Christos Makridis of Arizona State University: “I found the public’s demand for meaningful, live cultural experiences — including opera — remains strong. … (But) few opera companies have embraced strategies the rest of the entertainment industry regularly uses: audience data analysis, experimentation with digital content and streaming, engagement through online platforms rather than brochures.” - The...
Trot out the national anthem, the flag or a John Philip Sousa march, they believe, and it’s like a free exclamation mark to whatever point they’re trying to make: “Ha! See? The stars and stripes are on my side!” - San Francisco Chronicle
“The two perpetrators can be seen wearing balaclavas and using disc cutters to slice open display cases. The theft takes place under the watch of staff members who were not able to intervene.” - Artnet
Women are rewriting the rules of sword-and-sorcery, trading testosterone-fueled quests for romance-driven adventures. Publishers are discovering that dragons plus dating equals dollars—who knew female readers wanted both magic and meaningful relationships? — The Conversation
Nothing says "we nailed it" quite like forming a task force to fix your fresh new identity while quietly showing your chief marketing officer the door. Sometimes the most authentic brand move is admitting you got it spectacularly wrong. — Hyperallergic
Because nothing says 'making America great again' like erasing the last time we actually invested in artists. Depression-era public art programs apparently too woke for 2025. Grandma Moses weeps. — Hyperallergic
ChatGPT has writers channeling their inner folk hero, hammer in hand. But as Stephen Marche notes, we've been dancing with technological muses long before algorithms—typewriters, anyone? — LitHub
A key reason why it’s now more complicated to promote an album than, say, a theatrically released film, is the ephemeral, immaterial nature of contemporary music consumption. By comparison, most films that see a theatrical release maintain a predictable, streamlined promotional schedule. - The New Yorker
The rhythms that resonate in wedding halls, concert stages and apartment blocks are falling silent, as the Pakistani government pursues a wave of expulsions that has already forced out a million Afghans since last year. - The New York Times
“Is listening to a book while doing the dishes, walking the dog or drifting off to sleep really as valuable as sitting down to read it? For authors, the publishing trade and those encouraging reading and literacy, the answer is increasingly yes.” - The Guardian
Fundamentally, the state of the humanities and liberal arts reveals a widening conflict over the “value” of higher education – with increasingly corporatized universities favoring market-driven metrics for evaluation, and proponents of humanistic education stressing that its worth to both individuals and society at large cannot be measured that way. - The Guardian
The "starchitect" was a figment of media attention, drummed up to answer our interest in celebrity, and our exaggerated expectations of what might be achieved without the help of other people. It belongs to a deluded, more decadent age. - Dezeen
The Republican-run Alabama Public Library Service Board voted to withhold roughly $22,000 in state funding from the Fairhope Public Library, citing the library’s failure to comply with the board’s rules requiring books deemed “sexually explicit” be relocated to the adult section. - The Daily Beast
“Trolling and tackiness, often crossbred with left-coded pop songs and hot memes, have served to wish a new zeitgeist into existence. Consume only the output of MAGA’s multi-front media efforts, and you may come to feel that the country is coalescing into pep-rally unity on Trump’s behalf.” - The Atlantic (MSN)
“The country’s premier showcase for independent film is also in a time of profound transition after decades of relative stability. The festival is … forging forward without its founder, Robert Redford, who died in September. Next year, it must find its footing in another mountain town, Boulder, Colorado.” - AP
Leider’s career arc was an unusual one. He helped turn Artforum into a go-to source for serious, no-nonsense art criticism, serving as its editor starting in 1962. Then, in 1971, Leider left the publication — and the eye of the mainstream art world in the US, becoming a professor first at UCal-Irvine and then in Israel. - ARTnews
Daniel H. Weiss talks about leading the museum (“I believe very strongly in shared governance”) and sorting out the pressing priorities: re-examining the rebrand, erasing the budget deficit, looking at the museum’s physical facilities, and getting everyone’s focus back on the art. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
“The move not to produce this year is meant to allow the organization to continue to rethink its future after a period of radical change. Leadership is still deciding whether Williamstown will skip only this summer or move into producing the flagship festival on a biennial basis.” - The Washington Post (MSN)
Paul Dien, the chief marketing officer who oversaw that rebrand, has resigned. New director/CEO Daniel Weiss has set up a task force of staffers and board members to evaluate the rebranding and examine “what works, what doesn’t work, to do some analytical work around that.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
A key reason why it’s now more complicated to promote an album than, say, a theatrically released film, is the ephemeral, immaterial nature of contemporary music consumption. By comparison, most films that see a theatrical release maintain a predictable, streamlined promotional schedule. - The New Yorker
Most of us are by now familiar with the broad mechanisms of the “attention economy” – the hijacking and monetising of consumer attention through addictive channels. The ravages of this system are ever more apparent. - The Observer
