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- When Next You Go To Donate Blood, The Chicago Symphony May Be Playing The Soundtrack
There’s a new way to distract oneself while donating blood – to play immersive virtual reality games. And the games’s soundtracks? “Abbott commissioned the Chicago Symphony Orchestra … to record them in a whirlwind, one-day recording session in the spring.” – The New York Times
- How David Hockney Celebrated, Sometimes Mischeviously, Gay Life
“What’s so revolutionary about Hockney’s paintings is not just that they portray male nudity and desire, but scenes of domesticity: men swimming, showering and brushing their teeth together.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Dito Van Reigersberg, Philly’s Beloved Theatre Founder And Performer, Has Died At 53
“Antic yet elegant, Mr. van Reigersberg was closely associated with two important strands of 21st-century performance: devised physical theater — in which an ensemble works together to create a script through improvisation — and a playful, let-the-chest-hair-show take on drag.” – The New York Times
- The Sensual, Forbidden Pleasures Of Touching Art
“One of the cardinal rules of museum-going is that art should be enjoyed from a comfortable distance and never touched. However, in the 1960s, a cohort of artists began inviting audiences to interact with, and thus alter, their works.” – Aeon
- This Los Angeles Museum Knows How WWII Shaped Global Soccer
As the men’s World Cup gets underway, LA’s Holocaust Museum has a show on the “beautiful game” that “shines a light on the important but largely overlooked relationship between Jewish life and the global game” – and how WWII changed everything. – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
- Building A Jazz Trilogy Based On Black British History
Renell Shaw: “Our story is of growth, and it’s a love story, too. I mean, my grandmother came over here from Jamaica looking for work, and my grandfather came over to chase my grandmother!” – The Guardian (UK)
- Could You Memorize All Of Shakespeare’s 154 Sonnets?
This actor did, though he adds, “When I first had the idea, oh, yeah, I’m going to learn them all. I … I did not realize how much work it actually was.” – NPR
- Debut Authors Take Home Women’s Prize For Fiction, Nonfiction
The fiction award is well-known (as is, in this case, the award winner), but the Women’s Prize added the nonfiction award in 2023 to help redress an imbalance in nonfiction award winners in the UK. – The Guardian (UK)
- Let’s Talk About How Sondheim Made Order Out Of Chaos In Sunday In The Park With George
Or more specifically, in one song: “Sunday.” – The New York Times
- In Houston, Two Young White Men Scraped And Punctured A Painting By A Black Man
“The museum initially removed the painting to have it repaired but later decided to display it — with the damage — on the last day of the exhibition.” – The New York Times
- Oh, The Drama: Someone Tries To Trademark A Bookstagram Term, And It Does Not End Well
Can ‘Hot Girls Read’ be trademarked? One creator thought so. “She is using the trademarking this common phrase to retroactively target small businesses who very likely had the idea before her, or at the very least had it around the same time as her.” – Slate
- Why Is Tupac’s Likeness Appearing Again – In A Video Game?
“The announcement was the latest in a series of creative decisions that have earned the studio a growing amount of skepticism.” – CBC
- How David Hockney Taught His Beloved, Adopted Los Angeles To See Itself
“‘He loved the sunlight, the weather, the boys,’ said Richard Benefield, a veteran museum executive who served as the first director of the David Hockney Foundation.” – The New York Times
- What America’s Treasure To Trash To Treasure Pipelines Say About All Of Us
After WWII, “single-family homes spread across the nation like fireweed. In a distinctively American architectural feature, many of them were joined to a small dungeon dedicated to the tidy storage of automobiles—and other items.” – The Atlantic
- Canada Has Stepped Out Of The Shadows Of Hollywood North
Said one presenter at the Canadian screen awards, “A country that doesn’t tell its own stories in its own way is just a market for someone else, and we’re better than that.” – The New York Times
- There Are Now Plans For A New Black Box Theatre In Seattle
The plan – after extensive renovations of the now unprepossessing building – is for ExoArts to “offer six six-week blocks a year at subsidized sliding-scale rates that can be rented by outside theater companies to perform full-scale production” and to have its own programming as well. – Seattle Times
- Gene Shalit, Legendarily Moustached Today Show Film Critic, Has Died At 100
After moving over from the book critic desk, “Shalit proved to be a spirited counterbalance to the heavier news of the day, entertaining audiences with celebrity interviews and insights into moviegoing choices during his ‘Critic’s Corner’ segment.” – The Hollywood Reporter
- They Just Had To Take That Man’s Name Off The Kennedy Center From Behind A Curtain
After blowing the deadline and begging for more time – and being denied – workers took Donald J. Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center on Friday night. But “a spokeswoman for the center, said the institution was … evaluating ‘legal options.’” – The New York Times
- The Guardian’s Pretty Solid Summer Reading List
That is, if you like taking the advice of Zadie Smith, Mark Haddon, Anne Enright, Sarah Waters, Bernadine Evaristo and more. – The Guardian (UK)
- Sterling Elliott talks about the role arts organizations play in a journey toward leadership
Sterling Elliott, Sphinx Artist & Cellist, shares the role arts organizations and family played in his journey to leadership.
