Detractors of year-end lists argue that they too frequently reward work that has already been heavily promoted and acclaimed, especially in a category like books, in which an individual can’t evaluate everything released in a year; another common argument is that they privilege known voices and forms over bold experiments. - The Atlantic

"In the early days of GenAI tools, I would share these bullet-point lists of ideas with my team, and it would be met with a similar reaction: Wow! And nothing would happen because the next step is a big and difficult one." - Fast Company

A report this year, from nearly 200 philanthropic leaders, noted that as 20 million households dropped out of giving, from 2010 to 2016, the organizations that have suffered most are community-based groups whose existence depends on small-dollar donors rather than on mega-philanthropists, and those that “provide the backbone of civic life.” - The New York Times

“Everything about the modern Christmas movie is so relentlessly familiar. Even the stars I don’t recognize look somehow inherently recognizable, as if they are all fitted with squinting approximations of famous faces. I’ve found myself charmed by their commitment to the bit.” - The New York Times

“Grande and Erivo have been praised for their performances onscreen, but they have also been performing in a parallel show, making viral magic on the press tour.” - The New York Times

Why? Because the reasoning era is here. The basic difference: “Language models learn a grammar, perhaps even something about the world, while reasoning models aim to use that grammar.” - The Atlantic

The 1911 Wright Model B was flown, recklessly and repeatedly, around the skies over Philadelphia by brewery heir Grover Cleveland Bergdoll. In 1935, after he fled to Germany, the plane went on display at the Institute. Now Bergdoll's daughter and granddaughter claim the museum stole the plane. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

Lately, “new Berlin” has become shorthand for an under-visited European city that is cheap, fun, and up-and-coming. Ever since creeping gentrification and a massive rise in tourism have thrown into question the German capital’s status of the world’s “coolest” city, people have been racing to determine its successor. - The New Republic

The regional government for Berlin intends to cut its cultural budget by 12%, and other state and municipal governments are similarly strapped. The German federal government is holding back as well, and with the coalition government just having collapsed, there's no budget for 2025 at all yet. What can arts managers there expect? -...

Copyright will expire on Buck Rogers, Captain Easy, Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, Hal Foster's first Tarzan comic strips and, yes, Popeye. - Creative Blog

“The protesters interrupted the literary award ceremony in November 2023 carrying signs that read ‘Scotiabank Funds Genocide,' referring to the then-title sponsor's investment in the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems.” - CBC

The director - and actor - says that when little girls love movies, they’re told they should be actors. But “I think when little boys say they love movies, people say ‘You should be a director.’” She would like to make the messages more equal. - Variety

The Stradivarius on which Joseph Joachim played the world premiere of Brahms's Violin Concerto will be auctioned on February 7, and Sotheby's is estimating its value as between $12 million and $18 million. (The current record was set in 2011: $15.9 million for the Lady Blunt Stradivarius.) - Artnet

Loftis goes to the New Jersey Symphony from his position as Chief Advancement and Revenue Officer of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO), where he oversaw the fundraising, marketing, special events, and analytical research departments. - Symphony

“We, the undersigned musicians, wholeheartedly oppose major record labels’ unjust lawsuit targeting the Internet Archive,” the Musicians for Fairness and Preservation Open Letter reads. “We don’t believe that the Internet Archive should be destroyed in our name.” - Engadget

The short-term extension comes amid long and contentious bargaining between SFS management, which insists that huge deficits must stop for the organization to survive, and the American Federation of Musicians, which argues that cuts demanded by management will severely diminish the orchestra. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

Through its 149th and final show, which took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Sunday, Swift’s tour sold a total of $2,077,618,725 in tickets. That’s two billion and change — double the gross ticket sales of any other concert tour in history and an extraordinary new benchmark for a white-hot international concert business. - The...

“Between 750 BC and 400 BC, the Ancient Greeks composed songs meant to be accompanied by the lyre, reed-pipes, and various percussion instruments.” Now there are some reconstructions of the sounds of millennia ago that may be fairly accurate. - Open Culture

The Tokyo-based collective of artists and engineers operates nearly 60 temporary or traveling exhibitions around the world, with permanent installations in Japan, China, Saudi Arabia — and, opening very soon, the company's largest-ever work, in Abu Dhabi. And the shows are astoundingly popular. - The New York Times

 I looked at more than 200 museums, and counted which artists were on view any time during December. The resulting list includes a little more than 3,400 artist names. Of these, only about 300 appear more than once—a tiny fraction. - Artnet

“A full-time job should serve the basic things you need to take care of yourself, housing, food, health, even mental health. I’ve struggled to buy shoes, which I need as I spend all day in the galleries. Why should my coworkers and I have to go to Goodwill for shoes?” - ARTnews

"This move to support France’s national museum of Modern and contemporary art, which is scheduled to begin a massive €262 million renovation later this year, marks the latest development in a burgeoning cultural partnership between the two countries." - The Art Newspaper

Today alone, people have been coming out in droves to express their deep-seated hatred for or utter confusion about Mocha Mousse in various comments sections. USA Today even insinuated that Brat green had been snubbed in favor if the more “demure” milk chocolate tone. - Hyperallergic

Canva’s vision has always been to enable you to take your idea and turn it into a design, and reduce the friction between those two points. I think because that has always been our ambition, we were very early to start to adopt AI in our product. - Wired

Novelists increasingly defined their craft by opposing tradition, and so placed themselves at loggerheads with most of their possible audience. There is something essentially Pyrrhic about the triumphs of “Ulysses” (1920) and “The Man Without Qualities." - The Wall Street Journal (MSN)

"The store’s 110 unionized workers went on strike in the middle of the busy holiday season, leaving the shop’s '18 miles of books' to be run by a skeleton staff. … The union wants base pay to increase from $16 an hour, which is minimum wage in New York City, to $18 an hour."...

