Good Morning,
Governments spent a generation backing out of culture. Yesterday’s stories suggest they’re backing back in.
Scotland is in front. It will pilot a guaranteed minimum income for 2,000 artists modeled on Ireland’s, The Herald reports, and on the same day announced a sixth national performing company, this one for traditional music. California is using the tax code: a credit for newsrooms that hire journalists, per NiemanLab, and a fix to the film credit that studios said had been gutted, per Variety.
Then there’s the other door. The Kennedy Center will remove a major outdoor sculpture targeted after the Trump takeover, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times. Hong Kong’s independent bookstores are being squeezed under the national security law, AP reports. Patronage and editing are the same power exercised in different moods.
Meanwhile, where the state stays out, the market decides. Philadelphia’s 200-year-old Academy of Natural Sciences will close its museum this month, 6ABC reports, and Ivan Hewett argues in The Telegraph that Britain’s working class is being priced out of making art at all — and that a class-conscious backlash is forming.
And in Japan, thousands of volunteers are hauling Hirosaki Castle’s tower back to its foundation by rope, centimeter by centimeter, per AFP. Some infrastructure you rebuild by hand.
All of our stories below.