Goodbye to Dolly

Good Afternoon,

Two performers who spent careers refusing to be one thing: Dolly Parton, dead at 80 (AP), and Tim Curry, dead at 80 (Variety). Both were underestimated for decades by people who mistook their costumes for the person.

The AI argument, meanwhile, has moved out of panel discussions and into work. Aszure Barton has staged Pandora’s Box as a parable about artificial intelligence (The Guardian), while an essay in The Point argues for deliberately limiting AI in culture — preservation as a choice rather than a reflex.

The State Department is weighing the sale of a Kehinde Wiley painting for being “too woke” (ARTnews), and in China, sculptor Gao Zhen has been jailed for insulting “heroes and martyrs” (The Guardian).

Boston’s musicians settled and averted the BSO’s looming first strike (WBUR); But V&A staff, echoing unrest at other London museums, voted to walk (BBC).

For fun: in 1939 the BBC broadcast a note played live on Tutankhamun’s trumpet — a 3000-year-old instrument (CNN).

All of our stories below.