This Week’s Highlights:
Two stories from opposite ends of the cultural economy landed this week that belong next to each other. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery announced a $110 billion merger — one of the biggest media deals in history — that would combine CBS, CNN, HBO, and Discovery under a single roof (The Wall Street Journal). The same week, Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre cut 14 staff positions and paused education programs due to cash flow problems (The Seattle Times), DePaul University announced it’s closing its art museum (Hyperallergic), and Indianapolis closed its high-tech immersive art space after a five-year run (The Indianapolis Star). Antitrust lawyers began arguing in federal court that Live Nation’s grip on music ticketing and venues amounts to an illegal monopoly (The New York Times).
Meanwhile, culture kept functioning as a proxy for geopolitical repositioning. Russia returned to the Venice Biennale for the first time since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine (The New York Times) — while exiled Belarusian theatre brought dissident work to the same venue (Artnet). The Berlinale’s speech controversies prompted serious questions about whether Germany can run major cultural events at all (The New York Times). Who gets to show up, and under what terms, turns out to be a question with no clean answer anywhere right now.
Finally, here’s my essay connecting stories of the past week to larger trends in arts and culture. This week, did you notice the wording the Boston Symphony used in deciding not to renew music director Andris Nelsons’ contract? It signals a shift in power in orchestras (and more broadly across cultural institutions). You can read it here on my blog Diacritical.
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
