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- In Defense Of Liam Scarlett, Five Years After His Suicide
Clarissa Hard argues that, with no hard evidence of serious sexual misconduct ever revealed, the gifted young choreographer should not have been made a total pariah and driven to take his own life. – The Critic (UK)
- FCC Starts Investigation Of Disney Broadcast License
As expected, Brendan Carr and the FCC on Tuesday unleashed license-renewal hell on The Walt Disney Co. However, with another Jimmy Kimmel brouhaha erupting with Donald Trump and MAGAland, the Josh D’Amaro-led Disney is playing it cool and playing along, at least for now. – Deadline
- A Change To Portland’s Widely-Disliked Arts Tax
“’We’ve not identified a way to make (the tax) not annoying,’ said Council President Jamie Dunphy, the architect of the new policy. ‘But we’ve found ways to make it less annoying.’” The proposed change: fewer people paying more money. – Oregon Public Broadcasting
- A Shift: Reviews Are More Important Than Ratings In Streaming
Reviews are now even more crucial than they used to be while ratings have dipped in importance in a world of cannibalized viewing, Jeff Pope told a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch this afternoon in London. – Deadline
- A Conversation With Víkingur Ólafsson
“So you could also call me a soft Viking. I tend to stay away from crime, but I do like parallel fifths and parallel octaves, so maybe I’m not as innocent as I’d like to pretend to be.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
- Cory Doctorow: Why The World Is Suddenly Becoming Enshittified
“The internet is getting worse, fast. The services we rely on, they’re all turning into piles of shit. Worse, the digital is merging with the physical, which means that the same forces that are wrecking our platforms are also wrecking our homes and our cars, the places where we work and shop. – Literary Review of Canada
- Lost Copy Of Oldest Surviving English Poem Turns Up In Rome
“Scholars from Trinity College Dublin uncovered the manuscript that contains Caedmon’s Hymn at the National Central Library of Rome. Bede, the medieval theologian revered as the father of English history, recorded the nine-line poem in the eighth century.” – The Guardian
- State Legislatures Tweak Library And School Laws Concerning Books (To Protect Them)
“We’ve had success in blue states that want to protect from book banning at the local level, but these efforts have moved to purple or even red states, to the point of Alaska now moving this forward.” – Publishers Weekly
- NJ Father/Daughter Team Convicted Of $2M Art Fraud
Erwin Bankowski, 50, and Karolina Bankowska, 26, admitted in federal court in Brooklyn to wire fraud conspiracy and misrepresenting Native American–produced goods. The pair, a father and daughter, now face up to 20 years in prison, along with at least $1.9 million in restitution. – ARTnews
- Zimbabwe’s Plundered Iconic Stone Birds Are Finally Returned
Known as the Zimbabwe Bird, it has long been a symbol of national identity, but behind it lies a complex tale of displacement, colonial plunder and restitution. – BBC (MSN)
- Stephen Colbert On CBS’s Stated Reason (Financial) For Canceling His Show
“They’ve got the books, and I (have no) desire to debate them over what they say their business model is and how it does not work anymore. But less than two years before, … they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed.” – The New York Times
- In a Strange Broadway Season, Some Big Stars
The play is still the thing for these powerhouse performers, even if drama as good as Arthur Miller’s masterpiece is a rare occurrence in any age. But these actors are after more than a prestige showcase. They’re looking for an artistic lifeline. – Los Angeles Times
- What Has Gone Wrong With Architecture
Architecture is a Fox’s discipline. It sits between capital, politics, infrastructure, climate, design, engineering, art, psychology, and economics. Its task is to hold these domains together, manage complexity, and, at its best, make spaces and places in which we can live better together. – Time
- The Death Of Art Schools
Rather than treating education as a public good, elected officials shift the burden onto individuals, underfund institutions, and protect a system that redistributes wealth upward. Financialization destroys the relation between education, citizenship, and the public world that the university is supposed to build. – Hyperallergic
- The Man Who Discovered The Inside-Job Thefts At The British Museum Has Died At 61
“Dr. Ittai Gradel … alerted the British Museum and the police after he was able to buy dozens of museum artefacts on eBay over the course of several years. Gradel died of renal cancer days after receiving a rarely-presented medal from the museum in recognition of what its director called his ‘very significant contribution.’” – The Guardian
- Old Globe Theatre In San Diego Selects New Managing Director
Trish Santini — who, as executive director, oversaw the construction, opening, and programming of the Barry Diller-funded Little Island just off the shore of Manhattan — will have the title of co-CEO at the Old Globe, working alongside artistic director Barry Edelstein. – Playbill
- Opera Philadelphia To Continue $11 Ticket Scheme, Revive Timely Gershwin Show After 93 Years
There’s a slight change to the all-tickets-for-$11-or-name-your-price scheme for next year: subscribers get first crack at tickets. And what is this “timely” Gershwin show? It’s Let ‘Em Eat Cake, about a fictional US President who loses his re-election bid and tries to overturn the result. – WHYY (Philadelphia)
- How Do You Put The Venice Biennale’s Central Exhibition Together After Its Curator Died?
Only days after she was diagnosed with liver cancer last year, curator Koyo Kouoh passed away. Nevertheless, the Biennale’s flagship show will open next month under her name and chosen title, “In Minor Keys.” A five-person team of Kouoh’s assistants and advisers has tried to channel her work. – The New York Times
- 2 Arts Marketing, Development & Ticketing Conferences Devoted to Solutions for the New Era!
