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- The Dictator’s Paint Job Didn’t Hold
Good Morning,
For decades, Julio Escámez’s monumental mural in Chile was thought destroyed — Pinochet ordered it eliminated after the coup. Then conservators discovered it had only been painted over, and now it’s coming back into the light (Artnet). Worth remembering on a day when the wannabe censors are busy: both houses of Congress now have bills that would enable nationwide book bans in public schools (Publishers Weekly), and German broadcaster ZDF pulled an anti-fascist song by Igor Levit and Danger Dan — not on government orders, but out of caution (The Hollywood Reporter).
Meanwhile, follow the money and you get a snapshot of Hollywood’s values: Netflix disclosed it paid $587 million — cash — for Ben Affleck’s AI visual-effects startup (The Hollywood Reporter), while Disney is cutting several hundred creative jobs, with Pixar among the hardest hit (Deadline).
And a New York Times reporter joined ABT’s “Swan Lake” as a supernumerary, filing a dispatch from inside the sweat-and-velvet musk of the Met stage (The New York Times).
All of our stories below.
- Monumental Chilean Mural Painted Over By Pinochet Is Being Uncovered
Beginning and End, a 452-square-foot mural painted by Julio Escámez, was unveiled in 1972 by the Allende-aligned government of the city of Chillán, 250 miles south of Santiago. After Pinochet’s coup, he ordered the mural destroyed, and it was thought lost; in 2021, conservators discovered that it had been only painted over. – Artnet
- Disney Cutting Hundreds Of Creative Jobs
Disney is cutting several hundred positions, with Pixar and National Geographic among the divisions most affected by the move. – Deadline
- Many Theatregoers No Longer Know The Difference Between Previews And Post-Opening Night
“The distinction between a preview and an official opening night, once a universally understood boundary, has become increasingly blurred. In an era dominated by instant social media reaction, some no longer seem to realise there is a difference at all.” – WhatsOnStage (UK)
- Ten New Stadiums That Will Change The Form
- How $50 Million Could Make An Impact On American Literary Arts
Stabilizing a modest number of impactful, sustainable nonprofit literary organizations via large, annual gifts puts them in the best position to do what they do best—which is find great books to publish, support translations, and dream up new ways to reach readers—rather than having to spend so much time drumming up funding. – Publishing Perspectives
- Revisiting The Tortured History Of America’s Culture Wars
“One of the sad things about this story is that we did not emerge with a more active, permanent activist constituency for the arts in America. We got complacent and people were exhausted. – The Guardian
- What Leading Classics Scholars Have To Say About Christopher Nolan’s “Odyssey” Film
Both Emily Wilson, who published a widely acclaimed English translation of The Odyssey in 2017, and well-known professor/writer/editor Daniel Mendelsohn are glad the movie is out there and doing so well, and they praise a number of the film’s elements, but they each think Nolan missed something crucial in the original. – AP
- The Power Of Coffee Houses To Change History
It was debated whether coffeehouses were truly a place of creativity or frivolous laziness. Many resolved to leave the coffeehouse behind, as if it were a vice, and then failed to kick the habit. – Aeon
- How do We Define American Architecture?
