructure and the ‘fabric of our building’. Without doing so, the theatre is at risk of equipment failures and performance cancellations, according to a review of the organisation’s financial health.” – The Times (UK)
- Hollywood’s Open, Horrible Secrets, Such As The Whisper Network Concerning Jared Leto
“When a lot of people make a percentage off the earnings of one famous individual, the capacity for denial is vast” — and now there’s a huge, “well-oiled anti-accountability machine” that cranks up as well. – The New York Times
- The Report From Interlochen Might Help Change Michigan’s Laws Around Statute Of Limitations
Current bills “would extend the civil statute of limitations for criminal sexual conduct claims, create a one-year revival window for lawsuits that are currently time-barred and eliminate the civil statute of limitations when a criminal case results in a conviction.” – Detroit Free Press
MUSIC
- Torn To Shreds: The Writers Workshop
Joyce Carol Oates is known for her strict style. One of her students once described her crossing through the first several pages of a story and asking: “What’s the point?” I commiserated with him, but he looked at me and said: “No, that’s what I want. To be ripped to shreds.” – The Guardian
- Looks Like An Educational-AI Company Scraped The Poetry Foundation’s Website For Content
“According to its website, Giggle Academy is a nonprofit and was started by cryptocurrency mogul and Binance founder Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao in 2024. It also claims to have one million users in 182 countries.” Hundreds of poems, evidently copied from the Poetry Foundation’s website, are on Giggle Academy’s website without permission. – Publishers Weekly
- Australian Library Waives Fine For Book Returned After 150 Years
The book, The Antiquities of Athens, published in 1858, “was discovered inside a tea crate bricked into a sealed fireplace.” Normal place to put a book down and then never see it again, right? – Salon
- Writers Just Can’t Resist Writing From The POV Of A Dog
Virginia Woolf with Flush, Paul Auster with Timbuktu, Garth Stein with The Art of Racing in the Rain, and now another Paul – Yoon – with Etna. Why? Yoon says, “I deeply believe dogs have superpowers and secrets.” – The New York Times
- People Aren’t Reading As Much, But Perhaps This Will Spur Them On
That’s right: It’s a couch-to-5K, except for books. – The Guardian (UK)
PEOPLE
- Broadway’s Next Stage Comes With Lifeboat Drills
Good Morning,
Cruise lines have quietly become one of the largest employers of musical theatre performers, and they’ve stopped commissioning schlocky revues in favor of real productions (The Guardian).
The container keeps moving faster than the field’s map of it. Microdramas — vertical, two-minute, phone-native — are already spawning microsports (The Hollywood Reporter). And a Bay Area critic argues classical music is now underground music (San Francisco Classical Voice) — not an obituary, a repositioning. Underground scenes have workable economics, while mainstream-adjacent ones don’t.
Meanwhile Hollywood posted the biggest box office weekend in history on the strength of exactly two titles (Variety). Not hard to guess which.
Against all that, London’s Royal Ballet and Opera says it needs £60 million simply to keep its building open (The Times).
Also today: Mozart’s best librettist ended up an American, and his descendants are still here (The New York Times).
All of our stories below.
- Some Cruise Lines Are Shifting Onboard Entertainment From Schlocky Revues To Legit Theatre
Okay, they’re not doing Long Day’s Journey Into Night or Titus Andronicus; after all, the audience is on vacation. But cruises from the UK have started presenting professional productions like Come From Away and the RSC staging of The Constant Wife. Ambassador Cruise Line even has a playwriting competition. – The Guardian
- Are These The 25 Most Significant Sculptures Of The Modern Age?
To choose the 25 most important works of sculpture made since 1945, we asked a panel of experts to gather at the New York Times building in March. – The New York Times
- Torn To Shreds: The Writers Workshop
Joyce Carol Oates is known for her strict style. One of her students once described her crossing through the first several pages of a story and asking: “What’s the point?” I commiserated with him, but he looked at me and said: “No, that’s what I want. To be ripped to shreds.” – The Guardian
- You Know About Microdramas. Get Ready For Microsports.
