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- Who owns what, anyway?
Good Morning,
Three stories today circle the same question: who has standing to control the use of cultural assets — likenesses, artworks, infrastructure — and what happens when that standing is contested.
Dua Lipa is suing Samsung for $15 million, alleging the company used her image to sell TVs without permission (Variety). Several national pavilions at the Venice Biennale closed Friday in protest of Israel’s inclusion (The Guardian). And nearly 9,000 universities had Canvas — the platform that runs their assignments and grades — held hostage by a ransomware crew demanding payment by Tuesday (Wired).
The Musée d’Orsay is trying an experiment — embedding unresolved Nazi-provenance cases physically inside the museum, in public view (Salon). Acknowledgement as a kind of policy.
Elsewhere: Cannes opens this week with the Hollywood studios mostly on the sidelines (Seattle Times), Broadway is positively crawling with celebrities (CBC), and Billie Eilish isn’t sure another Billie Eilish is structurally possible anymore (Wired).
All of our stories below.
- When It’s Time For A Revival, But The Musical’s Book Really Needs A Rewrite
“I think of book writing as analogous to screenwriting: It’s a craft more about structure than dialogue, about setting the scene for the central activity, which … in the case of a musical is singing and dancing.” – American Theatre
- Xia De-Hong, The Main Character In Her Daughter’s Memoir Of Mao’s Cruelty, Has Died At 94
“The story of Ms. Chang’s stoic mother holding the family together while battling on behalf of her husband, a functionary who was tortured and imprisoned during Mao’s regime, was the focus of Wild Swans.” – The New York Times
- New From MolokoTake a Ride with A. Robert Lee’s Travel Painting<a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/05/new-from-molokotake-a-ride-with-a-robert-lees-travel-painting.html" title="New From Moloko
Take a Ride with A. Robert - The Art That Nazis Stole, Still Waiting To Go Home, Wherever Home May Be
“What makes the Orsay initiative notable is not simply that it acknowledges this history, but that it embeds it physically inside a major national museum — placing unresolved provenance cases in direct view of the public.” – Salon
- Is It OK For Samsung To Use A Musician’s Face To Sell TVs?
She says no: “Dua Lipa has filed a $15 million lawsuit against Samsung, alleging that the electronics manufacturer used her likeness to sell TVs without paying her and without permission.” – Variety
- Here Comes Cannes
“This year, Hollywood studios are mostly on the sidelines. But for more than 78 years, Cannes has been an unparalleled showcase, and sun-dappled circus, for some of the best in cinema.” – Seattle Times (AP)
- Best First Sentence In Literature?
Well, best opening, anyway. Maybe Lauren Groff? – The Atlantic
- Several Country’s Venice Pavilions Closed On Friday In Protest Of Israel’s Inclusion
“The Belgian, Dutch, Austrian, Japanese, Macedonian and Korean pavilions were closed for the day. The British, Spanish, French, Egyptian, Finnish and Luxembourg entries were either closed and then reopened, or opened and expected to close early.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Total Bans Are Actually Terrible Ways To Get Kids (Or Adults) Off Screens
“This is the cigarette story in reverse. Smoking rates did not plummet in the United States and other nations because of taxes alone. They plummeted because the social meaning of smoking flipped.” – The New York Times
- We Can Look For Ourselves In Fiction, Sure, But We Have To Look Beyond As Well
“I keep having conversations with grown, discerning adults whose chief metric for their enjoyment of a book, show or movie is how relevant it is, how directly it speaks, to the granular particulars of their lived experience.” – NPR
- Now Writers Who Are Children Of Other Writers Are Being Called ‘Nepo Babies,’ And That Seems Iffy
“Does having a novelist for a parent make it likely that a child will be inspired to follow? Or is it easier for children of writers to get published? I spoke to some novelists who have kept it in the family to find out.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Why This 80-Year-Old Korean Artist Is Suddenly Everywhere
Park Daesung: “I came from nothing, and I’ve accomplished some fame and a lot of good opportunities, but this feels very overwhelming.” – The New York Times
- Nearly Nine Thousand Institutions Of Higher Learning Had Their Grades And Assignments Held Hostage For A Ransom
This seems fine: “The message from attackers ‘urged schools included on the affected list to consult with a cyber advisory firm and contact the group privately to negotiate a settlement before the end of the day on May 12.’” – Wired
- Why The Lost Boys Epitomize The 1980s So Alarmingly Well
And maybe, just maybe, why the movie is back as a Broadway show now. – The New York Times
- Some Folks Really Could Not Deal With Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Show
And their reactions (or some astroturfing, perhaps) had them calling the FCC to complain. – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
- Opposition Is Mounting To The Paramount-WB Merger
Will it – can it? – make a difference? – Variety
- This Bookstore Has Wheels, And More Than One Hundred Thousand Miles
“While there are library bookmobiles and other bookstores housed in trucks, … Collins believes hers is the rare traveling bookstore. She wishes there were more, pointing out that there is little overhead and a lot of freedom to open and close at will.” – The New York Times
- The All-Seeing Eyes In Our Pockets
“Mixed in the flour that bakes digital technology sit two original sins pervading most gadgets, apps and platforms alike: surveillance and prediction; more specifically, surveillance at the service of prediction. Both lead to social control.” – Aeon
- There Are An Awful Lot Of Celebs On Broadway Right Now
Too many? Also, is it Bad For Theatre to have celebs there? – CBC
- SoundCloud Isn’t Quite Dead, But It Won’t Produce The Next Billie Eilish
So what’s next? Eilish says she has no idea. “Ten years ago artists could build followings, like Eilish did, through livestreams, Instagram posts, and videos on social media. In 2026, the landscape looks very different.” – Wired
- AJ Chronicles: The Venice Biennale Blows Up — Some Takeaways
Culture awards of all kinds have been steadily losing their currency over the past decade. So what’s going on? - Stéphane Denéve shares his philosophy of artistic curation
Stéphane Denève, Artistic Director of the New World Symphony, shares his passion for Modern Masterworks and his philosophy of artistic curation.
