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- Yorkshire Takes A Weary Breath, Prepares For Another Onslaught Of Wuthering Heights Fans
One hotel owner: “It could all be a flash in the pan, and that’s fine. If it sticks, that’s also great. What I do know is that I won’t be renaming any rooms as ‘The Jacob Elordi Room’ or ‘The Heathcliff Room.’” – The Guardian (UK)
- Those ‘Self-Driving’ Cars Are Often Piloted By Humans 8,000 Miles From San Francisco
Yes, Soylent Green is people, and … so is Waymo? “The autonomous vehicle company uses remote workers in the Philippines to assist its self-driving cars, including those operating daily on Bay Area roads.” – San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo)
- Anthropic Wasn’t Just Taking Electronic Books To Feed The AI Maw, But Scanning And Pulping Hundreds Thousands Of Paper Books
Well, at least they bought those books? “This program raised red flags for some inside Anthropic, who knew that tearing books apart to feed into an AI model was rather literally bringing the critiques of these companies to life.” – LitHub
- Woodie King, Who Died In January At 88, Was A Major Figure Steering Black Theatre In The US
“Woodie, as artistic director and producer, understood and respected the sanctity of the director. … Woodie, even faced with the challenges of inequitable funding for New Federal Theatre, and sometimes no funding at all, always persevered and prevailed.” – American Theatre
- The Louvre Will Restore The Crown Of Empress Eugenie And Put It Back On Display
It was, of course, badly damaged when thieves dropped it in October. – ARTnews
- Suddenly, The Michelle Obama Documentary Is Incredibly Popular On Streaming
Surely it’s a coincidence that as a movie named about the current First Lady opens in the UK, people start watching a movie about Michelle Obama (“a rise in views of more than 13,000%”). – The Guardian (UK)
- What Hudson Williams Does When He’s Not Busy Promoting Heated Rivalry
The man loves reading and writing, basically. “I love Joan Didion, and she once said she journals so that when she gets really old, she can pick up her books and find her way back to herself again.” – CBC
- It’s Not Easy Designing The World’s Biggest Stage
At the halftime show for the Super Bowl, “the stage must be assembled in about eight minutes, using rolling carts equipped with pneumatic tires. The field … can hold only so much additional weight. After the 12-minute performance, the stage must be torn down quickly.” – The New York Times
- Toronto’s Royal Conservatory Of Music Accused Of Enabling A Predatory Piano Educator
“I was left with a feeling of tremendous shame. Even after gathering the courage to speak up, I was ashamed that I was a victim, ashamed that I was unable to stop it. Ashamed that even after finally speaking up, I was disregarded, ignored, discarded.” – Toronto Star
- Good Morning
This week’s AJ highlights: One of the most visceral blows to our cultural ecosystem is the continuing hollowing out of legacy media expertise. The Washington Post has laid off its entire photography staff and Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee, a retreat from curated record-keeping that leaves the nation’s capital with fewer professional observers. The media contraction is a national trend, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has simultaneously cut 15% of its staff, targeting nearly half of those cuts in the newsroom.
But there is also good news. Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has secured a dedicated $10 million endowment for its artistic director position, a signal of private faith in the company. This institutional strength is mirrored on Broadway, where the jukebox musical & Juliet has defied the post-pandemic slump to become one of only four new musicals to fully recoup its investment—proving that sophisticated pop-theatricality still has a viable economic engine.
While a legal battle erupts in Philadelphia over the removal of a memorial to the enslaved people of George Washington’s household—an act of erasure many view as a direct attack on historical honesty—the judiciary is increasingly pushing back. Judge Fred Biery’s recent ruling is being celebrated as a “passionate, erudite, and mischievous” piece of writing that marshals literature and history to defend civil liberties against executive power.
And further good news. From the launch of the massive new Los Angeles Jazz Festival—hoping to draw 250,000 fans to a city recognizing its own musicians—to the surge of “Resistance Theater” rising across the country, the week’s stories suggest that our artists are resilient.
Lastly, my observation that the shuttering of the Kennedy Center and the decimation of the Washington Post are neither isolated nor unrelated happenings. They represent a break in the connective tissue that used to unite Americans. This is part of a larger systemic uncoupling of our civic, political and cultural institutions from the engine that sustains civic life. My theory: Why the Death of American Leadership may run through your Local Orchestra on Diacritical.
