ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

Today's Stories

Why Is The New York Public Library Giving Away Books?

Usually you have to return books you get from a library. Today the New York Public Library will give books away — 1,000 books from its list of the best titles of 2025, chosen by more than 80 librarians from branches across the library’s system. If you get one, you won’t have to return it. - The New...

How New Motion-Capture Technology Might Affect Dancers And Choreographers

An exec at the firm Move AI insists that the combination of motion-capture and AI software isn’t to replace dance artists but to streamline the repetitive, tedious process of animation. (The dance artists are still nervous.) Meanwhile, other AI programs stand to make the work of dance historians and archivists easier. - Dance Magazine

New $234M Record Sale For Modern Art

The 71-by-51-inch painting, named after its subject, was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Tuesday evening for $236.4 million, including fees. It belonged to the private collection of Leonard Lauder, the cosmetics heir who died in June. - Washington Post

Three University Leaders Discuss Challenges Facing Education

Many universities, not all, but many, were for a period of time deeply focused on identity diversity, and really not so focused on viewpoint diversity or belief diversity. I think there’s a danger of a pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. - The New York Times

Concern As Warner Brothers Sale Looms

Warners Brothers has had multiple owners over the decades. Three years ago, Warner Media, as it was called, merged with Discovery. And in June, the company announced it would split in two, with film, TV and streaming studios in one camp, and in the other, mostly legacy cable channels, including CNN. - NPR

This University Restructured, Eliminating Traditional Departments (And Humanities?)

The departments of English, classics, philosophy, world languages and Spanish and Latino studies, for example, will be grouped into the tentatively titled School of Human Narratives and Creative Expressions. - The New York Times

Ex-Employees Accuse Smoky Robinson Of Sexual Assault

“Two more former employees of the soul music star Smokey Robinson, both male and female, have alleged he sexually assaulted them, which he denies. Robinson is already facing similar allegations from four other former employees, who filed a ($50 million) joint lawsuit in May.” - The Guardian

One Company Is Flooding The Zone With Tens Of Thousands Of AI-Generated Podcasts — And People Are Listening

“Point AI, a startup with eight employees, (cranks) out 3,000 episodes a week covering everything from localized weather reports to a detailed account of Charlie Kirk's assassination and its cultural impact to a biography series on Anna Wintour. Its podcasting network has generated 12 million lifetime episode downloads and amassed 400,000 subscribers.” - TheWrap (MSN)

What’s Behind The Board Exodus At The Palm Springs Art Museum? Evidently, A Financial Mess

It’s not as simple as the museum not having enough money. An audit report indicates that there have been some very questionable accounting practices at PSAM — questionable enough that one of the eight board members who have resigned so far did so on the advice of his personal attorney. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

Titles About Middle East Dominate 2025 National Book Awards

Winners include Rabih Alameddine's Beirut-set The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) (Fiction), Omar El Akkad’s examination of the war in Gaza, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Nonfiction), and Daniel Nayeri’s The Teacher of Nomad Land, set in World War II-era Iran (Young People’s Literature). - NPR

Some Arts Organizations Are Turning Down NEA Grants Rather Than Follow Anti-DEI Rules

“After the (NEA) canceled a large percentage of its awards in May, organizations across the country have decided they would rather find money elsewhere than be subject to federal restrictions. … It is a decision that they say prioritizes free speech and creative expression without fear of restrictions or retribution.” - The New York Times

Who Paid $12 Million For Maurizio Cattelan’s Gold Toilet? Believe It Or Not …

Yes, the themed-museum-and-entertainment franchise Ripley’s Believe It or Not! was the purchaser of Cattelan’s America at Sotheby’s in New York this week. In its pun-filled announcement, Ripley’s proudly said that Cattelan’s conceptual artwork is the most expensive item in its collection. - Artnet

