On Tuesday, the Skydance-owned company said it would pay Warner shareholders an added “ticking fee” if its deal doesn’t go through by the end of the year — amounting to 25 cents per share, or a total of $650 million, for every quarter after Dec. 31. - AP News
Overhauling the Kennedy Center has become a fixation for Trump—and no detail is too small for the real-estate-developer-turned-president. - The Wall Street Journal
Marine Le Pen’s party is concocting plans to replace a vital, vibrant arts scene with a retrograde movement that would glorify the country’s past. - The Guardian
“The influential founder of France’s École Philippe Gaulier … taught the art of clowning for decades and his students included Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, Rachel Weisz and Geoffrey Rush.” - The Guardian
A new iron curtain now separates American dance and Russian dance, bringing an abrupt end to a rich dialogue that spanned centuries. Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, two crown jewels in the American repertoire, would not exist without Petipa’s original stagings; meanwhile, Russian ballet was bolstered by American influence. - The Atlantic
That Sunday, a ribbon-cutting ceremony will kick off two weeks of priority member access to the galleries, with general admission beginning May 4. - Los Angeles Times
“It has nothing to do with the name change. It is strictly dollars and cents, and the Kennedy Center’s inability to understand the economics of how opera works.” - Washington Post
“The Basic Income for the Arts initiative will provide €325 ($386) a week to 2,000 eligible artists based in the Republic in three-year cycles. ... The (pilot) scheme recouped more than its net cost of €72 million through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other welfare payments.” - The Guardian
“An international media outlet employing hundreds of foreign journalists with the stated mission of promoting civil liberties abroad was bound to be incompatible with an administration that was attacking the same liberties at home and had made xenophobic nationalism central to its political platform.” - The Point
“Trading financial gain for lasting impact, several older artists have donated the houses they bought decades ago to community land trusts, legal entities that can break the cycle of displacement by ensuring properties are handed down from one artist to another at affordable prices.” - The New York Times
Most of the World Service’s £400 million budget comes from the licence fee which funds the entire BBC, though the Foreign Office contributes a sizable amount, £137 million in the last year. BBC director general Tim Davie has just warned that the government must not delay further in deciding on Foreign Office funding. - The Guardian
The ensemble, founded in 1946, was believed to be the longest-running chamber orchestra in the US. While it has faced the same post-COVID financial problems that have plagued many performing-arts organizations, the PCO’s biggest difficulty has been recovering from the sudden death in 2023 of popular artistic director Yaacov Bergman. - Willamette Week (Portland)
Derrer — who came to The Dallas Opera in 2018 and then steered the company through COVID, raised $54.5 million and doubled the endowment, and commissioned and staged multiple new works — will take the helm at the COC in Toronto as of July 1. - CultureMap Dallas
“The Southbank Centre in London, which includes the Hayward Gallery, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Undercroft skatepark and was once voted ‘Britain's ugliest building’, has been heritage-listed. Completed along the River Thames in the 1960s, the post-war landmark has now been Grade II-listed by the Department for Culture Media and Sport.” - Dezeen
“The answer is that festivals in India are only partly about books. They are a ‘spectacle’ offering music, dance, handicraft sales and food. Even the T.rex of them all, the Jaipur literature festival (which attracted 400,000 visitors last month according to its marketing team), would almost certainly attract fewer people without these extras.” - The Guardian
“I like this construction of London and Manchester,” he tells me, at the Coliseum. “And I like the spirit of pioneering, of becoming an opera company in a city that previously hasn’t had a resident opera company.” - The Guardian
“In Speak, American tap dancers collaborate with their counterparts in kathak, a classical Indian percussive dance form. While these genres have been crossed before, rarely have the participants been such masters of their art.” - The New York Times
Through Hart’s teaching business, Plot Prose, she’s working on a proprietary piece of software that can “generate a book based on an outline in less than an hour, and costs between $80 and $250 a month.” - Gizmodo
New research published in the Australian Journal of Education this week found fewer students in high school and university were choosing to study the creative arts. At the same time, it found, dozens of tertiary courses were being slashed. - The Guardian