All of this week’s stories below.
- Why the Death of American Leadership may run through your Local Orchestra
In the space of a week, we have lost two significant and iconic American institutions. But the shuttering of the Kennedy Center and the decimation of the Washington Post are neither isolated nor unrelated. - Japanese City Cancels Major Cherry-Blossom Festival Because Tourists Behave So Badly
City officials in Fujiyoshida, not far from Mount Fuji, said residents had been littering, entering private homes to use the bathroom, and even defecating in people’s yards and getting belligerent when confronted. The weeks-long event had attracted about 200,000 visitors each year for the past decade. – The Guardian
- How Typists Have Shaped Literary Masterpieces
The typewriter, from its birth, has been tied to a set of assumptions about gender and skill. These assumptions persist to the present and color our cultural understanding of typists’ labor. – Public Domain Review
- “& Juliet” — How A Jukebox Shakespeare Musical That Flopped In Britain Became An Unlikely Broadway Hit
“Today, (after almost four years in New York,) the musical is still packing in crowds, a feat for a show that isn’t a revival or a movie adaptation and lacks big stars or Tony wins. It’s … one of only four new musicals since the pandemic to recoup their investments.” – Variety
- San Francisco’s Top Arts Official Retires As Mayor Rethinks Arts Policy
The exit, announced Monday, Feb. 2, comes just days after Mayor Daniel Lurie posted a job description for an executive director of arts and culture to oversee all three of the city’s arts agencies, which includes Grants for the Arts and the Film Commission, in addition to SFAC. – San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo)
- What Trump’s Kennedy Center Fiasco Shows Us Abut MAGA’s Culture Wars
- Whitewashing History In Philadelphia
To many Philadelphians who having been coming daily ever since to leave protest messages, it felt like an attack on a hard-won monument, and even on the city itself. Within hours of the removal, the city filed a lawsuit in federal court contesting it. – The New York Times
- Pianist And Conductor Tamás Vásáry Has Died At 92
“The Hungarian pianist … was one of the finest interpreters of Liszt and Chopin in the second half of the 20th century. He also achieved renown as a sensitive and insightful conductor, eventually combining both roles to direct many of the world’s leading orchestras … from the keyboard.” – The Telegraph (UK) (Yahoo!)
- We Think Cooperation Is The Ideal. In Fact A little Deceit Might Be Good
We evolved not to cooperate or compete, but with the capacity for both – and with the intelligence to hide competition when it suits us, or to cheat when we’re likely to get away with it. Cooperation is consequently something we need to promote, not presume. – Aeon
- Reimagining Shakespeare In Shanghai
Instead of Venice and Cyprus, Shakespeare’s setting for “Othello,” the Shanghai version takes place on an island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, where an American has been hired to help fight the Taiping rebellion, a bloody revolt in the 19th century. – The New York Times
- The Muppets Were On Top. Then Decades Of Bad Business Decisions Toppled Their Popularity. Can They Rise Again?
The characters have survived a cruel decade defined largely by false starts, aborted projects and creative in-fighting. – The Wrap (MSN)
- Enormous Challenges For Disney’s New CEO
The entertainment industry is in flux, and Disney will need someone with a deft hand if it is to survive and thrive. The business is consolidating around just a few superpowers, many of whom have the luxury of giant tech businesses to fall back on (see: Google and Amazon). – The Wrap (MSN)
- Something Is Not Working In Sacramento’s Arts
This struggle, we have found, applies across the board and includes live music venues, theater groups, performance arts, galleries, and does not discriminate between small and new or legacy organizations. But sometimes we don’t miss something until it’s gone. – CapRadio
- An Ambitious Project To Document Dance
The ambitious project was five years in the making and culled street dance resources from a wide-ranging array of sources spanning mediums. – Fjord Review
