But with the boom came backlash: the suspicion that biennales were above all an excuse for a tote-bag-wearing international art crowd to descend on a city for a few weeks, leaving behind a large carbon footprint but little meaningful engagement with the local population. - The Guardian
Shareholders of Warner Bros. Discovery voted to sell the company to David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance for $31 a share in cash at a special virtual meeting Wednesday morning. The approval was a key hurdle in advancing the deal. - Deadline
“One of the questions I always have is whether Willy is having flashbacks, or if he has some kind of dementia. … Miller said very clearly that they’re not flashbacks — Willie is not revisiting his past, but the past and the present absolutely exist simultaneously. He called them concurrences.” - TheaterMania
Tech companies with billion-dollar valuations are extracting value from copyrighted music on the internet and selling it as a service: making music-making easier and, they claim, more democratic. But creatives have always found ways to democratize and innovate music and art, long before tech companies tried to bite their flow. - Music Radar
The discovery of this “problem-finding” creative process was a seminal moment in creativity research. In the decades since, countless researchers have shown that many of the most meaningful forms of real-world creativity and invention depend less on solving well-defined problems than on figuring out what the problem is in the first place. - Psychology Today
This year’s list is organized by the “No Music for Genocide” initiative, which also calls on anti-Israel artists to have their music geo-blocked inside Israel. - Times of Israel
His contract, which was to expire in summer 2027, has been extended through the 2031-32 season, and the Venezuelan-born conductor’s title is now Music and Artistic Director. (He is also music director of the San Diego Symphony.) - Gramophone
Named Ace, the robotic system developed by Sony AI, won three out of five matches against elite players, but lost the two it played against professionals, clawing back only one game in the seven contests. - The Guardian
“I believe AI can simultaneously solve the problem of not knowing what to read and the difficulty of maintaining consistent reading habits.” Subscription-based reading platform Millie’s Library is taking things a step further by integrating a conversational AI chatbot into its platform. - Korea Joongang Daily
“Young Adult” fiction, despite its name, is aimed at teenagers; the "New Adult” category covers actual young adults, 18 to 24 or so. Four of the Big Five US publishers have now launched imprints dedicated to that audience. The subject matter is mostly romance, though publishers hope to expand beyond that. - Publishers Weekly
V&A East’s boxy, beige facade, pierced by pointed shards of window, was concocted by Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey and has received mixed reviews. Its futuristic appeal does, however, help establish a distinct identity from that of the original V&A in west London—an ornate Victorian shrine to the history of design and the decorative arts. - Artnet
The initial court ruling "was subsequently appealed, overturned and referred on several occasions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), resulting in a three-decade long legal battle over the regulation of sampling in Europe." -NME
Days after layoffs at Artnet and Artsy shook the art world, investor and owner Andrew E. Wolff has offered his clearest explanation yet for the cuts, framing them as part of a broader consolidation strategy already underway at the two companies. - ARTnews
Kamel Daoud, who lives in France, said that a court in Oran fined him five million Algerian dinars ($38,000) and sentenced him to three years' imprisonment because his novel Houris, which won the Prix Goncourt in 2024, makes public mention — a crime under current Algerian law — of the country’s 1992-2002 civil war. - AP
“He was widely considered one of the most distinguished American conductors of his generation” — most notably for his 25 years as music director of the San Francisco Symphony. “In addition to making more than 100 recordings of both rare and familiar classical repertory, he created valuable instructional series for television and radio.” - The Washington Post (Yahoo)
