Today’s AJ Highlights: At The TK Center, the cultural exodus continues as the Martha Graham Dance Company becomes the latest major troupe to cancel performances, citing no specific reason for the withdrawal (The Daily Beast ). This comes as the National Endowment for the Humanities has announced a defiant $71 million in new grants, including nearly $40 million for classical humanities institutes often promoted as conservative counterweights to liberal-dominated higher education (The New York Times; The Art Newspaper ).
Matt Damon says that Netflix now encourages writers to restate plots multiple times in dialogue simply because viewers are too distracted by their phones to follow along (Variety ). This erosion of focus is a core mechanism of the modern attention economy, which continues to hijack and monetize consumer attention through increasingly addictive channels (The Observer ).
Internationally, the lines between art and advocacy are hardening. South Africa’s culture minister has pulled a Palestinian-themed exhibition from the Venice Biennale (Hyperallergic ), and conductor Zubin Mehta has cancelled all performances in Israel to protest policies toward Palestinians (Moto Perpetuo ). In St. Petersburg, a play called The Kholops remains a packed sensation, surviving nearly two years of Russian censorship fears (The New York Times ).
Finally, we note the passing of theater pioneer Tina Packer (The New York Times ) and a declaration from author Julian Barnes that his latest book will be his last (The Telegraph (UK) (Yahoo!) ).
All our stories below.