- Gone Fishing<a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/02/gone-fishing.html" title="Gone Fishing” rel=”nofollow”><img width="150" height="150" src="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/JH-offprintparis-beaux-arts-2-1200-150×150.jpg" class="webfeedsFeaturedVisual wp-post-image" alt="Jan Herman at Offprint Paris, 2013 [Photo: Ben Schot]" link_thumbnail="1" decoding="async" srcset="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/JH-offprintparis-beaux-arts-2-1200-150×150.jpg 150w, https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/JH-offprintparis-beaux-arts-2-1200-70×70.jpg 70w, https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/JH-offprintparis-beaux-arts-2-1200-110×110.jpg 110w" sizes="(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" data-attachment-id="10269" data-permalink="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/jh-offprintparis-beaux-arts-2-1200" data-orig-file="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/JH-offprintparis-beaux-arts-2-1200-e1384877771466.jpg" data-orig-size="560,420" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"4.7","credit":"","camera":"DMC-FX55","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1384614333","copyright":"","focal_length":"12","iso":"200","shutter_speed":"0.125","title":""}' data-image-title="Jan Herman at Offprint Paris, 2013 [Photo: Ben Schot]" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="
JH at Offprint Paris, 2013 [Photo: Ben Schot]
” data-medium-file=”https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/JH-offprintparis-beaux-arts-2-1200-300×225.jpg” data-large-file=”https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/JH-offprintparis-beaux-arts-2-1200-1024×768.jpg”>I’d like to say I’ve gone fishing … ice fishing, given the weather … but in truth all I’m doing is taking a break. - Farewell To The Mass-Market Paperback Book
First introduced in the 1930s, mass-market books (once called “pulps”) sold in huge quantities for decades. Yet sales have been slowly-but-steadily sinking since the 1990s, displaced by ebooks and (more expensive) trade paperbacks, and the wire racks filled with the inexpensive titles in supermarkets, drugstores, and the like have almost disappeared. – The New York Times
- Los Angeles To Host Major New Jazz Festival
Concert promoter and former city councilman Martin Ludlow always wondered why a city full of excellent musicians had no equivalent of the big jazzfests in New Orleans, Montreux, and Montreal. So, starting this August, he’s putting on the LA Jazz Festival, hoping to draw 250,000 fans over 25 days. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
- Minnesota Orchestra Reports Record Earned Revenue — And $4.2 Million Deficit
In fiscal year 2025, earned revenue (ticket sales, hall rentals, concessions) reached a record high of $12.1 million. Orchestra Hall reached 82% paid capacity, up almost nine points. Nevertheless, the season ended with a $4.2 million operating loss, compared with a $3.8 million deficit the previous fiscal year. – Twin Cities Pioneer Press
- “Great American State Fair” To Replace Smithsonian Folklife Festival On National Mall This Summer
The Folklife Festival normally brings artisans and performers from various spots to the Mall for several weeks. This year, the Smithsonian says it will present mini-versions of the Festival around the country, while the Mall will host a state-fair-style gathering with pavilions from each state and territory. – The New York Times
- Buffalo AKG Art Museum Gave Its Director A Low-Interest $335K Loan For A House. It Hasn’t Been Repaid.
“Janne Sirén, director … since 2013, used a museum loan to help finance a $710,000 home — more than half of which remains unpaid, including accrued interest, according to a state review.” – ARTnews
- Newspaper Bloodbath Continues As Atlanta Journal-Constitution Lays Of 15% Of Its Staff
“About 50 AJC employees (will) be losing their jobs, with about half of the cuts coming from the newsroom.” – SaportaReport (Atlanta)
- Washington Post Lays Off Art Critic Sebastian Smee And Entire Photography Staff
All eight of the paper’s in-house photographers have lost their jobs, as has the Pulitzer Prize winner Smee, who has been with the Post for eight years. His colleague Philip Kennicott (another Pulitzer laureate) will remain on staff. – Hyperallergic
- Boosterism? Why, It Made America What It Is Today!
“Boosters don’t describe real things so much as what they hope will become real things, often presenting growth as inevitable and betting on optimism as a viable economic strategy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, boosterism has played a major role in American history. … The harsh truth is, boosterism sometimes works.” – Quartz
- Crypto Investors Pay $300K To Create Gold Trump Statue
At 15 feet tall, the statue of President Trump, mounted on its 7,000-pound pedestal, is about the height of a two-story building — a giant effigy cast in bronze and finished with a thick layer of gold leaf. – The New York Times
- The Difference Between Human Hierarchies And Other Primate Hierarchies
Evolutionary anthropologist Thomas Morgan: “People can be coercive, but unlike other species, we also create hierarchies of prestige – voluntary arrangements that allocate labor and decision-making power according to expertise.” – The Conversation
