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- Isabel Allende Entered Herself in a Contest under a Pseudonym
Good Morning,
Isabel Allende, 84, won Spain’s €1 million Premio Planeta by submitting a sequel to The House of the Spirits under the name Luz Ventura, with the title Los que faltan. She told those at the ceremony she had never entered a contest before because she didn’t want to come last (The Guardian).
Ana Mota, a senior at South Grand Prairie High in Texas, was cast as Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors until the school board swapped in Frozen, citing the 2025 anti-DEI law, Senate Bill 12. Nobody has explained how a girl playing a male role violates it (Downstage Center, a theatre Substack).
TikTok permanently suspended the ad account of Bleecker Street, distributor of Alex Gibney’s documentary Musk, for “political content” just as the film expanded to 470 screens. It restored the account Sunday morning and called the suspension an error (The Hollywood Reporter).
Billy Joel, 77, is auctioning more than 70 of his motorcycles because his neurologist says every show he gives is like getting a concussion (The Hollywood Reporter).
Catharina van Hemessen, a sixteenth-century Flemish painter, signed her work, which kept it from being filed under her father’s name (The New York Times).
NBC’s The Sound of Music Live drew more than 18 million viewers in 2013, against an internal hope of 10 million (Variety).
All of today’s stories below.
- A New Collective In Portland Would Really Like To Provide A Living Wage To Theatre Workers
Possible? Maybe: “Davidson found sources for Puddletown’s business structure by looking backward, to the kind of cooperative arrangements used by first traveling commedia dell’arte companies to Shakespeare’s players, on down to late 19th and early [20th] century repertory troupes.” Its first show is free. – Oregon ArtsWatch
- The Art Bird News Outrage Cycle Continues, But Why?
If you have miraculously missed most of the Kelly Clarkson/small business/rudeness cycle, it’s back. The art bird at the center of the Brooklyn storm, once tagged at $15,000, now retails for $15 million. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
- Recreating The Mona Lisa, By Plane
“Pilots looking to clock in flight hours and practice tricky turns can have a bit of fun by tracing the shapes of animals, words, phrases, or in Mr. McDaniel’s case, world-class art. Mr. McDaniel’s Instagram moniker is Pilot Picasso.” – The New York Times
- Lessons about Value and AI from the Digital Revolution
Twenty-five years ago the digital revolution rewrote the ways culture gets found, valued and paid for. The battles were fought in a series of skirmishes over disruptive technologies that remade the ways creative marketplaces were organized. AI is poised to do the same. So… lessons? - If We Force Chatbots Into Third Person, Will People Stop Thinking Of Them As Sentient?
Sherry Turkle: An AI is “really not afraid of death, it’s not afraid of illness, it’s not afraid of pain, it doesn’t love its children, and it doesn’t care if you kill yourself or make dinner.” – Wired
- Is It Possible To ‘Do Jane Austen Justice’ With Movie Costumes?
Says the new Sense and Sensibility‘s costume designer, “It was an amazing experience to try and fight those two sides, making historic accuracy marry up with how I wanted to give us a more modern take in the film.” – Variety
- Peter Nagy, Artist Turned Influential Art Dealer In India, Has Died At 66
Nagy was “a prescient artist turned canny art dealer who brought the New York gallery system to India and contemporary Indian art to the world.” – The New York Times
- Playing A Rock Concert Is Like Giving Yourself A Concussion, Doctors Tell Billy Joel
His neurologist says performing is out for now. “He describes the combination of extreme sound volume, lighting, stress and energy as the concern. Further testing, he adds, will help determine whether he can return.” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Creating Art In A Time Of International And Creative Crisis
Elif Shafak’s latest book “arose out of our own historical moment, which Shafak has dubbed ‘The age of three As: Angst, Anger and AI.’” – The Guardian (UK)
- It’s A Good Thing This Artist Signed Her Paintings
Otherwise, they likely would have been described as her father’s work, or taken as simply someone from his atelier. – The New York Times
- Remounting A Rarely Seen Balanchine Gives A Window Into The 1960s
“Pithoprakta is a wrenching, urgent work that pushes ballet’s otherworldly quality to a darker dimension, both uncanny and mystical. This is no place for chiffon. It’s not polite.” – The New York Times
- Isabel Allende, Writing Under A Pseudonym, Wins A Major Literary Prize In Spain
“The prize is open to unpublished manuscripts, with the option of submitting under a pseudonym, and Allende entered under the name Luz Ventura, with the fictional title Los que faltan.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Does Frankfurt Have The Best Book Parties Of The Year?