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- Compromise: Russia Will Have Show At Venice Biennale, But It Will Be Closed To Public
“According to new reports from Italian news outlets, Russia‘s group exhibition ‘The tree is rooted in the sky’ will only be accessible to members of the press and industry insiders during the Bienniale’s preview May 5-8. When the exhibition opens to the public (May 9-November 22), entry will be prohibited.” – Artforum
- Minnesota Orchestra Musicians And Management Agree To New Contract Months Early
The new two-year agreement, effective Sept. 1, includes a 2.5% salary increase each year as well as what are described as “temporary changes to hiring practices” in order to reduce expenses by $2 million. – Pioneer Press (Minneapolis-St. Paul)
- One Of America’s Oldest Period-Instrument Orchestras Names Its Second-Ever Music Director
Boston Baroque was founded back in 1973 by harpsichordist/conductor Martin Pearlman, who stepped down as artistic director last year. His successor, as of this coming season, is Marc Minkowski, who has amassed an estimable discography with Les Musiciens du Louvre, the Baroque orchestra he founded in France in 1982. – Moto Perpetuo
- AI Gets a Museum; Its Story Cracks
Good Morning,
The AI conversation is colliding with itself today. Refik Anadol’s Dataland — billed as the world’s first AI art museum — got a June opening date inside Frank Gehry’s Grand L.A. complex (Artnet). Meanwhile, a new Google DeepMind paper argues large language models will never be conscious, demonstrating the gap between AI marketing and rigorous science (404 Media). And a dissection of Sora’s stalled adoption asks why creative AI keeps drawing initial crowds and then bleeding them (The Conversation). The shift is from what AI can do to what it can sustain — and who pays for the institutional bets placed before the answer is in.
Elsewhere: Venice’s La Fenice abruptly fired Beatrice Venezi as incoming music director after she trash-talked the opera house and its audience to an Argentine paper (The Guardian). And Chicago arts leaders say openly they no longer count on federal funding as a reliable line item (Crain’s Chicago Business).
A 6th-century New Testament text long thought irretrievable from re-used parchment has been recovered through “ghost imaging” (Artnet). Medieval monks broke the book up. The technology of 2026 put it back together.
All of our stories below.
- “Ghost Imaging” Recovers Text Of 1,500-Year-Old Biblical Manuscript
The 6th-century Codex H included a Greek-language copy of the New Testament’s letters of St. Paul. Sometime in the Middle Ages, though, the monks of Mt. Athos broke the book up and re-used the parchment. Fragments have since been identified, but the original text on them was considered irretrievable — until now. – Artnet
- Rise Of The Viral Micro-Drama
While the rest of the world was getting hooked on cat videos and bedroom-dance routines, Chinese creators were tinkering with something more ambitious: serialized shows shot vertically, for phones, and packed with racy plots, absurd twists, and great swells of emotion. – The New Yorker
- Nilo Cruz: The Art Of Opera Libretto
A play lives in language. An opera lives in duration. One moment in an opera can expand for five minutes. Maybe you give the composer a full sentence. They might take one word and heighten it, expand it even more. Maybe the whole sentence disappears into music. – The Paris Review
- AI: A Philosophy About Language
The underlying intelligence of a large language model isn’t a function of its architecture, its parameter count, or the volume of compute thrown at its training. It is not even about the training data. It is a function of the social complexity of the civilization whose language it digested. – The Ideas Newsletter
- The Obsessive Who’s Rescuing And Preserving Indian Cinema’s Early History
“Seventy per cent of India’s films made before 1950 are gone forever. Film Heritage Foundation founder Shivendra Singh Dungarpur is trying to save the rest.” – Variety
- When A Fierce Street-Dancing Competitor Starts Choreographing On Contemporary Dance Companies
“’Usually, when I walk in rooms, people are afraid of me,’ the choreographer Courtney Washington said recently.” – The New York Times
- New Google Paper Argues AI Will Never Be Conscious
The paper shows the divergence between the self-serving narratives AI companies promote in the media and how they collapse under rigorous examination. – 404 Media
- A Detailed Account Of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Heist
A former FBI agent who led the investigation for more than two decades is now offering the first detailed account of how investigators reached that conclusion — and publicly identifying the men he believes were involved. – AP News
- Why AI Is Struggling With Creativity
Many generative AI programs geared toward creative fields have encountered a common problem: rapid initial adoption, followed by declining sustained engagement. – The Conversation
- David Malouf, Australian Author And “Living National Treasure,” Is Dead At 92
“From reimagined Greek and Roman classics to the exploration of identity and morality in the suburbs and landscapes of Australia, David Malouf successfully merged his passion for literature, language and imagination with his connection to home to become one of Australia’s most celebrated writers.” – The Guardian
- Docs: Adelaide Writers Week Sacrificed To Save Arts Festival
Adelaide writers’ week was sacrificed to save the 2026 Adelaide festival, an event that ploughs more than $60m into South Australia’s economy each year, documents show. – The Guardian
- Why It’s So Difficult To Agree On Truth
These different notions of truth shape everyday discourse as well as philosophical debate. They might help explain why some arguments feel pointless, why political debates circle endlessly, and why certain disagreements never quite meet on common ground. – Psyche