The implications for the battered-and-bruised entertainment industry are obvious. The impacts on our culture are just starting to fully materialize, but will be more significant. Instead of pulling us together, pop culture is another force dragging us apart. - The Wall Street Journal
This picture of time is not natural. Its roots stretch only to the 18th century, yet this notion has now entrenched itself so deeply in Western thought that it’s difficult to imagine time as anything else. And this new representation of time has affected all kinds of things, from our understanding of history to time travel. - Aeon
What if the next wave of artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t designed to feed that addiction — but to fundamentally change it? What if the future of AI demands young people’s attention, curiosity, and creativity in ways we haven’t experienced before? - Big Think
If you wanted to create a tool that would enable the destruction of institutions that prop up democratic life, you could not do better than artificial intelligence. Authoritarian leaders and technology oligarchs are deploying AI systems to hollow out public institutions with an astonishing alacrity. - Gary Marcus
Fundamentally, the state of the humanities and liberal arts reveals a widening conflict over the “value” of higher education – with increasingly corporatized universities favoring market-driven metrics for evaluation, and proponents of humanistic education stressing that its worth to both individuals and society at large cannot be measured that way. - The Guardian
“Trolling and tackiness, often crossbred with left-coded pop songs and hot memes, have served to wish a new zeitgeist into existence. Consume only the output of MAGA’s multi-front media efforts, and you may come to feel that the country is coalescing into pep-rally unity on Trump’s behalf.” - The Atlantic (MSN)
The National Endowment for the Humanities on Thursday announced $71 million in new grants, including nearly $40 million to classical humanities institutes and civic leadership programs that have been promoted by conservatives as a counterweight to liberal-dominated higher education. - The New York Times
“The National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) has announced a new round of grants — $75.1m to 84 projects, many of them celebrating the US’s semiquincentennial. These are the first grants since the administration of president Donald Trump fired all but four members of the National Council on the Humanities ... in October.” - The Art Newspaper
The notion that unstated corporate aesthetic preferences should determine what the public encounters as art — indeed, what counts as art at the nation’s art center — is absurd. It’s why we don’t (yet) have touring musicals about a young couple discovering the bold, zesty flavor of Cool Ranch Doritos. - Washington Post
Beginning in 1933, propagandistic art exhibitions were mounted throughout Germany. These “Schandausstellung” (modern art shame exhibitions) included the titles, “Art in the Service of Decay,” “Art Which Has Not Come from Our Soul,” “Horror Chambers of Art” and “Reflections of Degeneration in Art.” Artists themselves also faced pressure. - LMU
Christos Makridis of Arizona State University: “I found the public’s demand for meaningful, live cultural experiences — including opera — remains strong. … (But) few opera companies have embraced strategies the rest of the entertainment industry regularly uses: audience data analysis, experimentation with digital content and streaming, engagement through online platforms rather than brochures.”...
The rhythms that resonate in wedding halls, concert stages and apartment blocks are falling silent, as the Pakistani government pursues a wave of expulsions that has already forced out a million Afghans since last year. - The New York Times
The company is laying off 22 of its 284 administrative staffers, reducing pay for 35 of its top executives (including general director Peter Gelb and music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin), and dropping one production from next season’s schedule. - The Guardian
The women of 18th-century Venice’s ospedali (homes for the destitute, the sick, and orphans) are remembered largely because Vivaldi composed music for them. History has mostly overlooked them in favor of the famous men around them, but we now know that they were highly trained, ferociously talented, and deeply ambitious. - Early Music America
It says a lot that this orchestra is confident enough to let a critic see it rehearse from start to finish, on the record. Perhaps it says more that I was not allowed to sit onstage, to guard against distractions. - The New York Times
“The two perpetrators can be seen wearing balaclavas and using disc cutters to slice open display cases. The theft takes place under the watch of staff members who were not able to intervene.” - Artnet
Nothing says "we nailed it" quite like forming a task force to fix your fresh new identity while quietly showing your chief marketing officer the door. Sometimes the most authentic brand move is admitting you got it spectacularly wrong. — Hyperallergic
Because nothing says 'making America great again' like erasing the last time we actually invested in artists. Depression-era public art programs apparently too woke for 2025. Grandma Moses weeps. — Hyperallergic
The "starchitect" was a figment of media attention, drummed up to answer our interest in celebrity, and our exaggerated expectations of what might be achieved without the help of other people. It belongs to a deluded, more decadent age. - Dezeen
Daniel H. Weiss talks about leading the museum (“I believe very strongly in shared governance”) and sorting out the pressing priorities: re-examining the rebrand, erasing the budget deficit, looking at the museum’s physical facilities, and getting everyone’s focus back on the art. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
Paul Dien, the chief marketing officer who oversaw that rebrand, has resigned. New director/CEO Daniel Weiss has set up a task force of staffers and board members to evaluate the rebranding and examine “what works, what doesn’t work, to do some analytical work around that.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