She gave her first recital at four and performed her first concerto at seven, going on to tour with the Boston Pops, play for five U.S. presidents, and record 10 LPs. She developed a new audience with Beethoven videos during the 2020 lockdowns and recorded her last disk at age 97. - BBC
This past January, Khaby Lame, a Senegalese-Italian who has 160 million followers for his Chaplin-esque silent TikTok shorts, signed a $975 billion deal with Hong Kong-based firm Rich Sparkle Holdings for use of his likeness in AI-generated videos. Three months later, Lame largely disavows Rich Sparkle, whose share price is plummeting. - TheWrap (MSN)
“A theme emerged at virtually every stop: The water damage was real, apparent in some places through discoloration and pooling. Some pieces of equipment, including several 800-ton chillers that help cool the building, are decades old and need replacement. And the building is so massive ... that repairs will require time to finish.” - AP
“The first phase — removing grout from the massive concrete sculpture and cataloging the pieces for future reassembly — will take at least a week, officials said. Starting in May, cranes will begin removing the (Vaillancourt Fountain’s) 10-ton cantilevered arms and hauling them away (from Embarcadero Plaza).” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
The discovery of this “problem-finding” creative process was a seminal moment in creativity research. In the decades since, countless researchers have shown that many of the most meaningful forms of real-world creativity and invention depend less on solving well-defined problems than on figuring out what the problem is in the first place. - Psychology Today
Named Ace, the robotic system developed by Sony AI, won three out of five matches against elite players, but lost the two it played against professionals, clawing back only one game in the seven contests. - The Guardian
This soul of yours has obviously come into existence with your body. Yet equally obviously it’s not made of bodily stuff. It lasts through the night when your body sleeps. It wanders off and leaves your body when you dream. - Aeon
“The stimulus, cognition, response model of the brain is wrong. The brain prepares for a response and then perceives a stimulus. A brain is not reactive. It’s predictive. Action planning comes first. Perception comes second, as a function of the action plan.” - Picower Institute
Research suggests uncertainty can be more distressing than negative certainty. In one study, people were calmer when they knew they would receive an electric shock than when there was only a 50% chance of one. - The Guardian
The most successful organizations of 2026 and beyond will not be those that simply use AI to do more things faster. Instead, they will be the ones that use AI as a creativity accelerator, freeing up human capacity for the work that only we can do: imagining, connecting, and creating meaning. - Fast Company
But with the boom came backlash: the suspicion that biennales were above all an excuse for a tote-bag-wearing international art crowd to descend on a city for a few weeks, leaving behind a large carbon footprint but little meaningful engagement with the local population. - The Guardian
“A theme emerged at virtually every stop: The water damage was real, apparent in some places through discoloration and pooling. Some pieces of equipment, including several 800-ton chillers that help cool the building, are decades old and need replacement. And the building is so massive ... that repairs will require time to finish.” -...
“We need a NATO for universities,” said Lee Bollinger, president emeritus of Columbia University. “When one university is attacked, everyone commits to coming to their defense. We need less capacity of individual institutions to make decisions about where we should go in defending universities and more power in a system.” - InsideHigherEd
“I can’t wait for the judge to get hit with a $45 ‘Verdict Convenience Fee,’ a $30 ‘Gavel Processing Fee,’ and an $80 ‘Digital Print-at-Home Ruling Surcharge,” a Reddit user cracked. (After the verdict, Live Nation said in a statement, “The jury’s verdict is not the last word on this matter.") - The New Yorker
While this may be framed as fiscal discipline, cutting arts and culture is not a serious long-term economic strategy. It is a short-term fix that reduces foot traffic, weakens neighborhood business districts, and chips away at the culture that makes people want to live, work, visit, and invest here in the first place. -...
