Good Morning,
Several stories today about institutions discovering they don’t actually need a center. Alabama’s WLRH dropped NPR programming and its audience grew (AL.com); public media more broadly is finding that losing federal money surfaced a donor base it had assumed was tapped out (Current). Neither result makes the cuts a good idea, but still. Makes you think…
Rethinking the model shows up in Australia too, where four regional performing arts centers have pooled resources to originate the big work the capital-city companies used to (Limelight). In Buffalo, the AKG has split its director job in two (BTPM) — an admission that the singular-visionary model maybe should be rethought.
A terrific essay asks why “ancient history” still means Greece and Rome (Aeon).
And today’s saddest stories: the Kennedy Center is empty enough that the volunteer tour guide is now the story (NYT). And Betye Saar, who spent 70 years making art from what the culture threw away, has died four days short of 100 (Yahoo).
Lighter: Emily Wilson has seen Nolan’s Odyssey and would like a word (London Review of Books).