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- The Book That Shaped The Modern Revival Of Wicca
In 1899, Charles Godfrey Leland published, with the help of Roma Lister, Aradia, or the gospel of the witches, which purported to record an ancient tradition of female-led sorcery in Italy. In the 1950s, “mother of Wicca” Doreen Valiente used the book to shape Wicca as it exists today. – The Public Domain Review
- Good morning:
Universities pull the plug on culture when ROI falls short—Bucknell shuts its press, signaling trouble for academic publishing (Inside Higher Ed). Chicago’s arts broker revamps grantmaking amidst political turbulence (WBEZ Chicago). Museums ponder bans on selfies; operational chaos trumping curatorial ideals (The Art Newspaper). New study shows AI music fools 97% of listeners—creators face existential uncertainty as technology outpaces regulation (Reuters). Has culture lost its creative edge in the 21st Century? Reboots rule and algorithms smother invention (The Economist). These stories and more in today’s ArtsJournal.
- University Decides ROI On Investment In Its University Press Is Insufficient And Closes It. Others To Follow?
Bucknell University Press is on track to shut down by the end of this fiscal year. Demise of the press is raising broader questions about the future of university publishing as higher education institutions across the country face financial hardship and pressure to prove their return on investment to an increasingly skeptical public. – InsideHigherEd
- Chicago’s Unofficial Arts Czar Is A Daughter Of The City’s Most Famous Political Dynasty
“Amid (Trump-era) turbulence, Nora Daley — who generally prefers to avoid the spotlight — has quietly built a reputation as one of the city’s most effective cultural brokers. … In recent years, that has meant retooling the state’s cultural arm, the Illinois Arts Council, where she led a full overhaul of grantmaking as board chair.” – WBEZ (Chicago)
- As We Prepare To Celebrate America’s 250th Birthday, Is There A Recognizable American Classical Music?
Is there a unifying theme around the kinds of music being written in the classical world that could indicate an “American style?” (And, as an aside, can we take pride or ownership as a nation in something if we can’t define it?) – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
- Is It Time For Museums To Ban Selfies?
For some institutions, a ban on selfie-taking could be an operational choice, tied to staffing levels, available space, or the types of objects on display. – The Art Newspaper
- Has 21st Century Culture Lost Its Creativity?
Music without instruments and lyrics without meaning. Endless reboots, sequels and superheroes in the cinema. After a burst of magnificent TV dramas in the noughties, every glitzy new show is hailed as a must-see when most are mediocre. The algorithm has vanquished imagination. – The Economist
- Sarasota Orchestra Releases Design For Its New $425 Million Music Center
The 32-acre campus, designed by William Rawn Associates of Boston and HKS Architects of Orlando, will include an 1,800-seat concert hall, a 700-seat recital hall, and education center, rehearsal facilities, courtyards, and parkland with wetlands and water features. – Observer (Sarasota)
- New Study: 97 Percent Of Listeners Can’t Identify Whether The Music They’re Listening To Is AI
A staggering 97% of listeners cannot distinguish between artificial intelligence-generated and human-composed songs, a Deezer–Ipsos survey showed on Wednesday, underscoring growing concerns that AI could upend how music is created, consumed and monetized. – Reuters
- How Schools Across America Are Responding To AI Use
In the face of a revolutionary change that many educators believe will alter the career trajectories of school-aged kids and the instructional methods of their schools, a handful of districts across the country have responded with drastic measures to meet the moment. – Edutopia
- Preservationists Fight To Save New Deal-Era Murals In Building Called “The Sistine Chapel” Of Such Murals
The clock is ticking for Washington, D.C.’s 85-year old Wilbur J. Cohen building, described by preservationists as the “Sistine Chapel of New Deal Art” for the impressive art collection it holds, including works by Philip Guston and Ben Shahn. – Artnet
- Editing Video News Footage Has Become A Fraught Matter (Thanks To You-Know-Who)
“In the space of a few months, a straightforward journalistic skill — editing tape for broadcast — has been behind a $16 million legal settlement, a network’s change in how it offers interviews … and, now, the resignation of two top leaders at the BBC. The other common denominator: President Donald Trump.” – AP
