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- Good Morning
Big money dominates today’s headlines. Three media giants—Netflix, Paramount, and Comcast—are bidding for Warner Bros. Discovery (The New York Times), while a Frida Kahlo masterpiece sold for a record-breaking $54.7 million (The Wall Street Journal). But it’s not all profits: the BBC faces a $1 billion licensing shortfall (The Guardian), and the Louvre’s president is under fire amid mismanagement allegations (The New York Times).
Elsewhere, research suggests students learn less with AI (The Conversation), Superman flies to a $9.12 million Comic Book #1 auction record (The Guardian), and Hollywood’s UTA management agency signs a delicious new client: Parmigiano Reggiano (The Hollywood Reporter). Plus: Bach discoveries, political crosswords, and dance tech…
All of our stories below.
- Top Hollywood Agency Takes On New Client: Parmigiano Reggiano. No, Not Some Drag King, The Actual Cheese.
“The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium has revealed that United Talent Agency (UTA) has signed the governing body for ‘the king of cheeses’ to get the supermarket staple placement in films, TV shows and streaming projects around the globe.” – The Hollywood Reporter
- Superman Comic No.1 Sells For Record Price
A copy of Superman No 1 that was discovered in an attic in California last year has become the world’s most expensive comic book after selling for US$9.12m (£6.96m, A$14.14m). – The Guardian
- How The New York Times Crossword Became Political
In an excerpt from his book Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle, crossword constructor and former Will Shortz assistant Natan Last describes not only how it happened, but why it was probably unavoidable. – The Nation
- BBC Is Now Losing $1 Billion/Year In Lost Licensing
The BBC is now losing more than £1bn a year from households either evading the licence fee or deciding they do not need one, according to a cross-party group of MPs who warned the corporation is under “severe pressure”. – The Guardian
- Research: Students Learning With AI Say They Learn Less
The data revealed a consistent pattern: People who learned about a topic through an LLM versus web search felt that they learned less, invested less effort in subsequently writing their advice, and ultimately wrote advice that was shorter, less factual and more generic. – The Conversation
- Louvre President, Under Fire, Defends The Museum
Some, including a prominent art critic, have said she should lose her job, and she has been called to testify twice before Parliament. The criticism is particularly charged given the tumultuous state of French politics. – The New York Times
- Donald McIntyre, Great Wagnerian Bass-Baritone, Is Dead At 91
His powerful voice, authoritative presence and incisive musicianship led him to a major international career including the Met, Covent Garden, and La Scala. He had a 23-year relationship with the Bayreuth Festival, where he took the role of Wotan/the Wanderer in the landmark 1976 Chéreau/Boulez production of the Ring cycle. – Moto Perpetuo
- Three Bids To Buy Warner Bros. Discovery
Netflix, Paramount and Comcast submitted bids to acquire the Hollywood colossus, which owns the Warner Bros. movie studio, HBO, and cable networks like CNN and TNT, four people with knowledge of the proposals said. – The New York Times
- Frida Kahlo Painting Sells for $54.7 — Most Ever For A Woman Artist
The 1940 canvas, “The Dream (The Bed),” topped the previous record held by a $44.4 million Georgia O’Keeffe, “Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1” that sold to Walmart billionaire Alice Walton 11 years earlier. – The Wall Street Journal
- We Think We Need To Get Bigger To Be Happy. That’s Wrong
We tend to believe that to be happier, we need to become bigger in our own mind, and in the minds of others. But that’s wrong. What we really need to achieve both the perspective on life we need and the peace we crave is to get smaller in relation to everything and everyone else. – The Atlantic
- Biosensors Could Transform Medical Care For Dancers
“Biosensors are devices designed to measure real-time processes and responses within the body, like a person’s heart rate, blood oxygen level, and sleep quality. … Here are a few ways biosensors have been used to expand research in dance medicine.” – Dance Magazine
- Kennedy Center Boss Pushes Back Against NYT Story Of Gross Mismanagement
The NYT and the Senator’s letter writer are going to be embarrassed. We have a balanced budget, we’ve raised a whopping $117 MILLION under @realDonaldTrump – and FIFA has paid millions plus covered all expenses (the NYT made a gigantic mistake by assuming FIFA was a rental not a major Sponsor).” – The Daily Beast
