This Week’s Highlights:
Anne Carson, the Canadian poet who translates Greek tragedy, won the Nobel Prize in Literature for forms that set contemporary writing in dialogue with the classics (AP). Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery closed their merger Tuesday as a company called Skydance, which wants $6 billion in savings by the end of 2028; its co-CEO says labor is not the majority of it (Deadline). Trump calls the shuttered Kennedy Center a danger to anyone who walks in, yet some 100 National Symphony Orchestra musicians rehearse in its concert hall most weekday mornings (The New York Times).
Oracle, the database company building its headquarters on Nashville’s East Bank, gave the Nashville Symphony $10 million, the size of its deficit, and the suspended season is back on (The New York Times). In San Antonio, Harmonium of Texas, founded by conductor Jeffrey Kahane after he left the Philharmonic, debuted with 68 musicians, many from the city’s two defunct orchestras, days after the Philharmonic sued him over donor lists (San Antonio Express-News).
And Theaster Gates, the Chicago artist who turns closed buildings into cultural centers, bought Pickard China, the last American maker of high-end porcelain, now producing a quarter of its 1970s output; its competitor Lenox, sold to a private investment firm in 2020, moved production to Asia and Europe (NPR).
Finally, New York City doubled its grants to individual artists to $10,000, the first increase in 20 years (ARTnews).
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
Doug