Construction on the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, in the redeveloping East Bank neighborhood, begins next year; opening is expected in 2030. The complex, with Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) as lead designer, will include a 2,600-seat hall for touring Broadway shows, a 650-seat dance/opera hall, a black-box theater and a cabaret space. - WPLN (Nashville)
Tech companies with billion-dollar valuations are extracting value from copyrighted music on the internet and selling it as a service: making music-making easier and, they claim, more democratic. But creatives have always found ways to democratize and innovate music and art, long before tech companies tried to bite their flow. - Music Radar
This year’s list is organized by the “No Music for Genocide” initiative, which also calls on anti-Israel artists to have their music geo-blocked inside Israel. - Times of Israel
His contract, which was to expire in summer 2027, has been extended through the 2031-32 season, and the Venezuelan-born conductor’s title is now Music and Artistic Director. (He is also music director of the San Diego Symphony.) - Gramophone
The initial court ruling "was subsequently appealed, overturned and referred on several occasions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), resulting in a three-decade long legal battle over the regulation of sampling in Europe." -NME
“(John) Dowland was well regarded; (he) was also well-connected, cosmopolitan and at times unusually well-remunerated for his work. Yet his musical expression was dominated by melancholy. With that imbalance comes the sense that Dowland had an acute understanding of his place in the musical market of the time.” - The New York Times
For me, the subject of music is its sound. And in my music, I want to be in touch with sound that I haven't heard before, that feels somehow elemental, inevitable. One of the ways I've gone about it is, I use mathematics. - NPR
V&A East’s boxy, beige facade, pierced by pointed shards of window, was concocted by Irish architects O’Donnell + Tuomey and has received mixed reviews. Its futuristic appeal does, however, help establish a distinct identity from that of the original V&A in west London—an ornate Victorian shrine to the history of design and the decorative arts. - Artnet
“The first phase — removing grout from the massive concrete sculpture and cataloging the pieces for future reassembly — will take at least a week, officials said. Starting in May, cranes will begin removing the (Vaillancourt Fountain’s) 10-ton cantilevered arms and hauling them away (from Embarcadero Plaza).” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
A 28-year-old visitor caused thousands of euros in damage when she climbed the fountain of Neptune in the Piazza della Signoria because her friends dared her to touch the sea-god’s genitals. - The Guardian
In a startling and largely gratifying way, LACMA has done what the poet Audre Lorde, alluding to a different but not unrelated aspect of patriarchal dominance, deemed impossible: used the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. The change goes far beyond a remodel. It’s a reinvention, a recalibration, a revisionist fever dream. -...
What’s really wrong with Trump’s arch isn’t something that is always wrong with victory arches but, rather, something that is always wrong with all the architecture of autocracy. - The New Yorker
“I believe AI can simultaneously solve the problem of not knowing what to read and the difficulty of maintaining consistent reading habits.” Subscription-based reading platform Millie’s Library is taking things a step further by integrating a conversational AI chatbot into its platform. - Korea Joongang Daily
“Young Adult” fiction, despite its name, is aimed at teenagers; the "New Adult” category covers actual young adults, 18 to 24 or so. Four of the Big Five US publishers have now launched imprints dedicated to that audience. The subject matter is mostly romance, though publishers hope to expand beyond that. - Publishers Weekly
Kamel Daoud, who lives in France, said that a court in Oran fined him five million Algerian dinars ($38,000) and sentenced him to three years' imprisonment because his novel Houris, which won the Prix Goncourt in 2024, makes public mention — a crime under current Algerian law — of the country’s 1992-2002 civil war....
“In getting to its exalted place, the book had to navigate a tricky set of rapids. Though it sailed through them, a question lingers. ... Would a book like this, with its regional setting and its male and outdoorsy focus, face different challenges in today’s publishing world?” - The New York Times
Using AI tools and a pseudonym, unknown culprits are now profiting from my work and that of my colleagues. Worse, they are limiting what we can write about in the future. What publisher wants to publish a second book on an archaeological discovery, no matter how significant? - The American Scholar
The book became a dominant symbol of the age of development through the efforts of the new international institutions, and the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in particular. - The Conversation
Shareholders of Warner Bros. Discovery voted to sell the company to David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance for $31 a share in cash at a special virtual meeting Wednesday morning. The approval was a key hurdle in advancing the deal. - Deadline
Days after layoffs at Artnet and Artsy shook the art world, investor and owner Andrew E. Wolff has offered his clearest explanation yet for the cuts, framing them as part of a broader consolidation strategy already underway at the two companies. - ARTnews
This past January, Khaby Lame, a Senegalese-Italian who has 160 million followers for his Chaplin-esque silent TikTok shorts, signed a $975 billion deal with Hong Kong-based firm Rich Sparkle Holdings for use of his likeness in AI-generated videos. Three months later, Lame largely disavows Rich Sparkle, whose share price is plummeting. - TheWrap (MSN)
The Brazilian film industry has plenty of infrastructure for film production, but there was almost none for the early stages of development. So Olga Rabinovich founded, and singlehandedly funds, Projeto Paradiso to provide that support. During the Bolsonaro years, however, Rabinovich had to expand Projeto Paradiso’s remit. - Variety
The FCC has launched a new inquiry into the TV ratings system, including whether issues of gender identity are being included in children’s programming without flagging that content to parents. - Deadline
“It may not be realistic to expect lockstep agreement with Guillermo del Toro’s perspective that he would ‘rather die’ than use AI on his films. … But it does prompt questions about determining the right amount of support (or at least agnosticism) that anti-AI advocates can tolerate in their creative heroes.” - The Guardian
“The main studio of the École des Sables (in) Senegal defies every convention of what a professional dance space should be. It has no sprung floor, no mirrored walls, ... no walls at all. The dancers work outdoors, under a large, tented canopy. … The floor is unusually treacherous: It’s sand.” - The New...