San Diego Symphony Extends Contract With Music Director Rafael Payare

“The Venezuelan-born conductor — who became a naturalized US. citizen last year on the stage of the symphony’s Jacobs Music Center — began his tenure here with the orchestra in late 2019.” His contract term now extends through the 2028-29 season, with the new title of Music and Artistic Director. - The San Diego Union-Tribune (MSN)

Here’s One Israeli Orchestra That Isn’t Met With Protests When It Tours

The Galilee Chamber Orchestra, currently touring the US, is based in Nazareth (considered the cultural capital for Israel’s native Palestinians, about 20% of the country’s total population). It was formed 13 years ago as the first fully professional orchestra with equal numbers of Jewish and Arab musicians. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

So What Is Progress, Really? Some Limits Are Good

“Modernity is a machine for destroying limits." This attack on limits is legible in a host of current phenomena, including mass immigration, free-market orthodoxy, the rise of AI, overseas labor exploitation, the clear-cutting of rainforests, and new ideas about gender. - The Atlantic

Fort Worth Opera Tries A Pay-What-You-Can Program

For each of this weekend’s three performances of Philip Glass’s La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast, set to Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film), Fort Worth Opera has 100 tickets available for $1 or whatever price the purchaser names. - NBC 5 (Dallas-Fort Worth)

For A Long Time Artists Have Been On The Leading Edge Of Culture. Maybe Its Time To Give Up That Role?

What about all the painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance that people still love to make and see? They’re not going away, but it’s become harder to create fine art in those media while remaining on cultural discourse’s cutting edge.  - Art in America

French Art Establishment Opposes New Tax On Art

Under the legislation, France would become the only major market art center to impose a wealth tax on the mere possession of artworks, says the statement. France is the world’s fourth-largest art market, and accounts for more than half of the European Union’s market value, at $4.2 billion. - ARTnews

Nico Muhly On The Physical Translation Of Music Into Dancers’ Bodies

Watching a dance rehearsal as a score-addicted musician is surreal. You can have 30 people in the room, and only two of them will have the score. What is fascinating is that the choreographer has imposed an entirely different, invisible form of notation on the form of their counting. - The Guardian

Howard University Is On A Mission To Preserve The History Of Black American Newspapers

The project is digitizing U.S. newspapers that are are now in the public domain (after 95 years). The center also has permission to place online certain titles still under copyright. Other U.S. Black papers still under copyright are available on site, as are publications from the Caribbean and Africa. - The Christian Science Monitor

By Topic

So What Is Progress, Really? Some Limits Are Good

“Modernity is a machine for destroying limits." This attack on limits is legible in a host of current phenomena, including mass immigration, free-market orthodoxy, the rise of AI, overseas labor exploitation, the clear-cutting of rainforests, and new ideas about gender. - The Atlantic

For A Long Time Artists Have Been On The Leading Edge Of Culture. Maybe Its Time To Give Up That Role?

What about all the painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance that people still love to make and see? They’re not going away, but it’s become harder to create fine art in those media while remaining on cultural discourse’s cutting edge.  - Art in America

The GLP-1 Era Is Changing How We Think About Self Control

Although scientists are just beginning to study food noise as a concept, individuals who have taken a GLP-1 drug often report that it significantly reduces this distracting, ruminative thinking about food – a near-constant background hum of unwanted food-related thoughts, feelings and desires that may contribute to making poor food choices. - Psyche

We Live In An Age Of Self-Optimization. Where Did This Notion Come From?

This culture of self-quantification in the pursuit of self-improvement long predates social media, algorithms and targeted advertising. In fact, we can trace its roots back into the daily lives and preoccupations of the Victorian middle classes. - Aeon

Education Is Flapping Around Trying To Figure Out AI’s Role In Teaching, Learning

Even as a significant proportion of their students are submitting AI-generated work, they proudly reassure each other that their courses are too demanding or too humanistic for any machine to understand them. - Persuasion

Have Screens Actually – We Mean It, This Time – Destroyed Education, Worldwide?