Chicago, where the skyscraper was born, stood between the Western frontier of violence, timber, and gold and the banking capitals of the East Coast. It was at the center of a bridgeable world and the resources that flowed through it, requiring a degree of capital consolidation the likes of which had never been seen before. – The Nation
- Rethinking Dance Education
“The data shows that the majority of kids who enroll in dance will not pursue it as a career, and 90 percent will quit in their preteen years. There’s an opportunity for dance education to rethink its approach: How do we teach kids to love dance and the skin they’re in for all stages of life?” – Dance Teacher
- A New York Times Reporter Becomes A Supernumerary For ABT’s “Swan Lake”
“Being onstage, although well out of the spotlight, brought once-familiar sensations flooding back: the particular dry-mouth feel that comes from nerves and heavy lipstick, the sweat-and-velvet musk of the costumes. But nothing can quite prepare you for your first look into the Met audience — faceless and staggeringly vast.” – The New York Times
- Data: A Widening Gap In Financial Health Of Arts In American Cities
We found that as federal relief funding waned, the gap between the strongest- and weakest-performing cities widened sharply. – SMU Data Arts
- Sony Sues AI Music-Creator Udio Over Copyright Theft
Sony Music Entertainment has filed a second copyright infringement lawsuit against Udio, asserting 30,117 sound recordings it says the AI music company copied without permission to train its generative AI models. – Music Business Worldwide
- Clothing Fashion Turned Over To Algorithms
It monitors customers’ social media activity and internet searches, factors in Hailey Bieber’s latest outfits and spits out 300 styles a month made cheaply in China. After it reached $460 million in sales in 2025, one of its founders boasted to The Wall Street Journal, “We’re more like a data company than a fashion company.” – The New York Times
- German Public Broadcaster Canceled Performance Of “Anti-Fascist” Song By Igor Levit
“ZDF dropped plans to air ‘Keine Angst’ (‘No Fear’), the new song by rapper Danger Dan and classical (pianist) Igor Levit, in its weekly current affairs satire show Die Anstalt. The network said the song, which calls for Germans to take action against the far-right, could be interpreted as an ‘incitement to violence.’” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Netflix Paid Over Half A Billion Dollars — Cash — For Ben Affleck’s AI Startup
“Netflix disclosed in an SEC filing Friday that it paid $587 million for InterPositive, in cash. … InterPositive was formed in 2022 as (Affleck) began to explore the AI space, with a particular emphasis on upending visual effects without impacting the creative part of filmmaking.” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Both Houses Of Congress Introduce Bill Allowing Nationwide Book Bans In Public Schools
“Senate Bill 4925, a partisan effort to control materials in public schools, … was introduced June 24 by Republican Senators. … Like its companion legislation, House Bill 7661, SB 4925 would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to prohibit the use of federal funding for ‘sexually oriented material’ in public schools.” – Publishers Weekly
- UK’s Culture Secretary Will Stay On Under New Prime Minister
“Despite new Prime Minister Andy Burnham undergoing an extensive cabinet reshuffle, incumbent culture minister Lisa Nandy is set to remain in post. Nandy, who has been a member of Parliament since 2010 …, was appointed secretary of state for culture, media and sport by previous Prime Minister Keir Starmer in July 2024.” – Variety
- After Five Years In Prison And Nine Days Missing, Dissident Cuban Artist Arrives In US
“After over a week of ambiguity surrounding his whereabouts following his scheduled release from a five-year sentence for ‘contempt, defamation, and public disorder,’ Cuban dissident performance artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara arrived in Miami on Saturday, July 18.” – Hyperallergic
- Lam Wing-Kee, Bookseller Who Became Hero Of Hong Kong Resistance, Has Died At 70
“Lam Wing-kee, a former Hong Kong bookseller who became a symbol of resistance to Beijing’s crackdown on speech freedom after he was seized by Chinese authorities in late 2015, has died in Taiwan. … Lam was one of five people affiliated with Causeway Bay Books who disappeared in late 2015.” – AP
- Here Are The Books All Students In Texas Schools Will Be Required To Read
“(The state) is doing something unusual, attempting to create a common canon of books that all students statewide will be required to read. The list was approved last month by the Republican-led Texas State Board of Education and is in the process of being finalized. It will take effect starting in 2030.” – The New York Times
- Chief Executive Officer, Organ Historical Society
The Organ Historical Society welcomes nominations and applications for the position of Chief Executive Officer, available in September 2026.
Organ Historical Society
www.organhistoricalsociety.orgNow celebrating the 70th Anniversary of its founding, the Organ Historical Society (OHS) enriches public knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the pipe organ and its place in history and culture.
