AJ Four Ways:
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- The Problem With AI Writing (And The Opportunity For Human Literature)
If, as a French saying has it, “style is the man himself,” what does the style of AI writing tell us about it? For one thing, it has no fixed style, revealing that it has no fixed self. It’s happy to burn tokens saying the same thing in as many ways as you want. – The Atlantic
- Film Critic Gene Shalit Dies At 100
Shalit started on Today in 1970, according to NBC’s report on his passing, and became its arts editor in 1973, interviewing celebrities and reviewing books as well as films. His role on the show was reduced in his later years and he retired at age 84 in 2010, saying, “It’s enough already.” – CBC
- Alan Cumming’s Theatre In The Scottish Highlands Will Present Its Own Mini-Version Of Edinburgh Fringe
Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s five-day event — called “Edinlochry” — won’t be as chaotic as the actual Edinburgh Fringe can be, mainly because it will be curated rather than open-access. – The Edinburgh Reporter
- What We Learned About How To Celebrate A Divided America’s Birthday From The Bicentennial
Philadelphia, as the cradle of American independence, was supposed to be the center of attention 50 years ago. From the beginning, deliberations involved arguably the most important architect of the late 20th century, Louis I. Kahn. – Architecture and the City
- Jurgen Habermas And The Public Sphere
Habermas’s death might mark the end of a mode of main-stage philosophizing that, in the German-speaking world, reaches back, by way of Adorno, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Marx, Schopenhauer, and Hegel, to Kant himself. – The New Yorker
- The Aesthetic That Fits Our Times: Tragicomic
This cockroach of forms—adaptive, resilient, unkillable—was named by the Roman dramatist Plautus in the second century BC, enjoyed its heyday in 17th-century Renaissance theater, and was revived in the 20th century to describe a slurry of existential despair and absurd farce. – ARTnews
- Sarasota Opera’s Longtime Artistic Director Writes Op-Ed Explaining Why He Resigned
Victor DeRenzi: “In the last few years, I had begun to realize that I could not develop an artistic future for the opera with the current board. Budgets were approved late, sometimes less than six months before the new fiscal year began.” – Sarasota Herald-Tribune (MSN)
- Syracuse Orchestra Appoints Music Director
Austin Chanu, a 33-year-old Brazilian-American and a former assistant conductor at the Philadelphia Orchestra, succeeds Lawrence Loh, whose 10-year tenure ended in May 2025. The Syracuse Orchestra is the musician-led co-operative ensemble formed after the Syracuse Symphony folded in 2011. – The Post-Standard (Syracuse)
- California’s Next Big Tax Incentive For Movie Industry Will Target Post-Production Workers
“Assembly Bill 2319, which passed the California State Assembly and is awaiting a vote in the State Senate, would establish a $100 million budget allocation that would give productions that do their post work in the Golden State a base tax writeoff equivalent to 35% of qualified spending,” – TheWrap (Yahoo!)
- Lehigh Valley Public Media Acquires Lehigh University’s Radio Station
“The National Public Radio affiliate WLVR, which broadcasts at 91.3 FM, has been sold outright to LVPM by the university, which announced the transfer on Thursday. LVPM, which has operated the station since entering into a partnership with Lehigh in 2019, will purchase the Federal Communications Commission license.” – The Morning Call (Allentown, PA) (MSN)
- Kennedy Center Establishes A New Endowment, One Named After Donald Trump
“(Its) establishment comes less than two weeks after a judge ruled the Kennedy Center’s board acted unlawfully in adding the president’s name. … A source with knowledge of the plans for the endowment” — called the Trump Kennedy Center Fund — “suggested it will focus on the ‘physical disrepair’ of the building.” – CBS News
- 11th-Century Cathedral In Kyiv Set On Fire By Russian Missiles
“A massive Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv has badly damaged the Dormition Cathedral in the Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, a UNESCO world heritage site and one of Ukraine’s most significant religious and cultural sites.” – The Guardian
- Jazz Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim Dead At 91
“In an extraordinarily accomplished career that spanned eight decades, Ibrahim helped bring bebop stylings to South Africa, and he bonded with Duke Ellington, who produced one of his early, influential recordings. In his later years, he became an idol and an inspiration to new generations of jazz pianists.” – NPR
- San Francisco Symphony seeks Deputy Director of Development
Position Summary
Reporting to the Chief Philanthropy Officer, the Deputy Director of Development (DDD) is a key strategic leader and the second most senior position on the San Francisco Symphony’s (the Symphony) Development Team. Serving as a senior partner and designated proxy to the Chief Philanthropy Officer, the DDD plays a central leadership role in departmental strategy, contributed revenue growth, team performance, and organizational planning across the Symphony’s philanthropy operation. Together, they help lead a comprehensive philanthropy program that generates approximately $35 million annually.