Ballet BC is an impressive troupe, but it has long specialized in contemporary work; it’s been more than a decade since there was a resident company focused on classical and neoclassical style. That’s why choreographer Joshua Beamish founded Ballet Vancouver, which debuts this week. - The Georgia Straight (Vancouver)
Actors, musicians and politicians in sequined ball gowns and floral off-the-shoulder dresses ascended the steps of the New York Public Library’s regal main branch on Friday night to pose between the lions before the Martha Graham Dance Company’s 100th anniversary gala. - The New York Times
“Experts say the issue is awareness, not admiration. Performances are sometimes staged in unsuitable settings or paired with incorrect costumes — choices that, however unintentional, erode the dance’s sacred meaning.” - Cambodianess
“The owner of the shuttered Boulder dance studio, Frequency Dance, turned herself in Thursday afternoon at the Boulder County Jail after being indicted on accusations of staging two break-ins and getting more than $567,000 in fraudulent insurance payouts.” - Daily Camera (Boulder)
“Dancers danced at the company’s new North Broad Street building for the first time. Even as construction workers continued their own choreography of spackling and power-driving screws, company dancers could be seen in a large, glassy, sunlight-filled studio working out movements for an upcoming run of Romeo and Juliet.” - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
“One of the questions I always have is whether Willy is having flashbacks, or if he has some kind of dementia. … Miller said very clearly that they’re not flashbacks — Willie is not revisiting his past, but the past and the present absolutely exist simultaneously. He called them concurrences.” - TheaterMania
After 42 years, Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT) is suspending its operations as of June 1. The director cited “steadily rising costs in an increasingly challenging philanthropic environment” since the company’s post-COVID reopening in 2021. - TheaterMania
“Porchlight Music Theatre, an Equity-affiliated, nonprofit Chicago company founded in 1994, will stage its full upcoming 2026-27 season at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theatre, a historic venue in Lincoln Park that has been mostly dark since the pandemic.” - Chicago Tribune (Yahoo!)
More people are going to the theatre than ever before. In 2025, over 37 million people attended theatres across the UK, while the West End alone welcomed a record-breaking 17.64 million theatregoers, almost three million more than Broadway. But behind the success story lies a quieter reality: the financial model that sustains British theatre is under growing strain....
“As migrants faced uncertainty, displacement and made frequent attempts to cross into the United Kingdom, a robust arts community began to take shape inside the Good Chance Theatre. Residents staged stand-up comedy, music, storytelling, kung fu, circus acts and theater performances.” - Sahan Journal
“Despite so much practice, television still manages to get a few things wrong, specifically the process, the product and the people. (It occasionally manages to nail the excitement.)” - The New York Times
“He was widely considered one of the most distinguished American conductors of his generation” — most notably for his 25 years as music director of the San Francisco Symphony. “In addition to making more than 100 recordings of both rare and familiar classical repertory, he created valuable instructional series for television and radio.” - The Washington Post (Yahoo)
She gave her first recital at four and performed her first concerto at seven, going on to tour with the Boston Pops, play for five U.S. presidents, and record 10 LPs. She developed a new audience with Beethoven videos during the 2020 lockdowns and recorded her last disk at age 97. - BBC
Life in chess has always been a struggle, never more so than today. During the two-year battle for the 2024 world chess championship, I saw tantrums, I saw tears, I heard one top grandmaster muse about leaving the game for a career in fashion. - The Walrus
Over 60 years he wrote or co-wrote more than 50 books and fronted several hundred hours of television, starting in 1956 with the British children’s series Zoo Time. … He was an acknowledged authority on mammal behavior, including that of humans, and maintained a separate career as a surrealist painter. - The Guardian
“Across a career that stretched more than four decades, Hayward developed a reputation for paintings that were both restrained and intensely physical. His best-known works used dense layers of oil paint and repeated diagonal strokes to build ridged, meditative surfaces that explored color, gesture and the material force of paint itself.” - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)
Tacoma Musical Playhouse seeks Executive Producer to lead the organization on an exciting journey to celebrate musical theater & build community in Tacoma, WA region.