OHS began in 1956 with an impromptu meeting of young organ enthusiasts who shared an interest in locating historic pipe organs in New York City. Membership has since grown to include an international roster of musicians, organ builders, historians, scholars, and music lovers. The founders of OHS aspired to visit extant American “tracker” organs, create a comprehensive list with specifications, and share information with interested organ scholars. OHS has far exceeded this aspiration in the decades since and has created an online database of pipe organs with more than 60,000 entries; an historic organ citation program that has recognized more than 400 instruments; the world’s largest collection of pipe organ-related archives, books, journals, pamphlets, and other ephemera; publications including a quarterly journal and award-winning scholarly books on the pipe organ; and an online store with organ-related books, CDs, videos, and sheet music. Members and organ enthusiasts gather annually for conventions in cities across North America where they explore, study, and listen to the community’s most interesting historic instruments. OHS nurtures the next generation of organ performers, researchers, and builders through its annual E. Power Biggs Fellowship.
In 2017, with generous support from Wyncote Foundation, OHS moved its headquarters to Stoneleigh, a historic mansion in Villanova, Pennsylvania, located on a 40-acre property managed by the Natural Lands Trust. The OHS Library and Archives, a world-renowned research collection, is housed in state-of-the-art facilities at Stoneleigh. An historic Aeolian-Skinner organ, Opus 878, the centerpiece of the OHS headquarters building, allows OHS to present public performances as well.
OHS is governed by a seven-member Board of Directors. The Chief Executive Officer oversees a staff of eight full- and part-time employees. The OHS manages endowed funds of $4 million; the FY 26 operating budget is $700,000.
The Opportunity
The next Chief Executive Officer will take the helm of a healthy organization that is well-positioned for growth both organizationally and financially. The CEO will have the opportunity to build on the strength and success of existing OHS programs and lead the organization toward demonstrable strategic growth, institutional strengthening, and renewed membership engagement. The next CEO will expand OHS’s reach, deepen its impact, and ensure its long-term sustainability.
The Position
The Chief Executive Officer ensures that OHS realizes its vision, fulfills its mission, and achieves its goals for financial, organizational, and programmatic success. Reporting to the Board of Directors, the CEO is responsible and accountable for all aspects of OHS’s operations, including: strategic planning; program development and management; fundraising; membership development; member satisfaction; financial management; communications and marketing; publications; public relations; educational programs and activities; human resource management; community and local government relations; and advocacy.
Working closely with the Board of Directors, the CEO leads OHS’s strategic planning process to clarify priorities, align programs with member values, and ensure that resources are used wisely and effectively. The CEO works with the Board to refine governance practices to ensure that OHS’s structure supports its mission, strategic goals, and future growth. The CEO ensures effective communication across all channels, especially with OHS’s membership, to maintain a strong public relations and media presence across multiple platforms. The CEO recruits, motivates, mentors, and evaluates an effective professional staff within a culture of accountability, responsiveness, and collaboration.
The CEO serves as the chief fundraiser for OHS. The CEO develops and implements multi-year fundraising strategies designed to increase annual giving, develop special project support, and achieve significant expansion of OHS’s endowment. Working with the Board of Directors, the CEO leads efforts to identify, cultivate, solicit, and provide excellent stewardship of gifts from individuals, government, and private foundations.
The CEO develops and implements a plan to increase and diversify OHS’s membership to include opportunities for organ professionals and enthusiasts of all ages from their student days, throughout their careers, and on through retirement. The CEO leads the development of a revitalized educational program at Stoneleigh and in partnership with schools, universities, and cultural institutions throughout North America. The CEO develops professional convenings and national conferences that engage members and provide valuable professional growth opportunities for all participants.
The CEO of OHS is an active participant in the Villanova and greater Philadelphia arts, culture, and conservation community, representing OHS and encouraging interest and support from local residents.
Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate will be a proven leader with the ability to embrace and articulate the vision, mission, and goals of the Organ Historical Society with clarity and conviction. The successful candidate will have a good working knowledge of music and musical instruments, and enthusiasm for learning about the history and development of the pipe organ. Experience as an organ builder or an organist, while not required, will be seen as an asset, as will successful experience leading a nonprofit membership organization.