Campaign groups want a change to the victims and courts bill, which is currently making its way through parliament, to stop police from being able to present lyrics as evidence except when they are “literal, rather than figurative or fictional”. - The Guardian
Through Hart’s teaching business, Plot Prose, she’s working on a proprietary piece of software that can “generate a book based on an outline in less than an hour, and costs between $80 and $250 a month.” - Gizmodo
The immediate risk to employment may not be AI itself, but the way companies, seduced by its promise, overinvest before they understand what it can actually do. - The Atlantic
Art has inherent value, and public and private investment in the arts should not require a strong demand for continuous justification. The social benefits of the arts are self-evident, supported by extensive research and experienced by humanity since the dawn of time. - New England Foundation for the Arts
We already carry muscle memory: voting, organizing for fairness and equity, creating the beauty of art expressed in what we share between us — images, songs, movements, designs, or letters — shapes the will of the people and creates knowledges and visions of a fully manifested democracy. - GIA Arts
The (very) popular social media and community site will now require a facial scan or government ID scan for age verification. After an incident in October where a third-party vendor breach exposed thousands of government IDs, it’s possible that not every user will trust this plan. - The Verge
Yes, Soylent Green is people, and … so is Waymo? “The autonomous vehicle company uses remote workers in the Philippines to assist its self-driving cars, including those operating daily on Bay Area roads.” - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo)
Overhauling the Kennedy Center has become a fixation for Trump—and no detail is too small for the real-estate-developer-turned-president. - The Wall Street Journal
Marine Le Pen’s party is concocting plans to replace a vital, vibrant arts scene with a retrograde movement that would glorify the country’s past. - The Guardian
“The Basic Income for the Arts initiative will provide €325 ($386) a week to 2,000 eligible artists based in the Republic in three-year cycles. ... The (pilot) scheme recouped more than its net cost of €72 million through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other welfare payments.” - The Guardian
“Trading financial gain for lasting impact, several older artists have donated the houses they bought decades ago to community land trusts, legal entities that can break the cycle of displacement by ensuring properties are handed down from one artist to another at affordable prices.” - The New York Times
New research published in the Australian Journal of Education this week found fewer students in high school and university were choosing to study the creative arts. At the same time, it found, dozens of tertiary courses were being slashed. - The Guardian
One in every 10 employees in the arts, culture, and heritage had multiple jobs in 2025, compared with just 5.6% of all Canadian employees. In other words, the multiple job holding rate is 77% higher in the arts, culture, and heritage than for other workers. - Statistical Insights on the Arts
“It has nothing to do with the name change. It is strictly dollars and cents, and the Kennedy Center’s inability to understand the economics of how opera works.” - Washington Post
The ensemble, founded in 1946, was believed to be the longest-running chamber orchestra in the US. While it has faced the same post-COVID financial problems that have plagued many performing-arts organizations, the PCO’s biggest difficulty has been recovering from the sudden death in 2023 of popular artistic director Yaacov Bergman. - Willamette Week (Portland)
Derrer — who came to The Dallas Opera in 2018 and then steered the company through COVID, raised $54.5 million and doubled the endowment, and commissioned and staged multiple new works — will take the helm at the COC in Toronto as of July 1. - CultureMap Dallas
“I like this construction of London and Manchester,” he tells me, at the Coliseum. “And I like the spirit of pioneering, of becoming an opera company in a city that previously hasn’t had a resident opera company.” - The Guardian
Campaign groups want a change to the victims and courts bill, which is currently making its way through parliament, to stop police from being able to present lyrics as evidence except when they are “literal, rather than figurative or fictional”. - The Guardian
When men do join singing groups, they often avoid the tenor section. The tenor voice is “a cultivated sound”, says John Potter, author of a book on the subject. A man with no vocal training is more likely to have the range of a baritone (a high bass). - The Economist