“It seems ridiculous to have to say this, but digital distraction is terrible for academic performance.” - The New York Times

Three University Leaders Discuss Challenges Facing Education

Many universities, not all, but many, were for a period of time deeply focused on identity diversity, and really not so focused on viewpoint diversity or belief diversity. I think there’s a danger of a pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. - The New York Times

This University Restructured, Eliminating Traditional Departments (And Humanities?)

The departments of English, classics, philosophy, world languages and Spanish and Latino studies, for example, will be grouped into the tentatively titled School of Human Narratives and Creative Expressions. - The New York Times

Some Arts Organizations Are Turning Down NEA Grants Rather Than Follow Anti-DEI Rules

“After the (NEA) canceled a large percentage of its awards in May, organizations across the country have decided they would rather find money elsewhere than be subject to federal restrictions. … It is a decision that they say prioritizes free speech and creative expression without fear of restrictions or retribution.” - The New York Times

Well, If We Thought The Color-Blind Casting Debate Was Settled, We Were Wrong

“It can now be hard to remember that colorblind casting was once an inflammatory proposition. … But the triumphal march of colorblind casting — hiring actors of any race to play roles originally designated for just one — has taken a detour this year.” - The New York Times

Two Of New York’s Biggest Arts Philanthropists Died This Year. Will Anyone Follow In Their Footsteps?

As one former museum director put it about Leonard Lauder and Agnes Gund, “They could open doors, they could bring people together, they would give money, they would give art. It takes three different board members to contribute what they could.” Yet today there are few such people around. - The New York Times

Is The World Really Getting Dumber? “Yes, And We All Know It.”

Across the developed world, since the 1930s, there’s been what’s called the Flynn effect: IQ scores overall have been rising by about three points a decade — through the turn of the millennium, that is. Social scientist Elizabeth Dworak has documented the effect reversing since 2006. This surprises few people. - New York Magazine...

San Diego Symphony Extends Contract With Music Director Rafael Payare

“The Venezuelan-born conductor — who became a naturalized US. citizen last year on the stage of the symphony’s Jacobs Music Center — began his tenure here with the orchestra in late 2019.” His contract term now extends through the 2028-29 season, with the new title of Music and Artistic Director. - The San Diego...

Here’s One Israeli Orchestra That Isn’t Met With Protests When It Tours

The Galilee Chamber Orchestra, currently touring the US, is based in Nazareth (considered the cultural capital for Israel’s native Palestinians, about 20% of the country’s total population). It was formed 13 years ago as the first fully professional orchestra with equal numbers of Jewish and Arab musicians. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

Fort Worth Opera Tries A Pay-What-You-Can Program

For each of this weekend’s three performances of Philip Glass’s La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast, set to Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film), Fort Worth Opera has 100 tickets available for $1 or whatever price the purchaser names. - NBC 5 (Dallas-Fort Worth)

English National Opera Chief Leaves To Run Roundhouse

Jenny Mollica will step down from her current role in summer 2026 to become CEO of London music and arts venue Roundhouse. Mollica will succeed Marcus Davey CBE who steps down after 27 years at the helm of the Camden venue, while the process to appoint ENO’s next CEO is now underway. - Classical Music...

Michael Andor Brodeur Analyzes The 2026 Classical Grammy Nominees

Most notably, composer Gabriela Ortiz, who won three Grammys last time, could do it again, as she’s a triple nominee this year. Overall, in fact, the list of nominees is (as has been the case for a number of years now) largely dominated by contemporary music, most of it American. - The Washington Post...