Women are rewriting the rules of sword-and-sorcery, trading testosterone-fueled quests for romance-driven adventures. Publishers are discovering that dragons plus dating equals dollars—who knew female readers wanted both magic and meaningful relationships? — The Conversation
ChatGPT has writers channeling their inner folk hero, hammer in hand. But as Stephen Marche notes, we've been dancing with technological muses long before algorithms—typewriters, anyone? — LitHub
“Is listening to a book while doing the dishes, walking the dog or drifting off to sleep really as valuable as sitting down to read it? For authors, the publishing trade and those encouraging reading and literacy, the answer is increasingly yes.” - The Guardian
The Republican-run Alabama Public Library Service Board voted to withhold roughly $22,000 in state funding from the Fairhope Public Library, citing the library’s failure to comply with the board’s rules requiring books deemed “sexually explicit” be relocated to the adult section. - The Daily Beast
The greeting’s first known appearance in print happened 200 years ago this week in a Connecticut newspaper, but its roots go back at least two centuries further, probably more. - BBC
The intensity of the workout was necessary to take her out of her head, so that she could write from a different place—“an embodied place, because writing is not just intellectual; it’s emotional connection, sensual connection,” she explained. “We exist in the world.” - The Atlantic
“The country’s premier showcase for independent film is also in a time of profound transition after decades of relative stability. The festival is … forging forward without its founder, Robert Redford, who died in September. Next year, it must find its footing in another mountain town, Boulder, Colorado.” - AP
Nielsen says streamers logged 55.1 billion minutes on streaming services on Christmas, breaking the previous high — set on Christmas in 2024 — by 3.9 billion minutes. That amounts to 54 percent of all TV use during the day, also an all-time high for streaming services. - The Hollywood Reporter
Because viewers give a “very different level of attention” to a movie at home versus in a theater, Netflix wants to push the action set pieces toward the front. He said there are behind-the-scenes discussions about reiterating “the plot three or four times in the dialogue” to account for people being on their phones....
“Netflix’s all-cash offer of $27.75 per share replaces its previous offer of $23.25 in cash and $4.50 in Netflix common stock per share. The sweetened offer comes as rival bidder Paramount continues pushing its own all-cash offer for all of Warner Discovery. The value of Netflix’s offer remains $72 billion.” - The Wall Street Journal (MSN)
"When this deal closes, we will own a theatrical distribution engine that is phenomenal and produces billions of dollars of theatrical revenue that we don’t want to put at risk. We will run that business largely like it is today, with 45-day windows." - The New York Times
“The Oscar field has included one international director for seven straight years, making it likely that dissident filmmaker Panahi, a vocal critic of Iran’s authoritarian regime, earns a nomination for his blistering movie about resistance.” - Los Angeles Times
Trot out the national anthem, the flag or a John Philip Sousa march, they believe, and it’s like a free exclamation mark to whatever point they’re trying to make: “Ha! See? The stars and stripes are on my side!” - San Francisco Chronicle
The oldest dance company in the US had been scheduled to perform at the DC venue as part of its centennial tour. The brief statement announcing the cancellation mentioned no reason. - The Daily Beast
OK, sure: Heated Rivalry Night “began as a single event that quickly sold out, leading to extra dates … and more than 100 multi-city pop-ups are planned over the next few months in places like Brooklyn, Washington, D.C., Chicago and London.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
That fiasco, during 2024-25, featured the firing of the dancers, loss of municipal funding, and a government-ordered overhaul of governance and employment practices. Now, with a new board, restored funding, and the search for a new executive director, DBDT is trying to rebuild its artistic work and public trust. - D Magazine (Dallas)
Last month, Kinesis Dance, rebranded earlier that year as Frequency Dance, abruptly shut down. Preceding that closure was a long series of financial irregularities, unpaid bills, and other troubles, including a 2023 break-in which involved serious destruction but no theft. - Boulder Reporting Lab
With period dress and steps learned from contemporary manuals (which include notation of the steps), historical dance societies in Britain gather in ballrooms to do The Triple Minor, the Duchess of Devonshire’s Reel, and the dance Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet did in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice adaptation, Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot. - The...
“The move not to produce this year is meant to allow the organization to continue to rethink its future after a period of radical change. Leadership is still deciding whether Williamstown will skip only this summer or move into producing the flagship festival on a biennial basis.” - The Washington Post (MSN)
“On TripAdvisor, one user warns: ‘Don’t waste your money!’ Another pleads: ‘Kill me now!’ And yet, since 1987, Perfect Crime has been running eight times a week. Every performance stars the same actress, Catherine Russell; in nearly four decades she has missed only four performances.” - The Times (UK)
“When an obscure play called The Kholops opened in St. Petersburg in 2024, many Russians raced to see it, fearful that the authorities would quickly shut (it) down. … Nearly two years later, the doors remain open and the seats packed for The Kholops, written in 1907 by Pyotr Gnedich.” - The New York...