That Sunday, a ribbon-cutting ceremony will kick off two weeks of priority member access to the galleries, with general admission beginning May 4. - Los Angeles Times
“The Southbank Centre in London, which includes the Hayward Gallery, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Undercroft skatepark and was once voted ‘Britain's ugliest building’, has been heritage-listed. Completed along the River Thames in the 1960s, the post-war landmark has now been Grade II-listed by the Department for Culture Media and Sport.” - Dezeen
Matthew Bogdanos, founder and chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit in the New York District Attorney’s office, has been awarded the Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History, which is usually given to curators or scholars and includes a $100,000 purse. - ARTnews
“Maggie Fairs, who was promoted to chief of staff last year by former director and CEO Sasha Suda, will leave the museum at the end of the month. CFO Valarie McDuffie has also resigned, with her last day this Friday. Previously, the museum parted ways with its marketing chief Paul Dien.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
Today, as architects seek to improve the sustainability of a sector that is responsible for more than a third of global carbon emissions, the concept of using rammed earth sourced from, or near, the grounds of a proposed building site is attracting attention. - The Guardian
The AI-supported “findings supported scholars who had suggested that both versions were studio paintings – produced in the artist’s workshop but not necessarily by him,” but surprised some art historians, who now wonder whether an original exists somewhere. - The Guardian (UK)
“The answer is that festivals in India are only partly about books. They are a ‘spectacle’ offering music, dance, handicraft sales and food. Even the T.rex of them all, the Jaipur literature festival (which attracted 400,000 visitors last month according to its marketing team), would almost certainly attract fewer people without these extras.” - The Guardian
How, against all odds, has City Lights managed to remain a vital symbol of literary dissent and free speech? How, after more than seventy years, has City Lights survived economic and industry changes? How, decade after decade, has it managed to respond to the forces that threaten to silence us? - LitHub
If most middle-class homes are devoid of book-- if you can sit in an airport departure lounge or train all day and not see anyone reading--then why, come winter, do more than 100 literature festivals bloom every year, even in the smallest and unlikeliest of towns? - The Guardian
The tech platform is launching Page Match, a tool that will allow readers to scan a page of a printed or e-book using their phone and continue listening to the audiobook version where they left off. - The Hollywood Reporter
In a sense, the decline of book reviews, like the decline of newspapers themselves, is a story about disaggregation. Newspapers used to bundle several functions together in a way that made them both useful and profitable. - The Atlantic
On Tuesday, the Skydance-owned company said it would pay Warner shareholders an added “ticking fee” if its deal doesn’t go through by the end of the year — amounting to 25 cents per share, or a total of $650 million, for every quarter after Dec. 31. - AP News
“An international media outlet employing hundreds of foreign journalists with the stated mission of promoting civil liberties abroad was bound to be incompatible with an administration that was attacking the same liberties at home and had made xenophobic nationalism central to its political platform.” - The Point
Most of the World Service’s £400 million budget comes from the licence fee which funds the entire BBC, though the Foreign Office contributes a sizable amount, £137 million in the last year. BBC director general Tim Davie has just warned that the government must not delay further in deciding on Foreign Office funding. -...
“Deakins – cinematographer to the Coen brothers, Martin Scorsese and Sam Mendes, whose work has earned him 14 Oscar nominations and two wins, five BAFTAs, a knighthood and a reputation for being the greatest practitioner of his craft alive – is struggling to explain just exactly what he does.” - The Guardian
The sides will be negotiating in a Hollywood far different from 2023. Production has slowed significantly industrywide, as many entertainment companies struggle to adjust to the streaming world. Work has dried up for many actors, writers and directors. At the same time, the rise of generative artificial intelligence has become more central. - The...
“Browsing Letterboxd, you find an eclectic range of tastes, tones and approaches to movie-watching, a buffet of high and low, mainstream and esoterica. … If Rotten Tomatoes has become a tool of Hollywood’s homogenizing marketing machinery, Letterboxd is something else: a cinephilic hive buzzing with authentic enthusiasm and heterogeneous tastes.” - The New York...
