As the art world grows ever more corporate and culture continues its slide into an anti-intellectual dumpster fire, we will start to see a cultural rebellion — the return of a 1970s and ’80s “New York Drop Dead” barbarism, and with it a movement of making art for its own sake. - The New York Times
Todd Arrington, a career historian who previously worked at the National Archives, said he was ordered to resign from the Eisenhower Presidential Library. He had declined to turn over one of Eisenhower’s own swords so Trump could present it to Charles III while on a state visit to the UK. - CBS News
Only four of the 26 members of the advisory body remain; the rest were terminated via a notably terse email from the White House personnel office. Meetings require a quorum of 14 members, and new members must be confirmed by the Senate, so for now the Council is paralyzed. - The Washington Post (Yahoo!)
The Smithsonian museums and National Gallery will remain open for as long as leftover cash-on-hand lasts, which will be at least through Monday. Kennedy Center events are privately financed and should proceed as scheduled. As for the monuments, it depends … - The Washington Post (MSN)
The decision was made by the institution’s senate in its first meeting of the 2025-26 academic year without faculty input. Among the majors affected are fine arts, music history, classics, digital humanities, African-American and Latino/Latin American Studies, and French, German, Italian, and Russian language and literature. - ARTnews
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre, opening on October 13 and built for £185 million ($250 million), includes a 500-seat concert hall, a 250-seat theatre, a black box performance space, a dance studio, a cinema, lecture and exhibition halls, a library, and rehearsal rooms. - BBC (Yahoo!)
“Starting with eighth-graders this year, Oklahoma won’t require fine arts credits to earn a high school diploma. ... The decision to offer fine arts curriculum will now be left up to school districts across the state. Advocates worry about the future of drama, art and music opportunities in public schools.” - The Frontier (Tulsa)
Mann, whose work is held at major art institutions around the world, is reeling after police seized four of her most celebrated — and reviled — photographs off the walls of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas in January. "Awful" and "shocking," she recalled. - NPR
“A lot of gen AI supporters see it as a tool that’s ‘democratizing’ art by lowering traditional barriers to entry like ‘learning how to draw,’ ‘learning how to play an instrument,’ or ‘learning how to write a story.’” - The Verge (Archive Today)
Oops, the MP who’s the parliamentary secretary for combating crime forgot to give a heads up about his statement that Kneecap were banned to public safety colleagues. Now, he says, “any further comment I'm going to leave to the officials at Immigration and they will manage that accordingly.” - CBC
The levy includes funding to maintain three arts centers, which offer dance, art, and music classes - and in one case, valuable studio space - for low and middle-income Oregonians. - Oregon ArtsWatch
The fest is “a state-sponsored event in Saudi Arabia that Human Rights Watch said was designed to deflect attention from the country’s ‘brutal repression of free speech’ and other human rights violations.” - The New York Times
“Sinclair and Nexstar may be potent media players, but they would have run into serious problems if they had preempted Kimmel’s show for an extended period of time.” Also, there’s Monday Night Football. - The Atlantic