- At The Intersection Of Physical Dance And Virtual Reality
As VR becomes more widespread, a growing number of dance artists and companies are exploring—and, in some cases, redefining—what this technology can do. – Dance Magazine
- How A Bach Scholar Figured Out That Those Two Unsigned Organ Pieces Really Were By Bach
Peter Wollny, now director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig, discovered manuscripts of the two works in Brussels back in 1992. He was intrigued by the music and had a hunch it was Bach’s, but it took Wollny 33 years to gather the evidence he needed to be sure. – The New York Times
- Home Of Defunct Cal Shakes Gets New Tenant, New Name, New Shows
The Bruns Amphitheater, formerly home of California Shakespeare Company, is slated to reopen in April 2026 under a new name, the Siesta Valley Bowl. The newly-formed nonprofit Siesta Valley Foundation intends to present theater, including Shakespeare, as well as 40 to 60 concerts per year, which will bring in revenue. – SFGate
- Nvidia’s CEO Is Making Huge Annual Contributions To San Francisco Opera
“(Jensen) Huang and his wife, Lori … are making a previously unreported donation of $5 million a year for multiple years to San Francisco Opera. This year’s gift went toward underwriting The Monkey King; future gifts will help sponsor mainstage operas, young artist training, community programming, and digital media.” – The San Francisco Standard
- Lawmakers Reject Proposed Nine-Figure Subsidy For Film And TV Soundstage In Las Vegas
“The Nevada Senate has again rejected a $120 million annual subsidy for film and TV production, which would have enabled construction of a new soundstage facility in Las Vegas. The bill, AB 5, fell one vote short of a majority during a special session on Wednesday night.” – Variety
- Data Backs Up The Stereotype: Visual And Performing Artists’ Lives In The US Are Very Precarious
“We all know the trope of the starving artist,” said researcher Gwendolyn Rugg, “But there’s actually surprisingly little reliable data out there to back this up.” Rugg helped gather and analyze the data from a new survey by the University of Chicago’s NORC and the Mellon Foundation. – NPR
- Kennedy Center Special Deals For Trump Allies Investigated By Senate Democrats
“Senate Democrats are investigating the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts over its spending practices and booking deals involving political allies, accusing its leadership, installed by President Donald Trump, of ‘self-dealing, favoritism, and waste’ amid programming shifts and plummeting ticket sales.’” – The Washington Post (MSN)
- Secret To Code Of “Kryptos” Sculpture Sells For Almost $1 Million
“The long sought-after solution to the fourth passage of Kryptos, artist Jim Sanborn’s secret-code-bearing sculpture at CIA headquarters, sold at auction Thursday night for a final price of $962,500, blowing past its $300,000 to $500,0000 estimate and placing the 35-year-old enigma in new hands.” – The Washington Post (MSN)
- Frida Kahlo Self-Portrait Sets New Price Record For Female Artists
The 1940 self-portrait of the artist asleep in bed, titled El sueño (La cama) — in English, “The Dream (The Bed)” — sold for $54.7 million at Sotheby’s, surpassing the record held by Georgia O’Keeffe’s Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1, which sold for $44.4 million in 2014. – AP
- New York University, Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions, Performing Arts Administration-Non-Tenure Track Position
Position Description
New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development invites applications for a continuing contract (non-tenure track) Clinical Assistant Professor in the Performing Arts Administration Program to begin on September 1, 2026. The appointed faculty member will be a member of the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions. We seek a motivated, creative educator who has the potential to develop a strong record of teaching, scholarship, and service that will enhance the educational experience for students in the Performing Arts Administration program. They will have professional experience and academic expertise in performing arts administration, some artistic training in one of the performing arts, and the ability and desire to equip students with the skills and global perspective necessary to help them grow professionally and personally. Given the program’s long-standing commitment to internationalism, the successful candidate will be comfortable working with students from many backgrounds and be familiar with the performing arts practices of other countries to better prepare our graduates to assume leadership roles on the world stage.
