The Kennedy Center board voted to close the building for two years of renovations — heating system out, new marble and seating in (The New York Times). Also on the federal aesthetics desk: a tiny Queens art school whose founder’s mission is to revive pre-Civil War classical painting just received a $2 million NEH grant, handpicked outside the agency’s normal competitive process and roughly the size of the school’s entire annual budget (The New York Times). And Trump’s appointed arts commissioner wants to replace the White House’s Ionic columns with the fancier Corinthian kind (Washington Post). Helpfully, The Conversation notes that triumphal arches in ancient Rome and Napoleonic France have historically signaled republics devolving into something less republic-y (The Conversation).
Elsewhere in authenticity trouble: can you identify whether a song was made by AI? A viral cover controversy suggests probably not (The Conversation). And the music industry has apparently been quietly manufacturing the fiction of sold-out performances for years (El País English).
Lastly, a tiny library in a tiny coastal Oregon town got a $150,000 windfall. One condition: accept the late donor’s 1,000 mathematics books (Oregon ArtsWatch). Unclear if they had a choice.
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