The successful candidate will be a strategic thinker with the vision to chart future directions, recognize opportunities, forge consensus, and harness the energies of diverse constituencies to accomplish common goals. The candidate will be a good listener with excellent interpersonal skills. The candidate will have a track record for encouraging participation of various constituents in planning and decision-making in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
The successful candidate will be an enthusiastic fundraiser with the proven ability to achieve and exceed goals for philanthropic support and the willingness to devote substantial time and effort to fundraising. The candidate will have experience in all aspects of fundraising, including annual giving, special events, planned giving, capital and endowment campaigns, and grant writing. The successful candidate will have excellent verbal and written communication skills.
The successful candidate will be an experienced manager with the demonstrated ability to set expectations and assure both financial and operational accountability throughout the organization. The successful candidate will be experienced in working with an active and engaged volunteer Board of Directors. The candidate will be skilled in promoting effective governance and utilizing the talents of Board members to the maximum benefit of OHS. The candidate will lead staff in an environment that fosters creativity, transparency, a commitment to excellence, and teamwork. The candidate will be able to innovate, manage change, move an agenda forward, and resolve conflict.
The successful candidate will have an engaging public personality and presence, high energy, and excellent public speaking and listening skills. The candidate will have the ability to relate and interact effectively with stakeholders who represent a broad diversity in age, education, gender, and socio-economic status. The successful candidate will be kind, creative, curious, and flexible. The candidate will bring at least ten years’ senior executive leadership experience and will possess common sense, sound judgment, and good humor in abundance.
Compensation
OHS offers a competitive compensation and benefits package. The annual salary range for this position is $100,000 to $120,000; the benefits package includes paid vacation and sick leave and funding for health insurance and a retirement program.
Applications
OHS welcomes recommendations, nominations, and applications from all qualified candidates regardless of race, religion, political affiliation, disability, sexual orientation, gender, national origin, or marital status, or any other basis protected by law. Candidates must be authorized to work legally in the United States.
Please submit a resumé along with a cover letter that describes your specific interest in the mission and work of OHS and your qualifications for the position as described in the candidate profile. On a separate sheet, provide the names and contact information for several professional references. All applications will be treated as confidential and references will not be contacted without the applicant’s knowledge and agreement.
Electronic submissions are requested. Please send to:
President and CEO – Organ Historical Society
c/o Catherine French Group
applications@catherinefrenchgroup.com(Adobe Acrobat PDF attachments only, please)
- Judge Pauses Paramount/Warner Deal
“This is a critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day,” California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, a Democrat who is leading the states’ lawsuit, said in a statement. A spokeswoman for Paramount did not immediately respond to a request for comment. – The New York Times
- Large Protests In France Over Arts Funding Cuts
In Avignon, where artists, programmers and theatergoers rub shoulders for a month every summer, the announcement has ignited fierce debates and protests. Last week, an estimated 1,800 people demonstrated in front of the Papal Palace. – The New York Times
- Auction House Sales Reports Show A Fundamental Change In The Art Business
This year, the houses devoted nearly as much space to private sales, lending, financial services, luxury goods, hospitality, and advisory work as they did to paintings and sculptures. Read together, they suggest that the biggest transformation in the auction business isn’t the recovery itself. It’s the transformation of the auction houses’ businesses. – ARTnews
- A Bill In Congress To Protect Art Owned by The Federal Government
The PRESERVE Act (“Protecting Resources and Ensuring Stewardship of Enduring Records of Visual Expression Act”) would require the General Services Administration, which manages federal agencies, to identify any artworks contained within government buildings deemed “surplus property” and form a committee to oversee the future of said artworks. – ARTnews
- A Lifetime With My Teacher
Her name was Lore Segal, but often, when I spoke of her to friends or to my own students, I referred to her as “my teacher,” though nearly 50 years had passed since I’d sat in a classroom with her. – The American Scholar
- Why Costco Is Thriving As The Antithesis Of Amazon
While most retailers today assume that consumers want ever greater assortment, Costco’s popularity speaks to a countervailing desire for less choice. Indeed, the pre-selection of items for sale in their warehouses is part of the value proposition. – The Walrus
- Field Notes from a Soft-Hearted Theater Snob
If I had been watching the movie at home, I definitely would not have teared up. But sitting in a theater with about 3,000 other people, watching the Beast turn around and see Belle at the top of the stairs near the end of Beauty and the Beast, I couldn’t help it: I was verklempt.