And the reasons the word is an apt choice go well beyond politics. - AP

It does not have to be clear or obscure. In the voyage out between these binaries – between the oil spills, thistles and phantoms a novel might pass on the way, between desire, disappointment and the people who clean offices at dawn on page 33 – a novel can reach for understanding and re-examine...

"When Barnes & Noble took over they were saying, 'Hey, this is the Tattered Cover. The name Barnes & Noble will be nowhere in the store.' And then we got all this stuff, like machines, that said Barnes & Noble on them. - Westword

For a writer, that is. For a reader, it’s much easier. But when you’ve written 600 pages and you have a book contract? Yikes. - LitHub

The reality was that none of the people allegedly working for the Ashland Daily Tidings existed, or at least were who they claimed to be. The bylines listed on Daily Tidings articles were put there by scammers using artificial intelligence, and in some cases stolen identities, to dupe local readers. - Oregon Public Broadcasting

"Efforts to defund NPR and PBS … (along with) their member stations and their primary funding mechanism, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting … have been raised by Republicans and successfully batted away by public media defenders with annual regularity for decades. This time could be different." - Semafor

They generate a cumulative economic impact of $368 billion, a figure comparable to the GDP of Hong Kong and more than the entire economic output of Finland, New Zealand, or Greece. - Fast Company

On the TV side, FX/Hulu’s “The Bear” continues its trophy domination with the most nominations for any series; that’s five for the restaurant-set dramedy. - Variety

And Emila Pérez is in. Of course, “the Globes have been in turmoil since 2021,” and last year’s ceremony was a rushed stinkbomb of an experience for everyone. But hope springs eternal when celebrity-infused cash is involved. - The New York Times

"Feel-good movies with messages of tolerance and redemption ... are on the rise.” - Washington Post

Under a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board, "10 fired dancers, and three whose offers of employment were rescinded, will receive over $560,000 from the dance company in back pay, front pay and compensation for damages incurred through the loss of their employment." - KERA (Dallas)

If there were ever an argument for dance (and a sense of humor) as a way to extend one’s life, well: Dick Van Dyke in a suit and tie, barefoot, dancing in his California backyard as he nears his 99th birthday, is it. - Vulture

"San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker season will kick off as planned, despite concerns that opening night would be canceled due to a stall in contract negotiations. Ballet management … reached a tentative two-year agreement with its union members on Thursday." - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

Lynne Charles, artistic director of English National Ballet School, has developed a method she calls 4Pointe. "There are all these methods ... but there’s no pre-pointe teaching ... the balance as you go through your foot. I’ve developed exercises for specific parts of the foot and put them in a specific order." - Bachtrack

"Diego Vega Solorza does not want people to think of him as a visual artist. He is certainly not a sculptor, he insists, nor a photographer or videographer — even though he will exhibit that kind of work ... at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach." - The New York Times

"In the performing arts, it’s often assumed that audiences consider international or 'big-city' imports higher quality than locally-produced talent and creativity. But for decades, regional companies have been proving that false. … While these 'homegrown' companies may have relatively low profiles, they’re a crucial part of the national dance landscape." - Dance Magazine

UK Theatre joint chief executive Claire Walker warned that “unplanned increases in staffing costs” were adding to a theatre sector already at “risk”. - The Stage

“Morgan was like meeting, not a saint, but the … Muse of Curiosity. 'Ingenuity is always worth a read,' was one of her oft-repeated mantras. In essence, she viewed the act of creativity as inherently good. Something worthy of digging into.” - American Theatre

"'Every day (there’s shooting),' sighed the director, Eliezer Guérismé, as his company took a break from their read-through to the all-too familiar sound of gunfire. 'But even with the shooting, we keep on working because that’s our mission. We don’t want to stop.'" - The Guardian

"Why would anyone want to be a critic? As I’ve admitted before, it wasn’t in my case an aspiration but a series of accidents that only in retrospect seem inevitable." Charles McNulty explains how it happened as well as the principles that shape his criticism. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

According to UK Theatre, the majority of tickets sold in regional theatres cost under £35, with 99.9% priced below £100. Even in commercial venues, 65% of all tickets sold for less than £45. Furthermore, since 2019, the average ticket price at UK Theatre venues has decreased by 5%. - The Stage

A nonprofit called CulturalDC bought the Source Theatre in 2006 so it could remain a performance space. Now, however, CulturalDC's board wants to sell the building by the end of the year and is asking for $5.8 million. The company using the Source has offered to buy it, but not at that price. -...

"A poet of rage and revolution as well as love and longing, (she) emerged as a fiery voice of Black liberation in the 1960s before honing a more tender, meditative style in best-selling books for children and adults." - The Washington Post (MSN)

Chiung Yao "helped shape the idea of romantic love for generations,” with more than 60 novels and short story collections published, and countless movies and TV adaptations from her work. - The New York Times

Bernadette Peters, with whom he often worked, said, "The orchestras loved him. He had a great sense of humor and they respected his musicianship. … He knew what I was going to do before I did it.” - The New York Times

“The golden-haired Ms. Pinal, who collected more than 100 film and television credits in a career that began in the late 1940s, was known for balancing urbane glamour with saucy humor and sensuality” - and for working with Luis Buñuel on the Palme d’Or-winning Viridiana. - The New York Times

Nakayama was “a reigning J-pop star of the 1980s who broke through to become a critically acclaimed dramatic actress and gained international attention.” - The New York Times

In the late 20th century she was seen as an exemplar of well-meaning but extreme ascetic mysticism. Now she's either a prophet of, and antidote for, American political and spiritual malaise or "a mascot for misguided youths seeking to blend a fetishized Catholic ritualism with aestheticized eating disorders." - The Drift