- Spotify Launches A “Catch You Up” Feature For Audiobooks, To Summarize What You’ve Read So Far
The company likens the feature, called Recaps, to a “previously on” segment at the start of episodes in a TV series. – The Verge
- Ticket Prices Continue To Soar, But Lawsuits Abound
There are currently multiple class action lawsuits at various stages, as well as a Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit against the world’s largest concert promoter, Live Nation, which programs concerts at PPG Paints, Acrisure Stadium and PNC Park and owns the ticketing platform Ticketmaster. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
- Landmark AI Ruling On Song Lyrics
The court ruled on Tuesday that OpenAI should have acquired licenses for German song lyrics in GEMA’s repertoire before using them to train and operate ChatGPT. The verdict marks the first time a European court has legally examined and ruled in favor of creators whose works have been used by generative AI systems. – Music Business Worldwide
- Turmoil At Palm Springs Art Museum Over Hiring of New Director
Trustee Patsy Marino, who chaired the search committee, has resigned (along with two other trustees) over the elevation of chief curator Christine Vendredi to the directorship. The objection is not to Vendredi herself: no outside candidate was interviewed and the final decision was made, Marino says, behind her back. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
- “The Hunger Games” Has Now Become An “Immersive Theatrical Experience”
“To succeed, critically and commercially, the stage version must balance the horror the novel describes with enough verve and spectacle to delight a discerning, CGI-attuned crowd. Are the odds in its favor?” Journalist Alexis Soloski visits the show at its purpose-built theatre in London. – The New York Times
- City Council Restores Funding To Dallas Black Dance Theatre
“On Wednesday, Dallas City Council voted to grant $225,000 for cultural programming to (DBDT). Last year, $248,000 in funding was cut in response to (DBDT’s) settlement with the National Labor Relations Board. The agency found merit to dozens of unfair labor practice charges …, including the firing of dancers due to union efforts.” – KERA (Dallas)
- Sting Will Revive His Old Broadway Musical At The Metropolitan Opera House
The Last Ship flopped in its initial Broadway run in 2014-15. Sting has now revised the show, with new songs and a new director, and it will have nine performances at the Met this June after runs in Amsterdam, Paris, and Brisbane. – Playbill
- George Lucas’s Museum Of Narrative Art Gets Official Opening Date
“After years of delays, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles will finally open its doors to the public on September 22, 2026. … Designed by architect Ma Yansong, the museum will be home to a collection of more than 40,000 works centering illustrated storytelling as a universal language.” – Artnet
- World Cup Draw Will Take Over Kennedy Center For Three Weeks At No Charge: Report
The Dec. 5 draw, the World Cup’s highest-profile pre-tournament event, was expected to be held in Las Vegas. Trump reportedly swooped in at the 11th hour to offer use of Kennedy Center performance spaces and other facilities, for free, for almost three weeks, requiring cancellation or postponement of scheduled events. – The Washington Post (Yahoo!)
- Temple University To Open Downtown Philadelphia Campus Where UArts Used To Be
Temple, the Pennsylvania state university whose main campus is in North Philadelphia, will renovate Terra Hall, which had been a classroom building for the now-closed University of the Arts, and will move some of its art and music programs there starting in fall 2027. – The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
- Good morning.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s warhorses are suddenly getting strange again — immersive Phantom, drag-ball Cats, and Jamie Lloyd’s stark revivals reframing a canon. (TheaterMania). Public institutions are under pressure: San Diego vows not to cut arts funding despite a nine-figure deficit (The San Diego Union-Tribune (MSN)), British Library workers describe pay that doesn’t meet basic needs (The Guardian), Tate staff vote overwhelmingly to strike (The Guardian), and U.S. museums report lost grants and canceled programs under Trump-era cuts (The Guardian).
The rest of today’s stories below.