Here Are The Classical Grammy Nominations For 2026 (In Case You Missed Them)

And, unfortunately, they’re easy to miss, since they’re always stuck all the way down at the end of a very long list of categories. - Moto Perpetuo

New $234M Record Sale For Modern Art

The 71-by-51-inch painting, named after its subject, was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York on Tuesday evening for $236.4 million, including fees. It belonged to the private collection of Leonard Lauder, the cosmetics heir who died in June. - Washington Post

What’s Behind The Board Exodus At The Palm Springs Art Museum? Evidently, A Financial Mess

It’s not as simple as the museum not having enough money. An audit report indicates that there have been some very questionable accounting practices at PSAM — questionable enough that one of the eight board members who have resigned so far did so on the advice of his personal attorney. - Los Angeles Times...

Who Paid $12 Million For Maurizio Cattelan’s Gold Toilet? Believe It Or Not …

Yes, the themed-museum-and-entertainment franchise Ripley’s Believe It or Not! was the purchaser of Cattelan’s America at Sotheby’s in New York this week. In its pun-filled announcement, Ripley’s proudly said that Cattelan’s conceptual artwork is the most expensive item in its collection. - Artnet

French Art Establishment Opposes New Tax On Art

Under the legislation, France would become the only major market art center to impose a wealth tax on the mere possession of artworks, says the statement. France is the world’s fourth-largest art market, and accounts for more than half of the European Union’s market value, at $4.2 billion. - ARTnews

This Year’s Worldwide New Building Of The Year

The Holy Redeemer Church and Community Center of Las Chumberas, designed by Spanish architect Fernando Menis, has been named as the World Building of the Year at the 2025 World Architecture Festival. - Archinect

Gustav Klimt Portrait Is Now Second-Most Expensive Artwork Ever Auctioned

The six-foot-tall painting, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16), shows a young heiress and daughter of Klimt’s patrons draped in a Chinese robe. Its sale price of $236.4 million is exceeded only by the notorious Salvator Mundi attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which sold for $450 million in 2017. - The Guardian

Why Is The New York Public Library Giving Away Books?

Usually you have to return books you get from a library. Today the New York Public Library will give books away — 1,000 books from its list of the best titles of 2025, chosen by more than 80 librarians from branches across the library’s system. If you get one, you won’t have to return it. -...

Titles About Middle East Dominate 2025 National Book Awards

Winners include Rabih Alameddine's Beirut-set The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) (Fiction), Omar El Akkad’s examination of the war in Gaza, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Nonfiction), and Daniel Nayeri’s The Teacher of Nomad Land, set in World War II-era Iran (Young People’s Literature). - NPR

Howard University Is On A Mission To Preserve The History Of Black American Newspapers

The project is digitizing U.S. newspapers that are are now in the public domain (after 95 years). The center also has permission to place online certain titles still under copyright. Other U.S. Black papers still under copyright are available on site, as are publications from the Caribbean and Africa. - The Christian Science Monitor

Giller Prize 2026 Goes To “Pick A Colour” By Souvankham Thammavongsa

This is the second time that the Laotian-Canadian author has won Canada’s top literary award; she is only the fourth author to do so, after Esi Edugyan, M.G. Vassanji and Alice Munro. - Canadian Press (Yahoo!)

The Icelandic Language Is In Danger Of Dying Out

“Having this language that is spoken by so very few, I feel that we carry a huge responsibility to actually preserve that. I do not personally think we are doing enough to do that,” she said, not least because young people in Iceland “are absolutely surrounded by material in English, on social media and...

“Parasocial” Is Cambridge Dictionary’s 2025 Word Of The Year

Taylor and Travis, podcast hosts, even chatbots — this has been a year full of intense but one-sided relationships between some ordinary individuals and celebrities (or pieces of code) they’ve never actually met. - Cambridge University Press

Concern As Warner Brothers Sale Looms

Warners Brothers has had multiple owners over the decades. Three years ago, Warner Media, as it was called, merged with Discovery. And in June, the company announced it would split in two, with film, TV and streaming studios in one camp, and in the other, mostly legacy cable channels, including CNN. - NPR

