Katie Shepherd had wanted to be a balloon handler in the parade since grade school — since, believe it or not, she watched on TV the mess of 1997, when gale-force gusts wrought havoc on the balloons. In 2021 (and in calmer weather), Shepherd finally got her chance. - Slate (MSN)
The 28-member group includes curators, art dealers, journalists, and arts and nonprofit administrators. It ranges from Elizabeth Alexander, the president of the Mellon Foundation, which sits on an endowment of $7.7 billion, to Hannah Traore, who launched a 3,000-square-foot gallery on the Lower East Side not four years ago. - ARTnews
Carl Rollyson: “After writing three biographies of Sylvia Plath, what more could I possibly say about her suicide? Yet … in Plath’s case, (there are) very different circumstances that separate her suicide attempt in 1953 from her second, fatal one nearly a decade later.” - The Hedgehog Review
It’s no secret, too, that the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is the orchestras’ orchestra; the ensemble that makes hardened pros go wobbly at the knees, and sends critics spiralling towards Pseud’s Corner. - The Spectator
How big a threat is AI to quality children’s publishing, and does it also threaten children’s learning? In a sense, my questions—not all of which are answerable—boil down to this: What makes a good children’s book, and how much does it matter if a children’s book is good? - Mother Jones
A study by the Singapore Management University found that frequent interruptions to check our devices lead to more attention and memory lapses. Unlike total screen time, the frequency of smartphone checks is a much stronger predictor of daily cognitive failures. - Washington Post
“As AI technologies proliferate and become an increasingly inescapable fact of modern life, choreographers are not only experimenting with AI tools, but they’re also creating works that grapple with the potential repercussions of artificial intelligence and the existential questions it raises.” - Dance Magazine
A group of more than 130 musicians played in unison at Sherwood Phoenix piano shop in Mansfield on Saturday. Organisers believe the performance surpassed a previous UK record for the most pianos played at once, but said there was no "official" attempt made to verify their musical effort. - BBC
The study provides evidence that large language models, such as ChatGPT, are mathematically constrained to a level of creativity comparable to an amateur human. - Psypost
The study mapped neural connections and how they evolve during our lives. This revealed five broad phases, split up by four pivotal “turning points” in which brain organisation moves on to a different trajectory, at around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83 years. - The Guardian
When they were called to Parliament and questioned by the House of Commons Media Culture and Sport Committee on Monday, they minimized the allegations of bias at the network which they had spent the past few weeks trumpeting. - Prospect (UK)
The structure itself is tilted toward collectors, dealers, and institutions. It is not designed to support artists. But artists who understand the language of the market can sometimes turn that knowledge into a form of protection. - Hyperallergic
Artists and songwriters, according to the companies, “will have full control over whether and how their names, images, likenesses, voices, and compositions are used in new AI-generated music”. - Music Business Worldwide
If no one has heard of the Tampa-based AAC, this is because it was founded only in July of this year. The press release is so poorly edited that it repeats the same quote by executive director Jenni Parido twice. - Artnet
“The British Theatre Consortium report, titled ‘British Theatre Before & After Covid’, examines 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, and 2023, the first full year after theatres reopened. It draws on anonymised data from 139 theatres across the UK.” - WhatsOnStage (UK)
“That has become our key bit of outreach,” says Ruben Valenzuela, director of the Bach Collegium San Diego. And with no complete Spanish version available, Valenzuela and Tijuana-based choral conductor Mario Montenegro translated the libretto themselves. - Early Music America
“The abrupt firing earlier this month of a senior fact-checker and New Yorker union member, Jasper Lo, has set off a swell of outrage among magazine staffers and contributors, including some of the most famous writers in America.” - The Washington Post (MSN)
“Months before top Republicans forced out the widely respected leader of the Alamo’s $500 million redevelopment for being too ‘woke,’ a close political aide to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick undertook a literal rewrite of the heritage site’s three-hundred-year history.” - Texas Monthly
“San Antonio’s Scottish Rite fraternal order has given the Philharmonic until Friday to vacate the group’s historic downtown building. … While the letter states the Philharmonic can no longer ‘use or occupy’ the building after this Friday, it does allow the orchestra to rent the auditorium for scheduled concerts.” - San Antonio Current
“Latasha Harling, 43, was arrested in July and charged with theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, and related crimes about six months after she quietly resigned from her job as the chief people and diversity officer for the museum.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