- Why Gustav Mahler’s New York Career Was a “Failure”
- What Virgil Thought About Bees
“(The Latin poet) recognized that bees had what we might call social being — co-dependent, organized, enterprising — and he praised them for having all the virtues of a Roman citizen: industrious, hardworking, loyal, and (willing) to die to defend the colony.” – Literary Hub
- Kennedy Center As De-Trumpification Warning
Trump’s threat to walk away from the Kennedy Center suggests an additional danger: He could lose interest and doze off, as if at yet another Cabinet meeting or NBA Finals game, leaving parts of the government to fend for themselves. – The Atlantic
- A Musical About The 1984 Miners-And-Gays Coalition (Wait, What?)
Pride: the Musical, now at the National Theatre in London, is the stage adaptation of a 2014 film about the London-based activist group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners and the members of a Welsh colliery community whom they supported financially during the 1984-1985 miners’ strike. – The Guardian
- Biggest Hits On Spotify Are From The 70s And 80s
On May 14, almost exactly 43 years later, Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean was No. 1 again, prancing to the top of Spotify’s global chart following the release of the biopic “Michael.” – The Wall Street Journal
- Spotify Ditches Its Much-Hated Disco Ball App Icon
On Thursday an update to the Spotify iOS app switched the icon back to the well-known logo users are familiar with. That did away with the glowing green mirrorball icon for the Spotify app for Apple devices that it introduced the second week of May. – Variety
- David Hockney Liked to Draw by Other Means<a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/06/david-hockney-liked-to-draw-by-other-means.html" title="David Hockney Liked to Draw by Other Means“
- Please! Bring Back The Gatekeepers
Gatekeeper, here, doesn’t mean the patriarchal bogeyman of progressive fever dreams. It means the picky curator who maintains a necessary membrane between your half-formed, typo-addled thoughts and the wider world. It means the tastemaker who triages opinions and batters the better ones into readable form. – The Walrus
- National Center For Choreography-Akron Marks 10 Years
“For (a decade NCAAkron) has supported research and development of new work by over 800 dancers from around the United States through dancing labs and residencies. ‘As nobody questions when a scientist goes into a lab, that’s what we believe is possible for a choreographer going into the studio,’ said director Christy Bolingbroke.” – Signal Akron
- Landmark Ruling: German Court Rules Google Is Liable For What Its AI Overview Says In Search Answers
The court also found that the AI overview made claims “that are not even made in the search results.” None of the linked sources drew any connection between the plaintiffs and the shady companies the AI mentioned. The court called these “the defendant’s own statements.” – The Decoder
- What’s Behind The Intense Interest In Celebrity Estate Sales?
The growing trend for auctions of deceased famous people’s personal items – which has boomed ever since the hugely popular Marilyn Monroe estate sale in 1999 – has even attracted its own portmanteau: “deleb” as in dead celebrity. – The Guardian
- Why Impressionists Were So Fascinated With Gardens
One answer lies in the sheer ubiquity and sensory intensity of gardens by the second half of the 19th century, when impressionism came into being. Social change that made leisure gardens accessible to all (no longer just kings and aristocrats). – The Conversation
- Washington National Opera Sues Kennedy Center
“The Washington National Opera (WNO) filed a lawsuit Thursday, alleging that the Kennedy Center failed to return more than $17 million in donations made to the organization after its split from the venue earlier this year.” – The Hill
- The Great Divide: Creativity Before And After AI
On one side are texts produced before the arrival of generative LLMs. On the other, everything that has followed—texts that might still be useful, even compelling, but that will always face a lingering suspicion of not being entirely human, of having been smoothed by systems trained to predict the word that comes next. – LA Review of Books
- Cleveland Museum Of Art Launches $600M Campaign To Sustain Its Future
“Visitors rightly expect exceptional exhibitions, meaningful educational experiences, digital access, welcoming spaces, and opportunities for deeper engagement. Those expectations require sustained investment. That challenge is particularly significant for an institution that remains committed to free general admission for all.” – ARTnews