One Company Is Flooding The Zone With Tens Of Thousands Of AI-Generated Podcasts — And People Are Listening

“Point AI, a startup with eight employees, (cranks) out 3,000 episodes a week covering everything from localized weather reports to a detailed account of Charlie Kirk's assassination and its cultural impact to a biography series on Anna Wintour. Its podcasting network has generated 12 million lifetime episode downloads and amassed 400,000 subscribers.” - TheWrap (MSN)

Disney Hits A Wall With Its AI Ambitions

Even as other industries — from technology to publishing — proceed to incorporate AI to cut costs and replace jobs, media companies have bumped up against numerous roadblocks including actors reluctant to cooperate with AI models, animators and post-production experts pushing back on change, technological limitations and legal questions. - Yahoo Finance

Pope Leo: Movie Theatres And Cathedrals

There's "an inner peace that comes from entering the sanctum sanctorum of those movie palaces with the wall-sized screens.2 Don’t take it from me. Take it from a higher authority: his holiness, Pope Leo XIV." - The Bulwark

Alabama Public Television Decides Not To Break Up With PBS (Yet)

“Facing a public backlash, the commission that oversees Alabama Public Television voted Tuesday to continue paying its contract with PBS, rejecting an effort — at least for now — to be the first state to cut ties with the broadcast giant because of politics.” - AP

What Does News Independence Mean After BBC Mess?

The resignations come as the BBC enters a decisive period. The renewal of its royal charter in 2027 will define the corporation’s funding model and public purpose for the next decade. At the same time, the BBC faces a hostile political climate, sustained financial pressure, and a rapidly fragmenting audience. - NiemanLab

How New Motion-Capture Technology Might Affect Dancers And Choreographers

An exec at the firm Move AI insists that the combination of motion-capture and AI software isn’t to replace dance artists but to streamline the repetitive, tedious process of animation. (The dance artists are still nervous.) Meanwhile, other AI programs stand to make the work of dance historians and archivists easier. - Dance Magazine

Nico Muhly On The Physical Translation Of Music Into Dancers’ Bodies

Watching a dance rehearsal as a score-addicted musician is surreal. You can have 30 people in the room, and only two of them will have the score. What is fascinating is that the choreographer has imposed an entirely different, invisible form of notation on the form of their counting. - The Guardian

Norwegian National Ballet Did A Piece About Sami History By A Sami Choreographer. Oslo Loved It, But Did It Fly In The Sami Heartland?

That question worried the choreographer, administrators, and the dancers, none of whom are Sami themselves. What’s more, the piece was about a particularly sensitive topic: a violent uprising in 1852. So everyone was nervous about performing in the town where the rebellion happened. - The New York Times

How Software Has Changed Choreography, And How AI Could Change It Further

Julie Cruse is a pioneer of “computational choreography”: in 2007 she created a piece titled Choreobot in which she used software she coded to generate choreography. Here she looks at the earliest efforts to automatically create movement, explains how her program works, and looks at how AI could develop and change it. - Dance...

New Emphasis On Dancers’ Mental Health

Dancers began to question their careers and who they were apart from being dancers. Some saw their bodies change. Some decided to have children. And many started paying closer attention to their mental well-being. - The New York Times

Five Takeaways From The Dallas Black Dance Theatre Fiasco, Now That It’s Over

Bad publicity, funding lost and regained, a change in leadership, “community trust,” and so on. - KERA (Dalllas)

This Playwright Enlisted Anorexic Actors: The Ethics Of Who Portrays What

Theater makers have long depicted health struggles onstage, including the realities of living with H.I.V. and cancer, but the debate around this production, titled “Jeanne Dark” and running through May 22, has shown that ethical questions remain about how various conditions are portrayed theatrically — and who gets to shape those depictions. - The New York Times