Ideal candidates will demonstrate a deep understanding of the evolving landscape of the performing arts field and possess the foresight to identify emerging skills and qualities essential to future arts managers. In addition, well-connected within the performing arts community, ideal candidates will possess valuable industry relationships that will provide students with opportunities for networking and professional development.
They will have a commitment to working with a broad group of constituents and will be dedicated to supporting inclusive curricular design and classroom interactions, aligning closely with the strategic direction of the School.The Performing Arts Administration Program is designed to educate and prepare leaders in the performing arts through completing business courses, performing arts industry-specific courses, elective courses, and two internships supervised by professionals in the field. The program has approximately 90 students earning a master’s degree.
NYU Steinhardt is a uniquely interdisciplinary school, committed to a holistic understanding of people and human development across the lifespan. NYU Steinhardt has one-of-a-kind integration of education, communication, health, and the arts, with eleven departments, seventeen research centers and institutes, nearly 300 full-time faculty and close to six thousand students.Responsibilities
The successful candidate will be an excellent teacher, advisor, and mentor to undergraduate and graduate students; participate in program and curricular development; and serve on program, department, School, and University committees. Clinical Faculty may also engage in scholarly work or creative production. The teaching load for this position is six (6) 3-point to 4-point courses, or their equivalent: three (3) each semester, spring and fall. Course load may be adjusted for administrative and related/equivalent duties. Other duties include mentoring students, supervising major papers, and conducting some of the program’s operational/administrative duties, such as developing courses, reviewing applications, and leading program events and workshops.
NYU’s dynamic Global Network University includes NYU Abu Dhabi, NYU Shanghai, and international programs and academic centers around the world. NYU Steinhardt faculty may have the opportunity to engage in teaching at these global sites.
Qualifications
Candidates must have an earned doctorate in arts administration or a related field, have college-level teaching experience, and be able to demonstrate professional and/or academic expertise in several of the areas listed in the curriculum.
Application Instructions
Please submit the following materials via the Interfolio system:
- Cover letter
- Resume/Curriculum Vitae (CV)
- Names and contact information of three references
- Teaching Statement — Provide one to two paragraphs describing your teaching approach and philosophy.
- Please submit applications through Interfolio. We do not accept electronic applications sent by email.
- Review of applications begins immediately and continues until the search is complete.
For any questions please contact the Performing Arts Administration graduate program at performingartsadmin@nyu.edu.
- Resurrecting Fats Waller’s Lost Broadway Musical
Early to Bed (1943) is the only book musical for which Waller wrote all the music, yet no official score or even libretto exists. Yet John McWhorter (yes, the Columbia University linguist/New York Times columnist) managed to find Waller’s sketches and is presenting the show’s score in concert. – The New York Times
- AI and artists and rights
There is a recent piece at Lawfare, by Simon Goldstein and Peter N. Salib, “Copyright should not protect artists from artificial intelligence.” The article has the strawman subtitle, “The purpose of intellectual property law is to incentivize the production of new ideas, not to function as a welfare scheme for artists.”
I have a few problems with it, from their sloppy wording – they repeatedly say copyright is about protecting “ideas”, when it doesn’t; copyright law is pretty specific that it protects specific expressions, but not ideas in any grand sense – to what I think is a misguided understanding of the nature of the artist v AI dispute, to odd ideas about art in general, for example:
Like humans, AI companies need incentives to produce AI systems that will, in turn, produce novel poetry, visual art, music, and more. But the incentive here need not necessarily come from intellectual property. Poetry is non-rival in that, once written, a single poem may be enjoyed by everyone at no cost. But there is no law that says everyone must or even will wish to read the original poem.
