This Week’s Highlights:
The biggest institutions are building like the future belongs to them. LACMA opened its $724 million reinvention (Los Angeles Times). London’s National Gallery chose Kengo Kuma to design a $464 million modern-art wing (The Guardian). The Dallas Symphony closed a $50 million endowment campaign (The Dallas Morning News). And Lyric Opera of Chicago expanded its season and signed Sondra Radvanovsky for five years (Chicago Tribune).
But the culture’s software looks a bit less permanent. The Hirshhorn’s director is the fourth to leave the Smithsonian in two years (The New York Times). The Salzburg Festival fired its artistic director and named a replacement in under two weeks (Moto Perpetuo). The U.S. Holocaust Museum softened its own content preemptively, before the administration even asked (Politico). And the Trump administration dropped its legal fight to dismantle IMLS — then zeroed out its funding in the next budget (Publishers Weekly). Why litigate when you can starve the beast?
The sector is investing in buildings at historic scale. The institutional infrastructure underneath — leadership stability, regulatory protection, the willingness to hold ground — is thinning fast. What could go wrong?
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