“Brett Morris, the CEO of World 1, wants you to watch his ‘Microsports,’ which he describes as ‘entirely original sports where world titles are won or lost in 30 seconds.’” – The Hollywood Reporter
PEOPLE
- Broadway’s Next Stage Comes With Lifeboat Drills
Good Morning,
Cruise lines have quietly become one of the largest employers of musical theatre performers, and they’ve stopped commissioning schlocky revues in favor of real productions (The Guardian).
The container keeps moving faster than the field’s map of it. Microdramas — vertical, two-minute, phone-native — are already spawning microsports (The Hollywood Reporter). And a Bay Area critic argues classical music is now underground music (San Francisco Classical Voice) — not an obituary, a repositioning. Underground scenes have workable economics, while mainstream-adjacent ones don’t.
Meanwhile Hollywood posted the biggest box office weekend in history on the strength of exactly two titles (Variety). Not hard to guess which.
Against all that, London’s Royal Ballet and Opera says it needs £60 million simply to keep its building open (The Times).
Also today: Mozart’s best librettist ended up an American, and his descendants are still here (The New York Times).
All of our stories below.
- Some Cruise Lines Are Shifting Onboard Entertainment From Schlocky Revues To Legit Theatre
Okay, they’re not doing Long Day’s Journey Into Night or Titus Andronicus; after all, the audience is on vacation. But cruises from the UK have started presenting professional productions like Come From Away and the RSC staging of The Constant Wife. Ambassador Cruise Line even has a playwriting competition. – The Guardian
- Are These The 25 Most Significant Sculptures Of The Modern Age?
To choose the 25 most important works of sculpture made since 1945, we asked a panel of experts to gather at the New York Times building in March. – The New York Times
- Torn To Shreds: The Writers Workshop
Joyce Carol Oates is known for her strict style. One of her students once described her crossing through the first several pages of a story and asking: “What’s the point?” I commiserated with him, but he looked at me and said: “No, that’s what I want. To be ripped to shreds.” – The Guardian
- You Know About Microdramas. Get Ready For Microsports.
“Brett Morris, the CEO of World 1, wants you to watch his ‘Microsports,’ which he describes as ‘entirely original sports where world titles are won or lost in 30 seconds.’” – The Hollywood Reporter
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Our Complicated Relationship With Boredom
Boredom isn’t merely the result of a boring external environment, as a schoolchild might think, or inadequate mental resources, as my mother suggested. It is either a mysterious nexus of dysfunction or a healthy adaptive function (it’s complicated) that afflicts both individuals and societies at large. – Portico Quarterly
- Guardrails For AI Didn’t Work. So Bring In The Philosophers
“Efforts [to stop the generation of harmful content] were initially focused around putting in simple black-and-white guardrails, such as forbidding a model from talking about bombs entirely. But these proved clumsy and easy to circumvent. Now, companies are pursuing methods that lean heavily on a philosophical understanding of right and wrong.” – The AI Humanist
- America Is Losing Its Public Gathering Spaces
According to its Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages—which counts business establishments by industry down to the county level going back to 1990—the U.S. has lost a fifth of its movie theaters and nearly a third of its bowling alleys since 2001. – Fortune
- Google Briefly Allowed AI Manipulation Of Google Earth Satellite Images. Bad Idea
Google briefly allowed anyone to create AI-modified versions of satellite imagery available in Google Earth—before quickly reversing its decision as people shared examples of AI-generated pictures that illustrated the potential for misinformation and disinformation. – Ars Technica
- Question: Is It Even Possible To Make Non-Creepy Smart Glasses?
Sure, everyone has phones, but “the phone still needs to be pulled out, held up, and have its camera activated to capture a photo or film a video. Smart glasses, with small built-in cameras and the user’s ability to obfuscate the recording notification, are much sneakier.” – Wired