In a world where new works of great poetry are cheap and abundant, contract law can do the work that copyright does today. Rather than one Whitman laboring a lifetime over one “Leaves of Grass” in hopes of compensation via millions of readers, one Claude will write millions of works on par with “Leaves of Grass.” Each personalized for one or two readers. With the labor compensated—and then some—by a $20/month subscription fee.
I will just leave that there.
But let me get to where I think their main argument goes awry.
They point out correctly (notwithstanding their misuse of the word “ideas”) that copyright law is designed to strike a balance between incentivizing artists to produce new work, knowing copyright will give them the exclusive right to license publication, and access, for consumers (which is why it is good that works eventually enter the public domain), scholars, and the next generation of artists, who need room to be able to create new works without infringing on someone else’s copyright (if someone could copyright the “idea” of the chord sequence I IV I I IV IV I I V IV I I, we would have no more new blues songs). So far so good. The reason almost everybody thought the Copyright Term Extension Act (1998) was a terrible idea was that it further restricted access by delaying the entry of copyrighted works into the public domain for an additional twenty years, while having virtually no beneficial aspects in terms of incentives (my telling you that if you finally get around to writing that novel your copyright will last for seventy years after your death instead of just fifty is unlikely to have a prominent place in your decision to quit your day job and get writing).
But copyright does something else: it creates valuable assets that generate rents. If the extension of the term of copyright was such a terrible idea, why did Congress agree to it? Because there were certain firms (eg Disney) and authors’ estates who owned very valuable properties, ones that continue to generate streams of income decades after they were created, indeed decades after the artists who created them had returned to dust, and they did not want those properties going into the public domain. If I were a beneficiary of the portfolio of intellectual property created by Ernest Hemingway, I would like to continue to receive a stream of income from that asset for as long as possible. So even though copyright term extension did not make any sense in terms of the incentives / access trade-off, it really did make sense to a small group who lobbied hard for it (cf. the logic of collective action).
And it is this aspect of copyright, the battle for ownership of the income streams that can be earned from intellectual property, that the AI question is about.
There have been similar battles in the past when new technologies came into being. When cable television became a thing, and all these new channels could start showing reruns of old shows through syndication, those who worked on those programs wanted a share of this new revenue source, and fought for their rights to it. When the internets became a thing, and journals and newspapers started digitizing content for which they could sell access, the people who originally wrote those pieces wanted a share of the rents.
When Goldstein and Salib say that copyright is not designed to “function as a welfare scheme for artists”, well, sure. But it is not designed to be a welfare scheme for big tech firms either. The claim of artists, as I understand it, is that various producers of AI material are infringing copyright, making use of materials that goes beyond what have been the (sensible) provisions of fair use, and that if they are going to use material they ought to pay for it. Clearly, contracting between AI firms and millions of authors and songwriters would be impossibly complex, but a system of compulsory license might work (such as exists in music: I can record a cover version of Out on the Weekend without contracting with Mr. Young, but he will be entitled to a share of any royalties arising out of my tragic version).
They write:
Intellectual property rights always and everywhere create social loss. Ideas are non-rivalrous and, therefore, free for anyone to use. When intellectual property protects content creators from AI outputs, it makes it more difficult for anyone anywhere to access the incredible ideas that could be produced by AI outputs (or by humans). This kind of social loss requires strong justification. Historically, this justification has come from the incentive to produce new ideas. Without such a justification, it is unacceptable.
The alternative to intellectual property-as-welfare is actual welfare. Here, the best policy instrument is universal basic income, or something like it. Universal basic income avoids the problems of discrimination, distortion, and social loss. It could be given nonarbitrarily to all workers affected by AI automation. And it could be funded by general tax revenue. This means that the costs of universal basic income would not cause slowdowns on AI development, as compared with other technologies. Then the transition to cheap, abundant, AI-led innovation would allow everyone to costlessly access the immense value of innumerable non-rivalrous ideas.