A study by the Singapore Management University found that frequent interruptions to check our devices lead to more attention and memory lapses. Unlike total screen time, the frequency of smartphone checks is a much stronger predictor of daily cognitive failures. - Washington Post
The study provides evidence that large language models, such as ChatGPT, are mathematically constrained to a level of creativity comparable to an amateur human. - Psypost
The study mapped neural connections and how they evolve during our lives. This revealed five broad phases, split up by four pivotal “turning points” in which brain organisation moves on to a different trajectory, at around the ages of nine, 32, 66 and 83 years. - The Guardian
You never feel as if you’re getting warmer; rather, you go from cold to hot, seemingly in an instant. Or, as the neuropsychologist Donald Hebb, known for his work building neurobiological models of learning, wrote in the 1940s, sometimes “learning occurs as a single jump, an all-or-none affair.” - Quanta
If you’re more likely to read something written by AI than by a human on the internet, is it only a matter of time before human writing becomes obsolete? Or is this simply another technological development that humans will adapt to? - The Conversation
Machine intelligence meets or surpasses humanlike abilities in many areas—but being an embodied human is complex, and our grasp of intelligence has grown significantly. - Scientific American
Katie Shepherd had wanted to be a balloon handler in the parade since grade school — since, believe it or not, she watched on TV the mess of 1997, when gale-force gusts wrought havoc on the balloons. In 2021 (and in calmer weather), Shepherd finally got her chance. - Slate (MSN)
The 28-member group includes curators, art dealers, journalists, and arts and nonprofit administrators. It ranges from Elizabeth Alexander, the president of the Mellon Foundation, which sits on an endowment of $7.7 billion, to Hannah Traore, who launched a 3,000-square-foot gallery on the Lower East Side not four years ago. - ARTnews
“Months before top Republicans forced out the widely respected leader of the Alamo’s $500 million redevelopment for being too ‘woke,’ a close political aide to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick undertook a literal rewrite of the heritage site’s three-hundred-year history.” - Texas Monthly
“A U.S. District Court (in Rhode Island) ruled in favor of 21 state attorneys general suing Donald Trump over the dismantling of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and several other small federal agencies.” - Book Riot
We "blame everything wrong with education on generative AI rather than acknowledge deep and justifiable concerns we have had for a while. Course Hero, Chegg and other providers had industrialized academic dishonesty before ChatGPT was launched." - InsideHigherEd
It’s no secret, too, that the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra is the orchestras’ orchestra; the ensemble that makes hardened pros go wobbly at the knees, and sends critics spiralling towards Pseud’s Corner. - The Spectator
A group of more than 130 musicians played in unison at Sherwood Phoenix piano shop in Mansfield on Saturday. Organisers believe the performance surpassed a previous UK record for the most pianos played at once, but said there was no "official" attempt made to verify their musical effort. - BBC
Artists and songwriters, according to the companies, “will have full control over whether and how their names, images, likenesses, voices, and compositions are used in new AI-generated music”. - Music Business Worldwide
“That has become our key bit of outreach,” says Ruben Valenzuela, director of the Bach Collegium San Diego. And with no complete Spanish version available, Valenzuela and Tijuana-based choral conductor Mario Montenegro translated the libretto themselves. - Early Music America
“San Antonio’s Scottish Rite fraternal order has given the Philharmonic until Friday to vacate the group’s historic downtown building. … While the letter states the Philharmonic can no longer ‘use or occupy’ the building after this Friday, it does allow the orchestra to rent the auditorium for scheduled concerts.” - San Antonio Current
“For John Holiday, being true to himself means weaving together the loose strands of opera, gospel, R&B, jazz and pop that make up his musical life and inheritance.” - The New York Times
The structure itself is tilted toward collectors, dealers, and institutions. It is not designed to support artists. But artists who understand the language of the market can sometimes turn that knowledge into a form of protection. - Hyperallergic
If no one has heard of the Tampa-based AAC, this is because it was founded only in July of this year. The press release is so poorly edited that it repeats the same quote by executive director Jenni Parido twice. - Artnet
“Latasha Harling, 43, was arrested in July and charged with theft by unlawful taking, theft by deception, and related crimes about six months after she quietly resigned from her job as the chief people and diversity officer for the museum.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
“After 45 years, 36 of them at the Times, art critic Christopher Knight is retiring from daily journalism. His final day is Nov. 28. In 2020, Knight won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Art Journalism from the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation.” - Los Angeles...
