Here are this week’s AJ story highlights: I’ve written a post building off a research project I’ve been working on to map the landscape of issues in AI and the arts (Diacritical). Elsewhere: Gigantic sums moved through the culture sector this week, though they rarely settled in the pockets of actual artists. While a Gustav Klimt portrait commanded the second-highest auction price in history at $236.4 million (Washington Post) and media behemoths Netflix, Paramount, and Comcast circled to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (The New York Times), the ground level looks far more precarious. New data confirms the persistent financial instability of the American artist (NPR) , while the BBC faces a $1 billion licensing shortfall (The Guardian).
Institutional governance is also under a microscope. The Kennedy Center faces a Senate inquiry into alleged “self-dealing” and favoritism (The Washington Post) , and the Louvre’s president is battling mismanagement claims just as the museum shuttered a gallery over structural fears (The New York Times).
Finally, the AI debate shifted from theoretical to tangible: Disney is exploring AI for user-generated content (NPR), even as new research suggests students learn significantly less when using the technology (The Conversation).
All of the stories we collected, below:
