Rather than construct an imagined past as a universal tradition, as with conventional monuments... contemporary artists understand ambivalence and impermanence as key conditions of resistance, whether in the form of ephemeral materials, representations that flit across binaries, or speculative propositions for the future that challenge linear readings of history. - Hyperallergic
Stuck at home in Palo Alto with two parents who teach in Stanford’s music department, Ezra Costanza created the drag character Obsidienne Obsurd, a genderless Chinese-American genderless drag musician with an exuberant wardrobe, makeup palette, and playlist. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
Gehry, who arrived in L.A. as an aimless teenager just after World War II and went on to become the most famous and one of the most influential architects in the world over a prolific six-decade career, died Friday at his home in Santa Monica following a brief respiratory illness. - Los Angeles Times
The suspicion that Americans are becoming more illiterate has long been irresistible to the educated class. In the present day, this happens to be objectively true. But across time and cultures, we hear the alarm of declinism. - The Atlantic
The sheer amount of structural steel – 95,000 tonnes in total – is obscene for a building that contains just 60 storeys in its 423-metre height, half the number of floors you might expect in such a colossus. It uses 60% more steel than the Empire State Building, which is taller and has more square footage....
Jane Raleigh: “There was definitely an overarching feeling of waiting for the shoe to drop. I was committed to staying until I was removed, (but) I did believe from the beginning that everyone would be fired at some point. … Basically every payday Friday was mass firings day.” - Forward
The researchers found a significant negative effect for fantastical content. Children who watched programs featuring impossible events tended to perform worse on attention and executive function tasks immediately afterward. - PsyPost
“French production and exhibition giant Pathé is looking to ‘re-launch’ its English-language film business with the appointment of FilmNation president of motion pictures Ben Browning as co-CEO of Pathé U.K.” - The Hollywood Reporter
Trump and McCrery had clashed over the president’s desire to keep increasing the size of the building, but it was McCrery’s firm’s small workforce and inability to hit deadlines that became the decisive factor in him leaving, one of the people said. - Washington Post
If you’re anything like me, you did not enjoy reading that paragraph. Everything about it puts me on alert: Something is wrong here; this text is not what it says it is. It’s one of them. - The New York Times
“We as booksellers would naturally and instinctively disdain it,” said James Daunt, but “maybe it's going to produce the next War and Peace. And if people want to read that book, AI-generated or not, we will be selling it — as long as it doesn't pretend to be something it isn't.” - BBC (Yahoo!)
Previous hosts of the Kennedy Center Honors have included Walter Cronkite, Stephen Colbert, Gloria Estefan and Queen Latifah. Trump will host this year, a first for a U.S. president. - NPR
The 36-year-old author of the multiple-Tony-nominated Slave Play and current creative director of the Williamstown Theater Festival was arrested at the airport in Okinawa on November 16 after customs officers found several doses’ worth of MDMA (Ecstasy) in his luggage. Harris has been in custody ever since. - The Guardian
“The Institute of Museum and Library Services is reinstating all grants that were previously terminated by the Trump administration. A short statement posted on the agency's website Wednesday reads, ‘this action supersedes any prior notices which may have been received related to grant termination.’” - NPR
It will be a mammoth task, and a necessary one. The 43-year-old Brutalist landmark in central London has never been renovated, and its physical plant is starting to literally crack up. What’s more, the Barbican is notorious for being confusing to get around in, and that will finally be addressed. - The Guardian
While next weekend’s classical programs are still scheduled, the orchestra’s Holiday Pops shows for the weekend before Christmas and its New Year’s Eve Gala have been called off. - San Antonio Current
The suspicion that Americans are becoming more illiterate has long been irresistible to the educated class. In the present day, this happens to be objectively true. But across time and cultures, we hear the alarm of declinism. - The Atlantic
The researchers found a significant negative effect for fantastical content. Children who watched programs featuring impossible events tended to perform worse on attention and executive function tasks immediately afterward. - PsyPost
Style, as I see it, is much more idiosyncratic and manifests in scientists who may practice in the same field and utilize similar methods, but who nonetheless differ in the way they conduct and produce their work. - Undark
Put simply: Once established institutions lost the privilege to control the public conversation, they acquired an obligation to participate within it, which, so far, they have mostly failed to do. - Conspicuous Cognition
If an AI system were sentient, then the alignment paradigm, whereby AI activities are circumscribed entirely by human goals, becomes untenable. It would be ethically impermissible to subject the interests of a sentient AI system to human-defined goals. - 3 Quarks Daily
Today the conditions for apocalypticism—gaping inequality, pandemics, rapid technological development—are amply present. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that, over the past several years, a number of scholars and political figures have warned of a coming collapse, by which they tend to mean the destruction of the basic elements of society. - The Atlantic (MSN)
Previous hosts of the Kennedy Center Honors have included Walter Cronkite, Stephen Colbert, Gloria Estefan and Queen Latifah. Trump will host this year, a first for a U.S. president. - NPR
“The Institute of Museum and Library Services is reinstating all grants that were previously terminated by the Trump administration. A short statement posted on the agency's website Wednesday reads, ‘this action supersedes any prior notices which may have been received related to grant termination.’” - NPR
It will be a mammoth task, and a necessary one. The 43-year-old Brutalist landmark in central London has never been renovated, and its physical plant is starting to literally crack up. What’s more, the Barbican is notorious for being confusing to get around in, and that will finally be addressed. - The Guardian
The now-former vice president of education and programs at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center is suing the institution and its CEO, Perri Irmer, alleging misuse of public funds, harassment and retaliation. - WBEZ (Chicago)
Stuck at home in Palo Alto with two parents who teach in Stanford’s music department, Ezra Costanza created the drag character Obsidienne Obsurd, a genderless Chinese-American genderless drag musician with an exuberant wardrobe, makeup palette, and playlist. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
While next weekend’s classical programs are still scheduled, the orchestra’s Holiday Pops shows for the weekend before Christmas and its New Year’s Eve Gala have been called off. - San Antonio Current
A soloist was forced to carry her 1782 Giovanni Battista Guadagnini violin in her arms through the Helsinki airport security and onto a flight to Germany after Lufthansa refused to let her bring the case as hand luggage. - The Daily Beast
The conductor joined the company back in 1982 and helped build it into an impressive operation for a city of Sarasota’s size and a company known for having produced every opera Verdi wrote. When DeRenzi departs next May, general director Richard Russell will take on artistic leadership as well. - Observer (Sarasota)
Rather than construct an imagined past as a universal tradition, as with conventional monuments... contemporary artists understand ambivalence and impermanence as key conditions of resistance, whether in the form of ephemeral materials, representations that flit across binaries, or speculative propositions for the future that challenge linear readings of history. - Hyperallergic
The sheer amount of structural steel – 95,000 tonnes in total – is obscene for a building that contains just 60 storeys in its 423-metre height, half the number of floors you might expect in such a colossus. It uses 60% more steel than the Empire State Building, which is taller and has more...
Trump and McCrery had clashed over the president’s desire to keep increasing the size of the building, but it was McCrery’s firm’s small workforce and inability to hit deadlines that became the decisive factor in him leaving, one of the people said. - Washington Post
Well, Pantone is calling it “Cloud Dancer” and describing it with a lot of verbiage that strains credibility, but yes, it is white. As reporter Vittoria Benzine observes, “Maybe this is a good moment to note that white isn’t the absence of color, but the simultaneous presence of all hues.” - Artnet
If you’re anything like me, you did not enjoy reading that paragraph. Everything about it puts me on alert: Something is wrong here; this text is not what it says it is. It’s one of them. - The New York Times
“We as booksellers would naturally and instinctively disdain it,” said James Daunt, but “maybe it's going to produce the next War and Peace. And if people want to read that book, AI-generated or not, we will be selling it — as long as it doesn't pretend to be something it isn't.” - BBC (Yahoo!)
Researchers studied Taylor Swift’s voice as a way of exploring a phenomenon called “second-dialect acquisition,” or the way people learn a new style of speaking. Moving from place to place is the most obvious circumstance that might cause someone’s accent to change, but people’s voices can also evolve when they enter into new relationships. - The...
The State Library of Victoria in Melbourne is Australia’s busiest, yet a restructuring is eliminating 39 jobs — including reducing the number of public-facing reference librarians by 60%. Meanwhile the SLV has worked on “digital experiences” like a rotating 3D model of legendary outlaw Ned Kelly’s helmet. - The Guardian
Oddly enough, the collection —well, the cuneiform clay tablets, not the papyrus — has come down to us today precisely because the Babylonians and Medes conquered and down Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, in 612 BC. - Artnet
I first visited the Northern Arapaho people on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in 1999. At that time, there were hundreds of speakers of the Arapaho language. Today, there are less than 100, and all are over the age of 70. - The Conversation
“French production and exhibition giant Pathé is looking to ‘re-launch’ its English-language film business with the appointment of FilmNation president of motion pictures Ben Browning as co-CEO of Pathé U.K.” - The Hollywood Reporter
“The deal has a total enterprise value (including debt) of approximately $82.7 billion, with an equity value of $72 billion, the companies said. The announcement … came after a weeks-long bidding war that pitted the streaming giant against David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance and Comcast.” - Variety
Bollywood, based in Bombay/Mumbai and producing movies in Hindi, has always been the center of India’s cinematic universe. Yet there are centers of filmmaking in other Indian languages based in other state capitals. One of those centers — Tollywood, which produces Telugu-language movies in Hyderabad — has been enjoying a big run of successes....