La Jolla Playhouse Appoints Jessica Stone As Artistic Director

As of early next year, the two-time Tony nominee (for her direction of Kimberly Akimbo in 2023 and Water for Elephants in 2024) will succeed Christopher Ashley, who is departing to lead the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York. - The San Diego Union-Tribune (MSN)

India Could Be Poised To Develop Its Own Musical Theatre

“If authentically delivered, the potential is colossal. India’s population of 1.4 billion includes a fast-growing urban middle class … (with) a rising appetite for theatre that blends storytelling, music and spectacle. The real question is whether India can find its own mainstream musical theatre voice, and cinema may offer some clues.” - The Stage (UK)

Why Online “Critics” Should Review Broadway Previews

Imagine a painter still layering colors on a canvas while a stranger posts, “This looks messy and unfinished!” That’s what happens when someone reviews a preview. The damage lingers, and the artistry suffers. - The Broadway Maven

How Theatre Artists Survive Dictatorships

“If you press your ear to the plays of the 20th century, they’ll tell you secrets of human acts gone by and strategies to keep on. Among bloody slings and arrows of inhumane humanity are extraordinary scenes, real and imagined, of survival.” - American Theatre

Can Theatre About Sports, Or A Sport, Really Work On Stage?

“As a sports obsessive and avid theatergoer, I’ve always found the communal experiences staggeringly similar. Either way, we root and cheer and gasp in unison. Worship-worthy idols emerge — and nothing beats seeing them ply their trade in person.” - Washington Post (Yahoo)

Ex-Employees Accuse Smoky Robinson Of Sexual Assault

“Two more former employees of the soul music star Smokey Robinson, both male and female, have alleged he sexually assaulted them, which he denies. Robinson is already facing similar allegations from four other former employees, who filed a ($50 million) joint lawsuit in May.” - The Guardian

Wagnerian Tenor Gary Lakes Has Died At 75

A veteran who performed at the Metropolitan Opera 106 times and at many other companies, he was known for such challenging roles as Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan, Parsifal, and Siegmund and Siegfried (at various times) in the Ring cycle, as well as Florestan in Beethoven’s Fidelio and Aeneas in Berlioz’s Les Troyens. - OperaWire

Bill Ivey, Who Calmed Conservative Fury At The NEA, Has Died At 81

He was a guitar-playing folklorist who had run the Country Music Foundation in Nashville for 26 years, when President Clinton nominated him to chair the NEA in 1998. Congressional Republicans had repeatedly cut the agency’s budget following controversies over grantees; Ivey won the lawmakers over, and the NEA grew again. - The New York...

Guy Cogeval, Former President Of The Musée d’Orsay, 70

A "free spirit and nonconformist, often impetuous, the passionate lover of the 19th century left his mark on the Parisian museum from 2008 to 2017 with bold exhibitions." - Le Monde

Elizabeth Franz, A Versatile And Tony-Winning Actress, Has Died At 84

Franz's “vibrant portrayal of Linda Loman, the wife of the piteous title character in the 1999 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, earned her a Tony Award — and high praise from the playwright.” - The New York Times

Marina Lewycka, Author Of A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian, Has Died At 79

The author was born in a German refugee camp after the war, and her tragicomic first novel was an unexpected literary hit. - The Guardian (UK)

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Boch Center, VP Marketing & Communications | In Partnership with DHR...

The Boch Center seeks a Vice President of Marketing & Communications

Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra seeks Vice President, Human Resources

The next Vice President, Human Resources will lead the FWSO’s design and implementation of HR strategy to strength communication and collaboration across the organization.

Managing Director- The Old Globe working with Management Consultants for the...

The Old Globe is seeking a Managing Director to co-lead the company as it looks ahead to the landmark celebration of its 100th anniversary

Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra seeks President & Chief Executive Officer

The next President & CEO will lead the KSO into its next century of artistic excellence, inspired community-engaged education, and strategic growth.

