Good Afternoon,
The Kennedy Center is closed, fenced, and flashing “Emergency alert” where the show listings used to be (Washington Post). The president says it gets “ripped down” unless his name goes on it (ABC News), and photographers caught him aboard Air Force One studying a poster reading “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED” (The New York Times). The Atlantic calls it a shakedown: the leverage isn’t law, it’s the board’s affection for the institution (The Atlantic). Down the Mall, the administration is printing signs to accuse the Smithsonian Museum of American History of bias (The Atlantic). Same play: seize the building, relabel the contents.
Buildings are having a moment elsewhere too. AI companies, having lost copyright fights over pirated files, are now buying physical books printed before 2022 and destroying them — the last stock of text guaranteed untouched by machines, treated as ore (ARTnews).
The demand side keeps refusing the decline script: 89% of British adults say they’d attend an orchestral concert, up ten points since 2018, with the young leading (Gramophone). And Singapore will pay you 80 cents to read for 50 days (The Guardian). Cheaper than a fence.
Peter Max, who put the ’60s on coffee mugs and cruise ships, has died at 88 (Washington Post).
All of our stories below.