- When The Andrew Lloyd Webber Canon Becomes Experimental Theater
Critic Zachary Stewart considers how the new immersive adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera (titled Masquerade), the drag-ball production of Cats (subtitled The Jellicle Ball), and director Jamie Lloyd’s unconventional revivals of Sunset Boulevard and Evita demonstrate how interesting the ALW shows we all thought were old chestnuts can still be. – TheaterMania
- San Diego City Council Promises Not To Cut Arts Funding In Next Budget
“Council members have declared city arts funding off limits for budget cuts next spring, even as they face a projected $111 million deficit. … While the move falls far short of a long-unfulfilled council pledge known as ‘penny for the arts,’ council members said it’s a strong message.” – The San Diego Union-Tribune (MSN)
- Bill Ivey
Bill Ivey died this past weekend; he was eighty-one years old. It came as a shock to us – just last week he was here in Bloomington meeting with our arts policy students, something he loved doing. He was a great friend to our program, generous with his time and advice to students and to younger faculty. He had studied Folklore and Ethnomusicology here at IU, and enjoyed visiting.
He is best known for having been Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in the last years of the Clinton administration – you can read more about his career here.
I really enjoyed his 2010 book Arts, Inc. – an idiosyncratic look at American cultural policy, and what he saw as issues that were, unwisely, being neglected, such as with large corporations taking ownership of what ought by rights to be public domain national heritage. I used to assign to my students this essay he wrote for the Chronicle of Higher Education – “America Needs a New System for Supporting the Arts” (2005 – paywalled, sorry) – where he, rightly I’ve always thought, took aim at a public and big-philanthropy sector that assumed nonprofit arts presenters were the unique and special home of anything seriously worth consideration in the arts.
I first met him a little over twenty years ago, and enjoyed the chance to talk with him whenever I could – he was a very fine listener as well as a speaker, a really stimulating conversationalist. We could disagree on things – when Obama was first elected President, Bill was much more keen that the US create an executive position akin to a “Secretary of Culture” than I was – but our disagreements were always friendly, always with a smile.
We will all miss him here in Bloomington, and I send my condolences to his family and everyone close to him.
Cross-posted at https://michaelrushton.substack.com/
- The Resurgence Of Music On Physical Objects
Continuing one of the more surprising comebacks of the digital age, vinyl album sales in the United States increased for the 18th consecutive year in 2024.” While CD sales are on the decline, “Cassette tape sales jumped by 204.7% in the first quarter of 2025, hitting 63,288 units. – ToneArm
- The Muppets Come To Netflix And Go Global
More than almost any other children’s show, Sesame Street seemed to crack the code on how to simultaneously educate and entertain children. – The Guardian
- LA’s TV Commercial Business Is Tanking Too
Production in the third quarter of this year was 18 percent lower than last year, and 40 percent lower than the five-year average, according to a new report from FilmLA, the local government organization that tracks production in the area. – The New York Times
- Explainer: The Crisis At The BBC That Cost The Director-General His Job And Drew A Billion-Dollar Lawsuit Threat From Trump
“(A journalist) takes a deep-dive into all the facts of this fast-developing story, and why it’s brought the BBC to an inflection point.” – The Hollywood Reporter
- The Antique Movie Camera Reviving A Technology
A handful of rare and cranky antiques are powering the ungainly Hollywood resurgence of VistaVision. The format, developed in 1954 by Paramount, was once used to glorious effect by filmmakers such as Cecil B. DeMille. – The Wall Street Journal
- Masterworks Sold Shares In $1 Billion Of Art. Good Investment?
In just eight years, it has become one of the art market’s biggest buyers. Its collection of 500 artworks is now valued at more than $1 billion and its platform has drawn 70,000 investors. – The New York Times
- London’s Royal Opera Institutes Dynamic Pricing, And Top Ticket Prices Soar
“(The house) is selling tickets for Siegfried, the third instalment of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle, for up to £415 ($546). This is the priciest known ticket offered for sale in Britain by any publicly subsidised performing arts organisation. RBO receives a state subsidy of over £22 million each year.” – The Times (UK)
- Netflix’s First Venture Into Theme Parks
“This is the first permanent physical manifestation of Netflix for our fans,” says the company’s chief marking officer, Marian Lee. “They’ve been inviting us into their homes for years and years.” – NPR
- Striking British Library Workers Expose Dire Low Pay Consequences
According to their union, they are offered pay deals so dire that many of them work multiple jobs and live in substandard housing. Seventy-one per cent of respondents to a union survey find their salary insufficient to meet basic needs. – The Guardian