That was not the only surprise of my theater season that wrapped up yesterday when I saw the national tour of The Notebook. My theater menu this year included a subscription to the Broadway series at Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC), where I saw five Broadway musicals and two plays (well, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was more like a theme park show to be honest) on their national tours. Musical theater isn’t my favorite genre, but I respect it greatly and want to deepen my appreciation of the form, so subscribing to DPAC is part of my personal cultural curriculum.
My preferred theater taste would be more downtown/experimental (at least that’s what the Boomers and X-ers call it; “indie theater” if you’re Gen Z). In that genre, I saw Lost Lear, a production by Irish director Dan Colley and The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy, created by Joshua William Gelb, brought to North Carolina by university presenters, Carolina Performing Arts and NC State Live.
I expected to spend the season thinking about acting, directing, design, and production and relishing the craft and ingenuity of top professional artists. But as always, I found myself watching the audiences just as much as the shows. These are my field notes from one season spent sitting among very different theater audiences.
Theater asks audiences to participate in different ways
Broadway musicals are infectious creatures for big emotion, and even this theater pro is not immune. I welled up with tears at the end of The Outsiders and The Notebook, along with just about everyone else in the house. The songs, performances, design, pacing, and scale in Broadway musicals are all working to generate a shared emotional response.
When working well, the effect is hard to resist. (Hell’s Kitchen didn’t work on me – I was taken out of it as my inner dramaturg awoke and I spent the show mentally fixing the holes in the back story.) There is something powerful about thousands of audience members laughing, cheering, gasping, and crying together at the same time. No wonder musicals are the most popular genre in the U.S.
Lost Lear asked something very different of its audience. The piece was subtle, poignant, and beautifully crafted, using the story of King Lear to explore dementia and the bittersweet experience of familial love. The audience was sparse in a large theater, and at times it felt as though I could have been alone with the performance. Rather than sweeping the audience along, the production asked us to concentrate, sit with uncertainty, and lean into its rhythms and allow it to take us along switches between styles of naturalism, puppetry and video.
Two college students sitting next to me squirmed throughout the first act and left at intermission. I don’t say that to criticize them or the production. Their reaction was part of what made the contrast so striking. Lost Lear and The Notebook both dealt with dementia, memory, love, and loss, but they approached those subjects through completely different artistic languages. The Notebook wore its emotions openly and delivered them at scale. Lost Lear was quieter, stranger, and more demanding. Both were moving, but they required different kinds of attention from the audience.
More than a show to the audience
I eavesdrop all the time when I go to the theater. (How could I call myself an audience researcher if I didn’t?) What I hear most often is not commentary about the acting or the design. It is people catching up and sharing the mundane and exceptional parts of their lives with the people they came with. “Oh, let me tell you about…” may have been the phrase I heard most often all season.
On Sunday at The Notebook, I saw people passing phones back and forth to share wedding pictures and photos of a new house. A gentleman sitting next to me at Stereophonic gave his friend a detailed play-by-play of his open-heart surgery (TMI!).
All this reinforces that the show is not really why most audience members are there. The performance creates an occasion for people to spend meaningful time with friends and family. The show is part of a larger evening shaped by relationships, memories, and conversation.
In addition to eavesdropping, I just chat people up that sit next to me. At The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy, I sat next to a couple who had no idea what they were going to watch. Egon Tichy is a one-man show based on a science fiction story. The actor is in a closet-sized box, with a double of him on a video screen. It’s an incredibly well-crafted show by Joshua William Gelb who has been honing this style since he created Theater in Quarantine during COVID.
But the couple had no idea about all that background. They told me they had been meaning to get out to the theater again after not having gone for a while, so they simply bought tickets to what was playing and were game for seeing something interesting. They were not experts on the piece, and they were not relying on a familiar title. They just wanted to return to the theater and were willing to take a chance.
