Blockbuster news from Washington, where the Washington National Opera has decided to leave the Kennedy Center’s Opera House. The company plans to move its performances to other venues, marking a dramatic rupture for one of the center’s flagship residents (The New York Times).
In Atlanta, public media stations are facing a “cold dose of reality” as they grapple with the loss of federal funding following the dissolution of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Inside Radio). Meanwhile, a troubling trend is emerging in the visual arts, where artists are increasingly being asked to finance their own museum exhibitions as institutions slash budgets (The Art Newspaper).
On the ideas front, we have two provocative arguments. One suggests the “crisis of the humanities” is technically over—only because it has metastasized into a much larger crisis of civil society (Chronicle of Higher Education). The other critiques our obsession with metrics, arguing that living in a world where everything is ranked (“value capture”) impoverishes our actual experience of life (The New Yorker).
Finally, we look at a unique educational experiment: a university class titled “Existential Despair” that requires students to do nothing but sit in silence for seven hours and read a book from cover to cover—no phones allowed (New York Magazine).
All our stories below.