Indianapolis Ballet (IB) seeks its next Artistic Director, who will carry the organization’s mission forward, embracing the history and future of classical ballet through dynamic
Emerson College invites applications and nominations for a visionary leader and experienced manager to serve as its inaugural Vice President for Media Arts and Ventures.
The Fresno Arts Council seeks a strategic, collaborative, and community-centered Executive Director to lead the organization into its next chapter. Apply by May 1st!
Playwrights Horizons, an award-winning Off-Broadway theater located in the heart of Manhattan, seeks a dynamic, strategic and collaborative Director of Development to lead a high-performing
“He was widely considered one of the most distinguished American conductors of his generation” — most notably for his 25 years as music director of the San Francisco Symphony. “In addition to making more than 100 recordings of both rare and familiar classical repertory, he created valuable instructional series for television and radio.” - The Washington Post (Yahoo)
“Screenmaxxing is big business for an imperiled theatrical exhibition industry. … PLF screens seem to be an effective way to lure them out of the house, and charge a little (or a lot) extra for the assurance that they’re seeing a version of the movie that goes above and beyond.” - The Guardian (UK)
Yes, you need to watch The Sorrow and the Pity, and you need to do it right now. Why? Because “Ophuls’s film is illuminating precisely because its lessons about complicity apply to evil and corruption of all kinds.” - The Atlantic
“Transparency, porousness — all the buzzwords of architecture today are antithetical to security. It’s a paradox implicit to museum design today.” - The New York Times
“The Winnipeg-born children's book author and illustrator of I Want My Hat Back, has won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, which is worth nearly $750,00” (Canadian). - CBC
In the company’s staging of Kaija Saariaho’s opera Innocence, seven stage managers, four prop masters, and a big flock of stagehands transform the set from a decorated wedding-banquet hall into a blood-spattered high-school classroom in a minute and a half — and they do it while the set is rotating. - The New York...
One the one hand, you have the Buffalo Philharmonic’s JoAnn Falletta and the South Dakota Symphony’s Delta David Gier, both thoroughly embedded in their communities. On the other, you have Klaus Mäkelä with three orchestras and Andris Nelsons, who's losing his Boston Symphony job partly because he's so busy elsewhere. - The New York...
But “the Basque government, headed by Imanol Pradales of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), has made the transfer of Picasso’s painting a matter of regional pride." - El País English ...
“Solutions like Proudly Human and Not by AI aim to be broader, covering published text, visual art, videography, and music, but the verification processes being used by these services can be questionable.” (Archive Today version here.) - The Verge
PSU’s “dance program had once been a cornerstone of Portland’s artistic community, even as it struggled against decades of intermittent support, administrative turnover, and shifting school priorities.” - Oregon ArtsWatch
“Many shows have not only endured, they’ve spawned universes, international adaptations and spinoffs. Bravo, a TV channel that used to focus on the performing arts, is now an unscripted powerhouse that even has its own convention, BravoCon.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
“At the crux of the controversy is the fact that Tabouret’s new windows would push out Viollet-le-Duc’s undamaged ones. Advocates for the project argue that since the windows date to the 19th century, instead of the Middle Ages, they are fair game to be replaced.” - ARTnews