The DDD provides leadership for the Symphony’s frontline fundraising efforts, the largest fundraising vertical within the Development department, and oversees a team of nine development professionals, including senior fundraising leaders responsible for major gifts, leadership annual giving, new philanthropy, and foundation and government support. Through this leadership structure, the DDD guides strategy, performance, and contributed revenue growth across a broad portfolio of fundraising activity and donor engagement initiatives.
Working closely with the Chief Philanthropy Officer, Board leadership, fundraising volunteers, and senior institutional leadership, the DDD helps advance the Symphony’s philanthropic priorities and fosters a culture of ambitious, relationship-driven fundraising across the organization.
As a senior frontline fundraiser, the DDD personally manages a select portfolio of approximately 45 to 50 leadership and major gift households and prospects, with annual fundraising responsibility of approximately $3 million to $5 million in support of the Annual Fund and broader institutional priorities.
The Symphony operates on a hybrid schedule, requiring a minimum of two days per week in the office. The Deputy Director of Development is expected to maintain an active presence at select concerts, donor events, and other organizational activities throughout the year, including some evenings and weekends.
For more information, please visit: https://artsconsulting.com/opensearches/san-francisco-symphony-seeks-deputy-director-of-development/
- What Might the Kennedy Center Best Become — Take Two
I’ve received three memorable responses to my recent blog – also posted on Arts Fuse — pondering whether the Kennedy Center might become, or might
- A Landmark Deal for Music, and a new TV/Video Giant
Good Morning,
Two big stories for a Monday. First a landmark licensing deal between an AI company and industry-wide music publishers. (Music Business Worldwide). This is the first pact to value songs and recordings equally as training fodder, an admission that the human-made original is the scarce input the machines can’t generate themselves (yet). AND it means the first framework for how music will be compensated by AI companies is now set. This is a huge story that will impact musicians everywhere.
The second big story is Fox’s acquisition of Roku, the streaming interface, for $22 billion. The deal will create one of the world’s largest TV companies. It resets the new TV/video/streaming landscape.
Elsewhere, evidence keeps accumulating that the slower human version of creativity and cognition delivers something efficiency strips out: neuroscientists report measurable cognitive gains from reading physical books over screens (Psypost). Bookstores, improbably, are booming even as literacy declines, though the essay we link to today is clear-eyed that the boom is a class story, of an aspirational demographic doing what it always has while the reading crisis plays out elsewhere (LitHub).
None of this is really nostalgia. It’s the creativity markets discovering that when machines can make something, the value migrates to the context and provenance that human creators provide.
And just for fun: The Knicks, for their part, just turned all of New York into an impromptu dance floor (The New York Times).