- David Attenborough, Everyone’s Favorite Nature TV Host, Is Now 100
“(He’s) the man who has brought frolicking gorillas, breaching whales and tiny poisonous frogs into living rooms around the world for more than 70 years. … Attenborough has illuminated the beauty, ferocity and sometimes downright weirdness of nature in a hushed melodic voice that conveys his own awe at what he is witnessing.” – AP
- America’s First Baroque Dance Company Is Now 50
“While early music enjoyed a strong following (since) the 1970s, historical dance needed help catching up — and the New York Baroque Dance Co., founded in 1976 by Catherine Turocy and Ann Jacoby, was seminal in jump-starting research, performance styles, and popularity.” – Early Music America
- Claim: Figuring Out Consciousness Isn’t Difficult
Amid the current cultural backlash against progressive ideas, today’s debate on consciousness reflects our human fears of belonging to the same family as inanimate matter and losing our dear, transcendent souls. – Noema
- How Gawker Reshaped Our Media Landscape
Gawker, which shut down 10 years ago this August, was guilty of lapses in judgment — former staffers interviewed for this story admit as much. It could be withering, puerile and gratuitously nasty. But, at its best, it rebelled against media piety and the growing, often indiscriminate power of the digital world. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Retrospective Maps Brion Gysin’s Avant-Garde Canon
- Vice News Is Coming Back (Though Not Quite Like It Was)
“The hip current events platform targeted at Millennials, which sought to be ‘The Economist for young people’ during the decade (2014-2023), is now being resuscitated by company founder Shane Smith, both as a social-platform-first outlet for his podcast and news reports and as a brand partnership vehicle.” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Portland, OR Has An Arts Tax. Now It’s Time To Reform It
“Without this much needed arts tax reform, including indexing it to inflation, we risk losing the very institutions that make Portland vibrant, and we also risk losing the next generation of arts lovers by failing to sustain arts education in our schools.” – KATU
- Warner Bros. Posts $2.9B Loss In First Quarter
The New York-based media company released its first-quarter earnings report Wednesday, which included a $2.9-billion loss. That amount includes $1.3 billion in restructuring expenses, including updated valuations for Warner’s declining linear cable television networks. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
- How Trump Took Over The NEH
A little over a year later, after the Department of Government Efficiency eliminated more than half of the NEH staff and tried to terminate 97 percent of its grants, Trump fired all but four members of the 26-person advisory board, called the National Council on the Humanities. – Chronicle of Higher Education
- How Our Machines Are Getting In The Way Of Art
From the original, nineteenth-century form popularized by Balzac, Zola, and Stendhal to the “lyrical” variant of today, the verisimilitude that realism pursues—not just lifelikeness, but worldlikeness—is meant to convince us the novel is, for want of a better term, natural. – Boston Review
- Hungary: Will Péter Magyar Purge The Corrupted State Media Viktor Orbán Left Behind?
“Since taking power in 2010, Orbán and his Fidesz party reshaped the country’s media to promote themselves and demonise their opponents, sending press freedom rankings plunging and leaving swathes of the country living in an alternative reality.” Soon after last month’s election, Magyar vowed to suspend and reform state media he compared to North Korea’s. – The Guardian
- Time For Ballet To Go Big Again?
His way of turning chaos into clockwork, of shifting the act of watching ballet to an out-of-body experience, might do a number on a choreographer trying to make a full-scale classical dance at City Ballet. Still, why hasn’t anyone tried? Why don’t choreographers make huge classical ballets anymore? – The New York Times