“Helping stage managers and actors just shy of eligibility qualify for coverage through the Equity-League Health Fund—one of the strongest health plans in the country—is, I hope, a small but meaningful way to care for our collaborators and the larger theatre community.” - American Theatre
The touring troupe Quarantine was to perform its midday-to-midnight piece 12 Last Songs this weekend as part of the Under the Radar festival of experimental theater. Thursday afternoon the company announced that US visas had been “paused” for 10 of its 13 members, and Citizenship and Immigration Services won’t say why. - The Stage
That’s what Punchdrunk, the éminence grise of immersive companies, is doing at its southeast London headquarters. Lander 23 is an IRL multiplayer game in which teams of four audience members/players are split into two squads: "fields" who navigate an alien landscape and "drivers" who give them instructions on where to go. - The Guardian
Leider’s career arc was an unusual one. He helped turn Artforum into a go-to source for serious, no-nonsense art criticism, serving as its editor starting in 1962. Then, in 1971, Leider left the publication — and the eye of the mainstream art world in the US, becoming a professor first at UCal-Irvine and then in Israel....
“In 1978, Ms. Packer founded Shakespeare & Company with Kristin Linklater, a voice teacher; Dennis Krausnick, an actor, director and writer who later became Ms. Packer’s husband; and a group of other theater artists. An actress by training, Ms. Packer was the company’s artistic director until 2009.” - The New York Times
Toward the end of his life, the versatile Bennett Cerf — believing that growth was essential — acquired rival publishing house Knopf. A few years later, he arranged for Random House to become a subsidiary of the RCA Corporation, then an electronics and communications leviathan. This move, Cerf soon recognized, was a mistake. -...
Perhaps her “most significant contributions to the repertoire were the premieres ... Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis, an anti-Hitler allegory composed in the Theresienstadt concentration camp before Mr. Ullmann was murdered at Auschwitz, and Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.” - The New York Times
“ gave me an outlet that I would not have had if I'd gone on a path to be what I was meant to be, which is really just to be an intellectual. … It was a sink or swim. I had to develop an emotional side.” - NPR
Underwood was “a cast member of the former Nickelodeon children’s sketch comedy series All That,” and she had other credits to her name as well. She was 33. - Los Angeles Times
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The company is laying off 22 of its 284 administrative staffers, reducing pay for 35 of its top executives (including general director Peter Gelb and music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin), and dropping one production from next season’s schedule. - The Guardian
This isn’t great for U.S. audiences either - or the producers and promoters trying to bring international artists. “It’s an unbelievable mess, … and no one can provide an answer.”- The New York Times
One huge tell: If you listen to a few of “Rose’s” tracks, “you'll hear a telltale hiss. … That's a common trait of music generated on apps like Suno and Udio - partly because of the way they start with white noise and gradually refine it until it resembles music.” - BBC
But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. “AI music is here to stay, and rather than fighting it, we should understand its benefits as a tool for artists—either to amplify existing production processes or to introduce new ways of designing music.” - Fast Company
“Learning about the end of California College of the Arts was a sad day. And it’s in moments like these that we should rekindle the debate over what kind of city we want to be going forward. Simply put, San Francisco without artists is a dystopia.” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
Though the number is undoubtedly higher, "among the thousands of civilians confirmed dead are sculptor Mehdi Salahshour, filmmaker Javad Ganji, fashion designer and student Rubina Aminian, and hip-hop artist Soroush Soleimani.” - Art News
Following ferocious criticism from the art world in Belgium and internationally, Flemish culture minister Caroline Gennez has agreed not to put her plan to reorganize the system of museums in Flanders — a plan which includes the dismantling of Belgium’s oldest museum of contemporary art — on the government’s agenda just yet. - Belgian...
In response to the festival board’s earlier intervention to disinvite Palestinian-Australian author Randa Abdel-Fattah, more than 180 writers and speakers cancelled their appearances at the February-March event and half the board resigned. Now the remaining board members have quit and the festival has been called off. - The Guardian
“'The shared laughter in a crowded theater, the eager debrief after a musical, the heavy silence that hangs over all of us in a drama — these are moments that every New Yorker deserves,’ Mamdani said.” - The New York Times
“Chloé Zhao recovered from looking shellshocked to quote Paul Mescal, saying that making Hamnet made him realize that being an artist is about being vulnerable and being seen for who we are, not who we ought to be, and giving ourselves fully to the world.” - The New York Times