Doug
- The Old Are Taking Over America
Samuel Moyn argues that the oldest Americans, because of their retrograde politics and ever-increasing presence, are profoundly reshaping our collective life. – The New Yorker
- Reimagining The Benefits Of Music In Dementia Care
Music has a unique capability to engage multiple areas of the brain that can function in sync with one another. This includes areas involved in hearing and listening, movement, attention, language, emotion, memory and thinking. – The Conversation
- Study: There Are Cognitive Benefits To Reading Paper Books
Reading a book involves a complex series of mental tasks. A reader must decode words, interpret pictures, and connect new information to what they already know. To do this efficiently, the human brain builds what scientists call a story schema. – Psypost
- Sagrada Familia Might Have Topped Out, But Big Challenges Ahead
“The biggest [challenge] will be Glory Facade, which is the main facade. Maybe it will take 10 years, but we don’t yet have a fixed schedule.” – Dezeen
- Fox To Acquire Roku
The transaction combines Fox’s sports, news, and entertainment content and the Tubi streaming service with Roku’s connected TV platform, The Roku Channel, first-party data and direct relationship with more than 100 million global streaming households, the deal partners touted. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Attack: FCC Opens Early Comment Period On ABC License Renewal
The early renewal order represents one of the most significant actions the Trump administration has taken against a media company, a potential regulatory death-blow to go alongside the myriad legal actions taken against the press and access restrictions placed upon journalists. – The Guardian
- AI Company Makes Industry-Wide Licensing Deal
David Israelite said the Udio agreement is the first industry-wide licensing deal struck with a major AI music company, and the first to “value songs and sound recordings equally” when it comes to AI training. – Music Business Worldwide
- The Kennedy Center Sign Is Restored. But There’s A Bigger Issue
My biggest concern is that the Kennedy Center will remain nominally open—as in, I’ll be free to walk through the doors and perhaps buy a coffee at the cafe—but there will be few, or even no, performances to see. – Washingtonian
- Behold The New Obama Library
After standing in the glow of this new South Side landmark, I admittedly feel like a buzzkill focusing on documents, kind of like visiting the Sistine Chapel and contemplating the plumbing. – The Atlantic
- What The Kennedy Center Might Have Been
Imagine a scenario in which Bernstein and the Kennedys — John and Jackie both — bequeathed a proactive White House arts component prioritizing American achievement, past and present. It would have shaped the goals of the envisioned national cultural center. It almost happened. – ArtsFuse
- Living ‘FridaMania’ In Kahlo’s Hometown
“Frida died – but she didn’t pass away. She was like a rocket. She just went up and up.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Why The Art Workers Coalition Still Resonates Across The Art World
“Among their demands were a section of the museum dedicated to Black (and, in a later, amended statement, Puerto Rican) artists, an artist committee granted curatorial power, a ‘rental fee’ paid to artists for the exhibition of their work and free admission for all.” – The New York Times
- Juneteenth Is A Big Deal In Parts Of Mexico
Why? It all goes back to enslaved people escaping their captors across the South, and fleeing to Spanish-controlled Florida. – NBC News
- Why Are We So Obsessed With Aliens?
“You can keep it pretty simple. There are the alien movies where the aliens come in peace and the alien movies where the aliens do not come in peace.” – NPR
- The 91-Year-Old Venezuelan Artist Says No To Weaving With Electronic Machines
“Mora, who is 91 and tiny, wearing head scarves around her weathered face, has clung to a mix of ancestral Indigenous and Spanish traditions.” – The New York Times
- Where Did This Family’s Looted Artworks Go?
“Despite evidence that Neumann did appropriate the Zoellners’ furniture and paintings, he was not convicted; in 1947 he was deported from the Netherlands as an ‘enemy subject’ under the Nazi regime, and emigrated to the United States with his family.” – El País English
- As The Knicks Win, All Of New York City Becomes A Dance Stage
“Of all the joy blooming throughout the Knicks championship run, the most visible has been the jubilant transfer of energy from body to body.” – The New York Times
- Even In The UK, Music Festival Central, Costs Are Causing Collapse
Womad in Glasgow “is the 20th casualty so far this year as small and independent festival operators enter another tough summer facing myriad challenges, from belt-tightening consumers becoming more picky about how they spend their cash, to soaring energy and labour costs.” – The Guardian (UK)
- If People Aren’t Reading, Why Are Bookstores Thriving?
“The bookstore boom is a story about a certain educated, culturally aspirational demographic doing what it has always done, while the literacy crisis unfolds elsewhere, namely in under-resourced schools, rural communities, and households without the discretionary income to browse a charming bookshop on a Saturday afternoon.” – LitHub
