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- The Painter Who Uses Medieval Style And Techniques To Address The 21st Century
“Today (Malo Chapuy) paints religious scenes, altarpieces, and early Renaissance-style portraits that look like museum artifacts save for the proliferation of wind turbines, water towers, astronauts, and spaceships.” – Art in America
- Prediction Markets Are Wrecking Civil Society
Monetizing the full gamut of reality, platforms have opened Pandora’s box. Basic tenets of liberal society—democratic integrity and respect for human life—are being corroded. Regulators need to step in. – The Walrus
- As AI Overwhelms The Web: What Was The Internet?
Despite valiant efforts by activists and reformers, it’s been the dystopians’ world—or at least the realists’—for some time now: an age of techno-feudalism, digital colonialism, the new Jim Code. – Boston Review
- Missy Mazzoli’s New Opera Is A Tragicomedy About The Opioid Crisis (And Singing Sheep)
Why the comedy part? “New opera is sometimes boring because we’ve forgotten that our job is to entertain people. … During all my time in the American development system, no one ever told me that my job as a composer was to be a dramatist.” – The Guardian
- London’s National Gallery Asked Citizens To Help Chart The Future. Some Are Angry They Asked
London’s National Gallery is facing backlash from conservative groups in the U.K. after convening a 50-citizen assembly to help shape its future planning. – Artnet
- Exploding Myths About The English Language
If languages had all been getting ever easier over all of that time, humans worldwide would just be yelling “ah,” pointing at things and gesturing frantically. Despite occasional appearances otherwise, we are doing better than that. – The New York Times
- Concern That IndyCar Race On The DC Streets Might Damage Museum Art
One of those institutions, the National Gallery of Art, has studied vibrations ahead of the race as it prepares for possible effects on its art — but it’s declining to say what it found. – Washington Post
- Amanda Knox Is Bringing A Solo Show To The Edinburgh Fringe (And Getting Some Pushback)
The comic monologue, titled Cartwheel, is billed as about a woman “approaching forty, juggling motherhood and finally getting around to being furious about the whole wrongful-imprisonment thing. Especially when half the world is telling her to get over it, while the other half still thinks she’s guilty.” – AP
- Study: Arts Orgs That Got More COVID Relief Funding Are Doing Better Than Those That Didn’t
From Sacramento and Seattle to New York City and Philadelphia, the study highlights diverging trends across cities — some rebounded from the pandemic and even exceeded their 2019 numbers, while others plummeted. – Hyperallergic
- What’s Behind Gen Z’s Dark Humor?
In my assessment, Gen Z’s dark and nonsensical humor does not show a lack of moral values, but it’s instead the product of its desire to engage in more authentic conversations about what they believe. – The Conversation
- When Today’s Slang Leaves You Behind
I knew the context. I knew who was using it. I knew when it should be used. I knew when it was already embarrassing to use it. I wasn’t speaking the language but I was fluent. Now, I’m joining the ranks of the bamboozled elderly and Googling “quiet on the creek”. – The Guardian
- San Francisco Ballet Performs At Jacob’s Pillow For First Time In 70 Years
“In 1956, under the direction of Lew Christensen, SFB went to the Pillow with three programs featuring eight ballets by George Balanchine and Christensen himself. The performances were a tremendous success, and … helped propel SFB from regional significance to international renown.” Now, under Tamara Rojo, the company is back. – Pointe Magazine
- What Distinguishes A New Generation Of Teen TV Dramas
Together, these shows comprise a new wave of teen television defined by a slow indie-film pace, an anti-algorithm aesthetic, and longing as its central engine. – The Guardian
- Former Steppenwolf Head Anna D. Shapiro To Lead Juilliard’s Drama Division
Shapiro, who won a Tony in 2008 for directing August: Osage County and was Steppenwolf’s artistic director from 2015 to 2021, currently runs the graduate directing program at Northwestern University. At Juilliard, where her tenure begins next July, she succeeds Evan Yionoulis, who is now dean at Yale’s School of Drama. – The Hollywood Reporter
- San Antonio Philharmonic To Pay $232,000 To Settle Lawsuits
“The dispute began in September 2024, when (David) Wood and (Colette) Holt sued the Philharmonic, saying it had failed to repay a $150,000 loan to secure a collection of the former San Antonio Symphony’s orchestra instruments and its music library. … The agreement does not include any admission of liability or wrongdoing.” – Texas Public Radio
- Readers Prefer AI-Generated Stories To Human-Written Ones — As Long As They Don’t Know About The AI Part: Study
“Readers gave AI-generated stories they believed to be written by humans the highest ratings in a new study published by Cambridge University Press, … with researchers noting that ‘participants generally seemed to have poor instincts about how to tell which story was AI-generated’.” – The Bookseller (UK)
- Uffizi Galleries In Florence Reveal Plans For Two-Year, $57 Million Renovation
“The (€50 million) revamp includes dozens of projects in the Gallery of Statues and Paintings, the nearby Palazzo Pitti, and the Boboli Gardens, some of which have already begun, while others are scheduled to start in the coming months, allowing the museum to remain open.” – ARTnews
- Simon & Schuster Will Go Ahead With Embattled Academic Jason Arday’s Memoir
Arday is the sociologist who just resigned from Cambridge after accusations of plagiarism and of being, basically, the British George Santos. Despite the possibility that some of what he recounts in his book is untrue, S&S is “proceeding with the publication of Great and Unfortunate Things by Jason Arday as planned.” – The Guardian
- Seven Smithsonian Museums Closed Due To HVAC Issue
The museums, all on the south side of the National Mall, share one of the General Service Administration’s HVAC plants; the chilled water supply at that facility was disrupted on Thursday, leaving the museums without air conditioning during a heat wave. The buildings will reopen once the issue is resolved. – Washington City Paper
- Britain Declines To Intervene In Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger
“The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority cleared the pending acquisition, ruling that a Paramount-Warner tie up does not pose a ‘substantial lessening of competition’ in the country. Meanwhile, Britain’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said it also wouldn’t intervene — on the basis of several ‘legally-binding commitments’ from Paramount.” – AP
- Is Broadway Paying the price of Disneyfication?