In the rush to map cultural issues like gender disparity onto high-level financial trading, we’re forgetting that this has nothing to do with gender at all, and even less to do with art. - Artnet
The symbol of love is now a flash point in India’s historical antagonism between Hindus and minority Muslims, a battle between historians — a battle over truth, identity and power. - Washington Post
How big a threat is AI to quality children’s publishing, and does it also threaten children’s learning? In a sense, my questions—not all of which are answerable—boil down to this: What makes a good children’s book, and how much does it matter if a children’s book is good? - Mother Jones
“The abrupt firing earlier this month of a senior fact-checker and New Yorker union member, Jasper Lo, has set off a swell of outrage among magazine staffers and contributors, including some of the most famous writers in America.” - The Washington Post (MSN)
Publishing, argues Isen, was once an industry that offered room for experimentation and long bets; now it’s haunted by the tyranny of short-term judgment. - The Walrus
Determining what the nation did and did not read was the through line of Malcolm Cowley’s career. He was a great discoverer and nurturer of talent: Jack Kerouac, John Cheever, and Ken Kesey were among the writers he championed, and, of the critics he commissioned to produce reviews at The New Republic. - The New Yorker
When they were called to Parliament and questioned by the House of Commons Media Culture and Sport Committee on Monday, they minimized the allegations of bias at the network which they had spent the past few weeks trumpeting. - Prospect (UK)
“The unraveling of McGraw’s (Merit Street Media) was a gut punch for the celebrity therapist who has assiduously built a reputation" — and riches — "as one of the most trusted voices on television. But his fortunes faded amid a dying market for syndicated TV and clashes with a distributor and partner.” - Los...
KYUK, which broadcasts in English and indigenous language Yugtun to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta on Alaska’s west coast, transmitted crucial evacuation and rescue information when the remnants of a typhoon hit the area last month. The station lost 70% of its budget when Congress defunded public radio this past summer. - Reveal
Not only is it the biggest opening ever for a Broadway musical adaptation, unseating the record set by the first film’s $112 million launch, it’s also the second biggest debut of the year behind “A Minecraft Movie’s” $162 million. - APNews
When was the last time you saw incredible CGI or other visual effects? Probably a tougher question to answer. That’s because VFX, like any other filmmaking tool, is invisible when done well. - Washington Post
“By her own admission, Zhao isn’t much of a Shakespeare connoisseur,” but she has thoughts on Hamlet, and Hamnet. “Grief keeps you in the past, but time is pulling you forward.” - Washington Post (MSN)
“As AI technologies proliferate and become an increasingly inescapable fact of modern life, choreographers are not only experimenting with AI tools, but they’re also creating works that grapple with the potential repercussions of artificial intelligence and the existential questions it raises.” - Dance Magazine
Toronto-based Ballet Jörgen had just begun its annual December tour of Ontario with the holiday favorite when the rental truck containing its sets and backdrops was stolen around 3:30 am Monday morning. - CBC
“Biosensors are devices designed to measure real-time processes and responses within the body, like a person’s heart rate, blood oxygen level, and sleep quality. … Here are a few ways biosensors have been used to expand research in dance medicine.” - Dance Magazine
As VR becomes more widespread, a growing number of dance artists and companies are exploring—and, in some cases, redefining—what this technology can do. - Dance Magazine
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
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
“The British Theatre Consortium report, titled ‘British Theatre Before & After Covid’, examines 2019, the last full year before the pandemic, and 2023, the first full year after theatres reopened. It draws on anonymised data from 139 theatres across the UK.” - WhatsOnStage (UK)
The musical, based on a 2012 documentary about a Florida couple seeking to build a palatial home but stymied by an economic downturn, is yet another high-profile financial failure for Broadway: The show cost up to $22.5 million to capitalize. - The New York Times