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Director of Programming, Hult Center, Eugene, OR

Application Deadline: Monday, December 1, 2025, at 5 p.m. P.T. Accepting Online Applications Only Via the City of Eugene’s Website: Director of Programming | Job

NYU Tisch School of the Arts Undergraduate Drama, Department Chair

Department of Undergraduate Drama at NYU Tisch School of the Arts seeks a Chair to lead the Bachelor of Fine Arts program beginning Fall '26.

Gustav Klimt Portrait Is Now Second-Most Expensive Artwork Ever Auctioned

The six-foot-tall painting, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16), shows a young heiress and daughter of Klimt’s patrons draped in a Chinese robe. Its sale price of $236.4 million is exceeded only by the notorious Salvator Mundi attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which sold for $450 million in 2017. - The Guardian

How Theatre Artists Survive Dictatorships

“If you press your ear to the plays of the 20th century, they’ll tell you secrets of human acts gone by and strategies to keep on. Among bloody slings and arrows of inhumane humanity are extraordinary scenes, real and imagined, of survival.” - American Theatre

Software Is Good At Pattern Recognition And Spitting Those Patterns Back Out, But Is That ‘Writing’ Music?

“As with most things in life, when expertise is devalued, it’s easier to pass trash off as treasure. AutoTune and AI are enabling people who lack musical talent to game the system — like audio catfish.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)

Disney May Be Turning To AI To Help Create ‘User-Generated Content’ On Its Main Streamer

Bob Iger knows it’s, uh, interesting to be suing some AI companies while courting others. “'It's obviously imperative for us to protect our IP with this new technology,’ Iger said.” - NPR

The Return Of A Night At The Natural History Museum

“Children ran, some of them in stocking feet, through the displays, with abandon. (Running had been discouraged in the safety lecture, but this did not dissuade a young boy who shouted ‘I have to look for the animals that will hunt us in the night.’)” - The New York Times

The Palm Springs Art Museum Trustee Revolt: Just What The Heck Is Happening Here?

Basically, “without consideration of multiple outside candidates, the search committee had in effect become simply a hiring committee for an in-house nominee.” That in-house nominee might be great - but that doesn’t fix the hiring process. - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

Inside The National Endowment For The Humanities, In The Iron Grip Of The Current Administration

“Many of its nearly 50 grant programs have been paused or ended. … About two thirds of the staff has been laid off and, last month, most members of the scholarly council that must review a majority of grants were abruptly fired by the White House.” - The New York Times

World Cup Draw Will Take Over Kennedy Center For Three Weeks At No Charge: Report

The Dec. 5 draw, the World Cup’s highest-profile pre-tournament event, was expected to be held in Las Vegas. Trump reportedly swooped in at the 11th hour to offer use of Kennedy Center performance spaces and other facilities, for free, for almost three weeks, requiring cancellation or postponement of scheduled events. - The Washington Post...

The Trump Administration Keeps Using Norman Rockwell’s Imagery, And His Family Is Fed Up

“It’s important to us that younger generations know what the work stood for and don’t get some false impression from these decontextualized samplings — and we don’t want it to be associated with what the Department of Homeland Security is doing.” - Washington Post (MSN)

A Passionate Plea To Stop Devaluing Art, And The Future

“For years we’ve been grappling with the collapse of the creative middle class due to corporate greed. … We have more content than ever, but fewer opportunities for art and artists to thrive.” - LitHub

When Words, And Then Truth, And Then Reality, Fall Apart

“Navigating life in an era of ‘alternative truths’ has proved to be a disorienting experience: How can people live together when truth has become whatever one would like it to be?” - Le Monde (Archive Today)

Two Top BBC Officials Abruptly Quit Over Editing Of Documentary About January 6

The resignations “came several days after The Daily Telegraph published details of a leaked internal memo arguing that a BBC Panorama documentary had juxtaposed comments by Mr. Trump in a way that made it appear that he had explicitly encouraged the attack on the Capitol.” - The New York Times

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