It’s definitely got big, not to mention packed and chatty, fêtes. “In an era when book auctions are held regularly over email, it’s that sense of community that keeps the publishers coming back.” – The New York Times
- How – And Why – NBC Brought Back Live Musicals On TV
Nobody quite knew what they had when 2011’s first revival started. But “Sound of Music Live delivered an astounding 18 million-plus viewers — well past the hope internally that it would reach at least 10 million.” – Variety
- Texas School Board Say That It’s Not An Anti-Drag Law, But An Anti-DEI Law, Stopping Little Shop Of Horrors
“However, there was no explanation given of exactly how a girl performing as a male character runs afoul of the more recent SB12, leaving only the implication that perhaps gender equality has been nixed under its provisions.” – Downstage Center
- During And After Protests, Gangs Spread Fires Across France
In Limoges, the city hall burned. At the actual protests, demonstrators “complained about inflation sent soaring over 3% by the war in the Middle East. Others slammed perceived police brutality in student protests that have gripped France over the past four weeks.” – Le Monde English
- TikTok Has Banned The Musk Documentary Advertiser From The Platform
Hunh: “Distributor Bleecker Street was informed Friday afternoon a ‘permanent suspension’ was coming regarding any ads it tried to buy, and the company was unable to do so shortly after.” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Ice Dancing Champion Tessa Virtue Makes Her Professional Debut Dancing On Dry Land
“In the studio, Virtue has found new freedom in the ‘ability to get grounded with the floor,’ she says. ‘I’m not just gliding across the surface, but I’m actually using the floor as an impetus to step and move and turn.’” – Dance Magazine
- London’s Art Market May Be Damaged But Small Galleries Are Sharpening Their Edge
Though Brexit and reforms to wealthy international residents’ tax arrangements have damaged the Britain’s art market, the depth and quality of London’s midsize and smaller gallery offerings still give the city’s art scene an edge. – The New York Times
- How Ukrainians Are Fighting Back Against Russia’s Destruction Of Their Books
“The Ukrainian response has been a renewal of patriotism and engagement with national culture, along with enthusiastic defiance: the queues outside bookshops that formed in response to … the destruction, the orders that flooded in for e-books, or customers content to wait months for physical copies.” – The Bookseller (UK)
- New from Moloko Print It Is Written: Times with Brion Gysin<a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/10/new-from-moloko-print-it-is-written-times-with-brion-gysin.html" title="New from Moloko Print
It Is Written: Times - Bernie Sanders: Let’s Not Let Big Tech Dictate The Future Of Humanity
If these were the fantasies of teenage boys obsessed with science fiction, we could laugh them off. They are not. These are the foundational beliefs of the most powerful people in the world, who are mobilizing trillions of dollars to turn them into reality. – The Atlantic
- Opening Of New Brazil Pompidou Museum Delayed Until 2029
“The project is currently working toward an opening in 2029 and is in the technical preparatory stages for the bidding process,” a Pompidou spokesperson tells The Art Newspaper. – The Art Newspaper
- CNN Signs Deal With Google For Generative AI Development
CNN says the partnership would unlock “new pathways for audiences to access CNN’s unparalleled journalism while being compensated for the delivery and use of our unique intellectual property in connection with AI products.” – Variety
- Traditional Chinese Opera’s Biggest Star Is Also Its Most Controversial
Mao Weitao has performed in Yue opera (the form from the city of Shaoxing) for almost 50 years, and she’s one of very few performers in traditional Chinese theater to have achieved mainstream celebrity. And she’s done that in part by upending the conventions of the genre. – Sixth Tone
- How Florida’s New College Was Neutered By DeSantis’ Culture War
The report shows that NCF, with about eight hundred students, had both the largest administrative personnel and the highest operating expenses of any public college in Florida. – n+1
- Is Their A Limit To Human Knowledge? Or Do We Keep Moving The Goalposts?
Are certain questions closed to the human mind? Are there truths about the world that we can never know? – Aeon
- Ian McKellan To Perform As A Hologram In New Play
Sir Ian McKellen is set to star in the European premier of a play in which he appears as a hologram. – BBC
- Kennedy Center’s New Artistic Director Has Been Working With Trump’s People There From The Beginning
Since April 2025, two months after Trump’s takeover, Rick Canny has been a senior adviser to the Center, which has now amended his consulting contract to appoint him artistic director “in a designated executive consulting capacity.” Memos indicate that Canny wants authority to make a lot of changes. – The Washington Post (MSN)
- Comedy Podcasts Are Changing Funny
Comedians now routinely give their audiences hours of new material every week, in exchange for subscription and advertising revenue that, while amounting to much less than what box offices and network sales departments once commanded, also goes more substantially and directly to the artists. – The New Yorker
- Why Are Scammers Targeting Book Authors?
I’m not the only author to have found myself stuck in a Zoom book club with fake readers. Countless writers with published books have been receiving invitations from reading communities that start to unravel after a basic Google search. – The Dial
- Louvre Robbery Was A Preview For A Year Of The Art Heists
Police are still looking for the Louvre’s stolen trove of 19th-century jewelry, though French authorities arrested eight people in connection with the crime last October. But the subsequent heists across Europe suggest the Louvre heist wasn’t a one-off and might have emboldened copycats. – The Wall Street Journal
- A Broadway Theater Is Replacing “The Full Monty” With … Ionesco?
Roundabout Theater Company had planned for next spring a large-scale Broadway revival of The Full Monty. That has been postponed, and Roundabout has scheduled a star-studded production of the Romanian-French absurdist playwright’s Rhinoceros, about a town whose inhabitants are turning into half-blind, ill-tempered horned pachyderms. – The New York Times
- This Fund Was Launched To Save Public Radio Stations From Closing. Now It’s Helping Them Figure Out How To Stay Open.
“The Public Media Bridge Fund has raised about $87 million and stabilized 186 public radio stations that serve about 30 million people in the United States. (Now begins) PMC’s new $38 million fundraising effort to help stations become more financially sustainable without federal funding.” – AP