A new iron curtain now separates American dance and Russian dance, bringing an abrupt end to a rich dialogue that spanned centuries. Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, two crown jewels in the American repertoire, would not exist without Petipa’s original stagings; meanwhile, Russian ballet was bolstered by American influence. - The Atlantic
“In Speak, American tap dancers collaborate with their counterparts in kathak, a classical Indian percussive dance form. While these genres have been crossed before, rarely have the participants been such masters of their art.” - The New York Times
“The most decorated ice dance pair in U.S. figure skating history wants more than a team medal in Milan — they want the ice dance gold medal. ... But while they did so much heavy lifting for their team, their competition got extra rest.” - USA Today
The ambitious project was five years in the making and culled street dance resources from a wide-ranging array of sources spanning mediums. - Fjord Review
Amidst ongoing lawsuits between Flatley, creator of the Irish step-dancing spectacle, and Switzer Consulting, whom he contracted to manage the show’s touring operations, Switzer announced on Tuesday morning that it was canceling the Thursday event in Dublin, leading Flatley to rush to court for an emergency injunction. - Press Association (UK) (Yahoo!)
Daria L. Wallach, a retired financier and the chair of the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation’s board of directors, and her husband are the donors. - The New York Times
“These content creators are not just copycats; they are attempting and sometimes mastering the complicated dance moves and distinctive performances of shows they may never see live, let alone be cast in. Sharing the result with the world, they are making TikTok a theater of their own.” - The New York Times
Libby Howes, who was central to the group’s avant-garde breakthrough Rumstick Road, left the theatre during a psychotic breakdown. “For decades, Howes’s location has been a mystery; she has been an unquiet absence, one of the ghosts in the avant-garde’s machine.” - The New York Times
“Woodie, as artistic director and producer, understood and respected the sanctity of the director. … Woodie, even faced with the challenges of inequitable funding for New Federal Theatre, and sometimes no funding at all, always persevered and prevailed.” - American Theatre
At the halftime show for the Super Bowl, “the stage must be assembled in about eight minutes, using rolling carts equipped with pneumatic tires. The field … can hold only so much additional weight. After the 12-minute performance, the stage must be torn down quickly.” - The New York Times
“Today, (after almost four years in New York,) the musical is still packing in crowds, a feat for a show that isn’t a revival or a movie adaptation and lacks big stars or Tony wins. It’s ... one of only four new musicals since the pandemic to recoup their investments.” - Variety
"Encouraging audience enthusiasm while upholding basic theater etiquette has become a tricky balance, but attracting fans itching to sing along is also a badge of popularity. … Where people draw the line on what’s “too crazy” may be the animating question of our time.” - The Washington Post (Yahoo!)
“The influential founder of France’s École Philippe Gaulier … taught the art of clowning for decades and his students included Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, Rachel Weisz and Geoffrey Rush.” - The Guardian
“Scarlett Pavlovich filed a lawsuit against Gaiman and his wife, Amanda Palmer, in Wisconsin in February 2025, accusing Gaiman of multiple sexual assaults while she worked as the family’s nanny in 2022. She filed lawsuits against Palmer in Massachusetts and in New York on the same day she filed the Wisconsin action.” - AP
The man loves reading and writing, basically. “I love Joan Didion, and she once said she journals so that when she gets really old, she can pick up her books and find her way back to herself again.” - CBC
“The Hungarian pianist … was one of the finest interpreters of Liszt and Chopin in the second half of the 20th century. He also achieved renown as a sensitive and insightful conductor, eventually combining both roles to direct many of the world’s leading orchestras … from the keyboard.” - The Telegraph (UK) (Yahoo!)
Libby Howes came to New York in 1975 and fell in with The Wooster Group. Her work there thrilled viewers, and Helen Shaw was blown away just by old film of Howes performing. But in 1981, after a psychotic break, she disappeared. Shaw investigated what became of her. - The New York Times
The next Director of Development will lead all fundraising efforts for the Illinois Symphony Orchestra to strengthen the ISO’s visibility and supporter relationships.