Arts organizations spend a great deal of time worrying that audiences will not try unfamiliar work. Sometimes that concern is justified, but this couple represented another kind of audience member: someone motivated less by the title than by the desire to have a theater experience. Their willingness to buy a ticket unseen just filled me with happiness. I was so excited for them – I knew that it was going to be a fun evening, and definitely something they wouldn’t get anywhere else around here. It was rare, it was a treat. They trusted that going to the theater would be worthwhile even when they did not know exactly what they were going to see.
There are plenty of people looking for something fun to do, and would be open to theater or performing arts or a museum – we just need to break through in their awareness, give them enough of a preview that they’ll take a bit of a risk, and then give them a great experience.
There cannot be a wrong way to begin loving theater
Theater organizations talk constantly about making audiences feel welcome. Welcome is about more than ticket prices, dress codes, parking, or friendly ushers. It also means allowing people to have the experience they actually came to have without signaling that they are appreciating the art incorrectly.
Those of us who work in the arts can be remarkably snobbish about what counts as a legitimate response. I’ve had to unlearn this snobbishness myself. We tend to admire the audience member who approaches a performance with concentration, analytical distance, and an appreciation for subtle artistic choices. We are less generous toward the person who wants spectacle, a familiar story, a good cry, or an enjoyable evening with friends and family. One response gets treated as serious engagement. The other gets dismissed as mere entertainment.
But entertainment is not the opposite of engagement, and emotional immediacy is not the opposite of artistic value. The Notebook and Lost Lear both explored dementia, memory, love, and loss. They did so through radically different artistic languages, and they asked different things of their audiences. One created emotion openly and at scale. The other worked through subtlety, ambiguity, and sustained attention. I was moved by both.
If we want audiences to grow again, we need to celebrate that range of experience rather than arranging it into a hierarchy. People do not generally enter an art form through its most unfamiliar or intellectually demanding work. They begin with something that captures them. They enjoy themselves. They feel moved. They learn how to be in the room. They have fun. They return to something familiar. Over time, they may become curious about what else the form can do.
The couple sitting beside me at The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy offered another version of that story. They were willing to encounter unfamiliar work because the idea of going to the theater already felt inviting enough, interesting enough, and safe enough to trust.
That is what audience development should ultimately build: not a march from supposedly inferior art toward supposedly superior art, but a growing confidence that the theater contains many kinds of experiences and that you are entitled to explore them. You can cry at a musical, puzzle over a contemporary performance, bring your children in costume, catch up with a friend at intermission, or decide that a particular show is not for you. None of those experiences disqualifies you from belonging.
If theater is going to become a place where more people develop lasting curiosity and affection for the form, we have to make room for the full range of reasons they walk through the door. We cannot invite people in and then quietly judge them for loving the wrong thing, feeling too much, knowing too little, or having too much fun.
The audience does not need to prove that it deserves the theater. The theater needs to give people enough ways to discover that it belongs to them too.
- What Touched Off The Culture Wars
Frohnmayer’s dilemma was that he believed in artistic freedom and didn’t think Congress should dictate what the N.E.A. funded, but he also felt obliged, as a political appointee, to avoid funding work that Congress and the President found offensive. The result was flip-flopping. – The New Yorker
- When Is It Okay To Let A Language Die?
Preserve this language (or species or building or mine) or else surrender to indifference, cynicism, and nihilism. But is that ever the choice we face? – The New Yorker
- A Short History Of Being Burned Out
Burnout’s meaning shifted from literal to figurative over time. It began as a description of candles burning out or fuel being used up, then shifted to a barn burning down and a worker’s energy or body being depleted in the rebuilding. Eventually it came to simply describe a worker’s exhaustion. – The Conversation
- Why Is Everything Weird? Blame The Uni-Context
How do all other norms—our morals, our ethics, our sense of what is good for us and for others—change when we continually imagine ourselves to be living in a universal room with everybody else? – Derek Thompson
- Cleveland Comes Out On Top For Public Funding Of The Arts
The report ranked Cleveland No. 1 revenue growth among arts organizations from 2019 to 2024 in a cohort of 10 U.S. cities. The others were Atlanta, Des Moines, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Sacramento and Seattle. – Ideastream