Both restrictions are part of an accelerating clampdown on foreign tech platforms: In the case of FaceTime, Russian authorities allege it is being used for criminal activity, while Roblox was accused of distributing extremist materials and "LGBT propaganda." - CBC
As more shows switch to a weekly release schedule, it gives viewers a chance to watch the episodes as they become available and take part in the same cultural moment, but experts suggest what's happening is more of a happy middle ground between appointment viewing and binge watching. - CBC
“It has become increasingly clear, through media reporting and otherwise, that WBD appears to have abandoned the semblance and reality of a fair transaction process, thereby abdicating its duties to stockholders, and embarked on a myopic process with a predetermined outcome that favors a single bidder. - Deadline
Jane Raleigh: “There was definitely an overarching feeling of waiting for the shoe to drop. I was committed to staying until I was removed, (but) I did believe from the beginning that everyone would be fired at some point. … Basically every payday Friday was mass firings day.” - Forward
Mack, who did two stints as a principal dancer with the company (and got a master’s degree in-between), says her vision is to balance between Alvin Ailey’s own “powerful, visceral” choreography and new pieces by Fredrick Earl Mosley, Matthew Neenan, Jamar Roberts, and Urban Bush Women founder Jawole Willa Jo Zollar. - NPR
“As with other artistic attempts to track the mind more accurately — like the stream-of-consciousness of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce — O’Connor’s coexistence-of-everything choreography can appear off-putting and abstruse. But O’Connor isn’t trying to be difficult, he said.” - The New York Times
August Bournonville directed the company in the mid-19th century, and his works and style became thoroughly identified with the institution. Yet for some years the RDB turned away from Bournonville toward contemporary ballet; new artistic director Amy Watson is bringing his works and style back to the company’s heart. - The New York Times
“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
“The (Times) has been publishing reviews by a number of writers since predecessor Jesse Green was reassigned earlier this year. That list notably did not include Shaw, who joins the Times after a stint as theatre critic for The New Yorker, and a tenure as chief theatre critic at New York magazine prior.” - Playbill
The property was born in the French capital, first as a play, then as a hit film (followed later by the big US remake). But the American musical version had flopped in France — until the director of the Théâtre du Châtelet, Olivier Py, took it on. - The New York Times
Company management expects to reduce its base expenses by £2.8 million ($3.7 million) annually with layoffs as well as pay cuts for some remaining staffers. - The Stage (UK)
Erik Piepenburg: “This year at least six theater productions have used “f*****” in their titles. … Why is a slur that a stranger hurled at me now waving hello from my playbill?” On the other hand, famously gay Black playwright Jeremy O. Harris told Piepenburg to stop pearl-clutching. - The New York Times
“We wrote something, you know, with very open hearts and no political agenda. We just wanted to tell this amazing story, and look what has happened.” - NPR
Gehry, who arrived in L.A. as an aimless teenager just after World War II and went on to become the most famous and one of the most influential architects in the world over a prolific six-decade career, died Friday at his home in Santa Monica following a brief respiratory illness. - Los Angeles Times
The 36-year-old author of the multiple-Tony-nominated Slave Play and current creative director of the Williamstown Theater Festival was arrested at the airport in Okinawa on November 16 after customs officers found several doses’ worth of MDMA (Ecstasy) in his luggage. Harris has been in custody ever since. - The Guardian
On Monday, while in New York to accept three Gotham Awards for his latest film, It Was Just an Accident, Panahi was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for “propaganda activity against the state.” Nevertheless, he said today, he’ll return to Iran after his current Oscar campaign wraps up next spring. - AP
Toni Pierce-Sands, a featured soloist in some of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s most iconic suites and a co-founder of celebrated Twin Cities company TU Dance, died Tuesday in Minneapolis. She was 63 and had been battling cancer. - The Star-Tribune
June Squibb made her Broadway debut in the Ethel Merman-led production of “Gypsy” as a replacement for one of the strippers. What would she have said if someone had told her back then that she’d eventually get a starring role on Broadway, but that it wouldn’t happen for another 65 years? - Los Angeles...
While he called the reporting of the allegations “unfair,” Adjaye didn’t address directly the substance of the charges (which he denied when the first reports came out). Rather, he spoke about the effect the accusations had on him and what he sees as the media’s motives in reporting the story. - Dezeen
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Hollywood. “At one point in the early 1990s, Stoppard earned $500,000 for a five-week stretch polishing various projects for Universal Pictures. … He seemed to have a particular fondness for dog movies, contributing to both Beethoven and 102 Dalmatians.” - The New York Times
“Based on the available evidence, the skills that future graduates will most need in the AI era—creative thinking, the capacity to learn new things, flexible modes of analysis—are precisely those that are likely to be eroded by inserting AI into the educational process.” - The Atlantic
"Playing an instrument well is phenomenally difficult. It takes a lifetime of arduous work and can become all-consuming, making it easy to forget that technical mastery is a means to an expressive end, not the goal. … In and of itself, it is uninteresting.” - The New York Times
Rooney says that “UK legislation may mean she cannot be paid royalties by her British publisher or the BBC because it could leave both at risk of being accused of funding terrorism.” The Irish writer has said that she intends her royalties to support the group Palestine Action. - BBC
“One of a select band of writers from any discipline to earn his own adjective – ‘Stoppardian’ – in the Oxford English Dictionary, he delighted in the most improbable juxtapositions.” He also shared a co-writing Oscar for Shakespeare in Love. - The Guardian (UK)
“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)