Good Morning,
Major institutions are now partnering to buy works jointly and share them, swapping trophy acquisition for pooled expertise and a split invoice (Artnet). Pittsburgh is running the same play one level up, where the CLO and the Public Theater are merging instead of chasing the same subscribers and donors (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
The Alex Theatre in Glendale hadn’t screened a first-run movie in 35 years and is now the top-grossing venue in the country for Christopher Nolan’s “Odyssey” (The Hollywood Reporter). London’s West End is out-drawing Broadway in part because mounting a show in New York costs three to five times what it does there (The Wall Street Journal) — roughly what John Caird means when he calls Broadway Disneyfied (The Stage).
The day’s oddest story: someone has been buying used books in enormous quantities from shops around the world, and the likeliest culprits are AI companies short on training data (The Atlantic).
And young Ivorians have invented biama, a competitive dance form fusing acrobatics with deliberate goofiness, built entirely out of TikTok challenges (The Guardian). No partnership agreement required.
Doug
- A Kinetic, Slightly Goofy New Form Of Competitive Dance Develops In Côte d’Ivoire
“There is some debate over exactly when biama emerged, but it exploded in popularity after the coronavirus pandemic as young people turned to TikTok to post and respond to dance challenges that fused acrobatics with goofiness that pushed bodies to their limits.” – The Guardian
- Why Are Theatres Still Ignoring (Mostly) The Deaf Audience?
Most films are distributed with caption tracks, but cinemas, on average, caption only 1% of all showings. This is despite statistics showing that in the UK, one in seven people – approximately 14% of the population – are deaf or have hearing loss. – The Conversation
- The Mystic Poet-Saints Of Kashmir, One Hindu And One Muslim
The 14th-century Hindu poetess Lal Ded and the 15th-century Sufi Muslim poet Nund Rishi wrote not in the elegant, aristocratic court language, Persian, but with simple words and phrases in Kashmiri, the everyday language of ordinary people These mystics are seen by many Kashmiris as spiritual grandmother and grandfather, even today. – The Conversation
- Rise Of The Neo-Luddites
The label of “neo-Luddism” or “digital Luddite” is also being reclaimed by people concerned about labour conditions, society and democracy in an era of AI expansion twinned with personal profit. – The Conversation
- Company Turns AI On Art Fraud
In practical terms, that means a knowledge graph representing thousands of artworks, with billions of nodes detailing the complex relationships its algorithms have identified between them. – Didginomica
- How A Grassroots Seattle Theatre Built Itself From The Ground Up
As Taproot’s current and founding artistic team members chat in the theater’s comfortable lobby, with its welcoming windows looking out onto North 85th Street in Greenwood, it’s hard to believe that the company’s permanent space was once an X-rated movie theater with a dirt floor basement. – Seattle Times
- Do The People Of This Slovakian Village Really Want To Lose UNESCO World Heritage Status?
That’s what all the headlines said, but the people of the well-preserved medieval village of Vlkolínec say it’s not that simple. They want to protect their small, still-living community from the pressures of overtourism, which could easily overwhelm it. – Deutsche Welle
- Two Pittsburgh Theatres Merge
Pittsburgh’s theater community is betting that a business deal of its own — the merger of the Pittsburgh CLO and the Pittsburgh Public Theater — will pay off. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
- When Superfans Go Too Far
In recent years, celebrities have attempted to set boundaries for their adoring, sometimes obsessive fans. – The New York Times
- Theatre That Hadn’t Shown A Movie In 35 Years Has Highest Ticket Sales In The Country For “Odyssey”
The venue, which hadn’t shown a first-run movie for 35 years, has announced it’s the highest grossing theatre in the country for Christopher Nolan’s mythological epic on the film format. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Samantha Morton Says She’s Gotten No Acting Work Since She Finished Shooting For “The Odyssey”
A two-time Oscar nominee who’s widely expected to get another nomination for her performance as Circe, Morton said, “I’ve got really good agents and a manager, but at the end of the day, I’m 49. I do believe I’m a good actor, (but) there are other good actors out there.” – Variety
- John Caird: Broadway Has Become Disneyfied
Caird concluded that Broadway’s significant cost meant it might now “no longer necessarily be people’s choice of where to put a show, which is maybe a good thing”. He added: “Maybe some sanity will return [to Broadway].” – The Stage
- Who Is Buying Massive Quantities Of Books?
We know that something mysterious is afoot. Someone—if not more than one group or company—has been snapping up massive volumes of books from shops around the world. – The Atlantic
- The Big Estate Sales That Are Reshaping The Art Market
The list of collectors whose art has arrived at auction over the past two years reads like the society pages of decades past. Some died; others have merely reached an age when keeping several hundred million dollars’ worth of paintings around no longer seems quite as important as it once did. – ARTnews