Quantum Theatre seeks a visionary Artistic Director to build on an experimental legacy, shape ambitious programming, and lead Quantum into its next era of impact.
The next Chief Advancement Officer will lead the organization’s fundraising, institutional marketing, and external engagement efforts during a significant period of institutional growth and evolution.
The Executive Director serves as chief executive of the Louisville Orchestra and, with the Music Director and Board of Directors, is responsible for its success.
The Knights seek a Director of Artistic Operations to work with the Artistic Directors and Executive Director on high-level artistic planning and program implementation.
The Columbia Museum of Art (CMA), in Columbia, South Carolina, an AAM-accredited institution, seeks an Executive Director to build upon its 75-year legacy.
Managing Director opportunity at NYTB, leading growth, operations, partnerships, governance, and teams, delivering expansion, innovation, and compliance across the dance community.
Seattle Theatre Group (STG) is seeking an experienced, innovative Chief Marketing and Communications Officer (CMCO). The CMCO is a vital member of STG's senior leadership.
The AI-supported “findings supported scholars who had suggested that both versions were studio paintings – produced in the artist’s workshop but not necessarily by him,” but surprised some art historians, who now wonder whether an original exists somewhere. - The Guardian (UK)
Tabouret: “It’s not very French to change stuff, so I thought that interesting as well as brave and fresh. They specifically wanted figurative painting, which also isn’t very French.” But church authorities eventually gave her a lot of artistic freedom. - The Guardian (UK)
“Every night, I would sit in my room listening to recordings of Bach, then Horowitz and Ashkenazy, pretending to play along. It was pure escape, pure fantasy. I could hide inside the music. ... The Chaconne specifically was like an ancient key that slid into my heart.” - The Guardian (UK)
“Do you know what’s more tubular than snowboarding? Giant tubes of paint descending from the ceiling! More sweeping than curling? A beautiful recital of a poem by a man in a long coat! More thrilling than a hockey brawl? A dance-off between two competing clusters of contemporary dancers!” - Vulture
“I was left with a feeling of tremendous shame. Even after gathering the courage to speak up, I was ashamed that I was a victim, ashamed that I was unable to stop it. Ashamed that even after finally speaking up, I was disregarded, ignored, discarded.” - Toronto Star
“Judge Biery’s decision … is much more than dry judicial reasoning. It’s a passionate, erudite, at times mischievous piece of prose. … In fewer than 500 words, Judge Biery marshals literature, history, folk wisdom and Scripture to challenge the theory of executive power that has defined Trump’s second presidency.” - The New York Times
Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Literature, and composer Olga Neuwirth, who received the 2022 Grawemeyer Award, have created Monster’s Paradise — now premiering at the Hamburg Opera — with an Ubu-like President-King who looks very familiar and gets eaten by the monster Gorgonzilla. (Yes, there are also zombies and vampires.)...
“Executive Editor Matt Murray … said the Post will shutter its sports desk, while keeping some sports writers who will write feature stories. It will likewise close its Books section and suspend the signature podcast Post Reports. The international desk will shrink dramatically,” as will the Metro desk. - NPR
“Family members of the three men said they fear for their loved ones’ safety and are concerned the moves to solitary confinement are a form of retaliation for outspokenness about problems within the prison system.” - The Guardian (UK)
Trump wrote on Truth Social that “he would shut it down this summer, on July 4, arguing that a dramatic step was necessary to safeguard one of Washington’s most treasured cultural institutions.” - The New York Times
“Italy’s culture minister and the diocese of Rome have launched investigations after claims were made that an angel in a landmark church in Rome was restored in the likeness of the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.” - The Guardian (UK)
The “uniquely American” model of funding opera meant that the National Opera had to leave, thanks to “a new mandate set forth by the Kennedy Center that every performance break even through only ticket sales and corporate sponsorships.” - The New York Times