The first sentence is simply wrong – we have patents and copyright because on the whole the system is socially beneficial. The rest of the first paragraph is wrong because the debate is not about preventing AI, but of finding a way to divide the returns from this new technology between the artists who created works and the AI companies that want to use those works. You can have a system that pays artists and still has AI – the authors present a false dilemma.
On the second paragraph, I just don’t know where to begin. Thanks for letting us use your book, here’s a welfare cheque.
The AI and artists question is a hard one, especially because the technology is moving so fast, faster than any legislative body could keep up with, much less the comically hopeless United States Congress. Predictions about what comes next are a mug’s game, and I don’t care about polls that show people can’t tell the difference between real Wordsworth and fake Wordsworth. But at least for now we can say what is at the heart of the battle, and it’s not what these authors claim it is.
Cross posted at https://michaelrushton.substack.com/
- A Messy Crisis At France’s Leading Festival Of Graphic Novels And Comics
Bande dessinée (comic strip) is considered the “ninth art” in France, and the Festival international de la bande dessinée d’Angoulême is its pinnacle. But the culture ministry has withdrawn €200,000 in subsidy while graphic novelists and publishers are boycotting the event after a staffer who lodged a rape complaint was fired. – The Guardian
- Does “Sound Of Music” Still Hold Up After 60 Years?
“The filmmaking is, I think, up there with anything Hollywood’s produced. And musically … there’s not many musicals out there, if any, which have as many classics on the soundtrack as The Sound of Music.” – CBC
- The Surveillance Workplace Is Coming For Us
For many workers, both remote and in person, the workplace has quietly shifted into a site of constant measurement—where every pause can trigger scrutiny and where productivity is no longer just about results but continuous presence. – The Walrus
- What I Learned From The Difficult Book Club
None of us are academic philosophers, by any means; we have busy jobs and other pressing adult responsibilities. But the process has proved fruitful. A camaraderie emerges, I’ve found, when a group dedicates itself to a task that requires great effort. – The New York Times
- America’s Leading Medical Museum To Get $27 Million Upgrade
“The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which runs the popular Mütter Museum, announced plans on Monday to expand its footprint at 22nd and Chestnut Streets with a new, accessible entrance, larger galleries, educational and event spaces, an upgraded gift shop, and a renovated core gallery for the museum.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
- Warner Music Group Makes AI Rights Deal With Udio
The deals underline how AI is shaking up the music industry. AI-generated music has been flooding streaming services amid the rise of song generators that instantly spit out new tunes based on prompts typed in by users without any musical knowledge. – APNews
- Seattle International Film Festival Bought An Iconic Theatre. It Didn’t Work So Well. Now SIFF’s Director Is Out (Immediately)
Earlier this year, The Times spoke to a dozen current and former SIFF staff and board members, many of whom expressed profound concerns about both SIFF and the impact that the landmark acquisition had on the organization amid broader challenges in the industry. – Seattle Times
- Why Is The New York Public Library Giving Away Books?
Usually you have to return books you get from a library. Today the New York Public Library will give books away — 1,000 books from its list of the best titles of 2025, chosen by more than 80 librarians from branches across the library’s system. If you get one, you won’t have to return it. – The New York Times
- How New Motion-Capture Technology Might Affect Dancers And Choreographers
An exec at the firm Move AI insists that the combination of motion-capture and AI software isn’t to replace dance artists but to streamline the repetitive, tedious process of animation. (The dance artists are still nervous.) Meanwhile, other AI programs stand to make the work of dance historians and archivists easier. – Dance Magazine
- New $234M Record Sale For Modern Art
The 71-by-51-inch painting, named after its subject, was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Tuesday evening for $236.4 million, including fees. It belonged to the private collection of Leonard Lauder, the cosmetics heir who died in June. – Washington Post