The musical, starring Kristin Chenoweth (in her return to Broadway after ten years) and featuring Stephen Schwartz’s first Broadway score since Wicked, began previews in October and officially opened two weeks ago. The production was expected to run into next spring but, after negative reviews, will close on Jan. 4. - Entertainment Weekly
Pam MacKinnon will step down as artistic director of San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) at the close of the 2025-2026 season, ending an eight-year tenure with the company. MacKinnon was the theatre's fourth leader, joining in 2018. - Playbill
“Fatal accidents inside the Globe of Death — a popular circus stunt in which multiple motorcyclists ride around inside a globe-shaped metal cage in tight formations — are rare, despite the stunt’s death-defying appearance.” - The New York Times
“While it was not immediately clear what they were protesting, eyewitnesses said one of them had denounced David H. Koch, the billionaire industrialist, a polarizing figure who poured much of his fortune into right-wing causes and a campaign to discredit the idea of climate change.” - The New York Times
Carl Rollyson: “After writing three biographies of Sylvia Plath, what more could I possibly say about her suicide? Yet … in Plath’s case, (there are) very different circumstances that separate her suicide attempt in 1953 from her second, fatal one nearly a decade later.” - The Hedgehog Review
“Thomas King, … the writer of books including 2003's The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative and 2012's The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, says he is reeling from recent news that he has no Cherokee ancestry.” - CBC
Vogel and her husband, a postal clerk, "bought thousands of works from future art stars like Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd, stashing them in their cramped one-bedroom New York apartment and eventually handing over the entire collection to the National Gallery of Art.” - The New York Times
His powerful voice, authoritative presence and incisive musicianship led him to a major international career including the Met, Covent Garden, and La Scala. He had a 23-year relationship with the Bayreuth Festival, where he took the role of Wotan/the Wanderer in the landmark 1976 Chéreau/Boulez production of the Ring cycle. - Moto Perpetuo
“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
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
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.
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
The Executive and Artistic Director will provide leadership and have overall responsibility for programming, fundraising, external relations, mission fulfillment, and the financial performance of The Soraya.
“Pick a film from either current releases or a curated archive, select a drink package for an extra $50 each, choose a 12-13 course gourmet meal off a seasonal menu for another $100 a head, and you have a ritzy night at the movies.” - The Guardian (UK)
A security guard (now suspended from his job) was not at his post. “That allowed the two protesters to walk on a narrow ledge along the wall of the left side of the orchestra pit and make their way on to the stage.” - The New York Times
“Many participants reported that their work had already been used without their permission to train large language models, and more than a third (39%) said their income had fallen as a result of generative AI. A large majority also expected their earnings to decline further.” - The Guardian (UK)
“Senate Democrats are investigating the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts over its spending practices and booking deals involving political allies, accusing its leadership, installed by President Donald Trump, of ‘self-dealing, favoritism, and waste’ amid programming shifts and plummeting ticket sales.’” - The Washington Post (MSN)
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
“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
“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)
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
“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
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)
“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
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...
