AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Wigmore Hall And Apple Music Launch New Digital Platform For Artists
Under a new artist-first model, Wigmore Hall will pay the full production costs for every release and will take no share of the recording income, passing on 100% of royalties received directly to the performing artists. – Gramophone
- EU Investigating Paramount/Warner Financing
The European Commission is investigating the $111 billion Paramount-WBD deal under the EU’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation, looking at the approximately $24 billion being fronted for the takeover by the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. – Variety
- After Strikes And Fiery Rhetoric Last Time, Why Were Hollywood Contracts So Easy This Year?
The top factor, perhaps, was the ongoing fallout from Hollywood’s contraction. It’s no small thing that, since 2022, studios have tightened their belts and downsized their slates, reducing the job opportunities available for average industry workers. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Pennsylvania Reverses Decision Not To Fund Smallest Arts Organizations
“Last year, the (Pennsylvania Council on the Arts) renamed itself Pennsylvania Creative Industries and reorganized its funding criteria, making organizations with budgets under $100,000 ineligible for grants. … (Last Thursday) the council approved a new program called Spotlight, which makes state funding available to organizations with budgets between $10,000 and $100,000.” – WHYY (Philadelphia)
- Survey: Nearly Half Of Mid-Career Women Are Considering Leaving The Arts
While the inaugural survey revealed gaps in leadership roles and pay for women, this edition offers a more detailed picture of the structural pressures determining who is—and, crucially, who isn’t—able to build a sustainable long-term career in the arts. – Artnet
ISSUES
- Survey: Nearly Half Of Mid-Career Women Are Considering Leaving The Arts
While the inaugural survey revealed gaps in leadership roles and pay for women, this edition offers a more detailed picture of the structural pressures determining who is—and, crucially, who isn’t—able to build a sustainable long-term career in the arts. – Artnet
- A New Penn Station We Won’t Dread Walking Into?
- The Looted Antiquities Trade Continues For The Same Reason The Illegal Drug Trade Does
In a word, demand. – Artnet
- How Gaudí’s Design Keeps Sagrada Familia Standing Tall Without Flying Buttresses
The great Barcelona architect despised flying buttresses, especially in 20th-century neo-Gothic architecture, calling them “crutches” for a building that couldn’t support its own weight. To keep the walls and towers of his masterpiece church standing tall, he relied on an even older architectural feature, one that dates back to antiquity. – BBC
- Archaeologists Find Intact 18th Century Ship Off Norway
In addition to the well-preserved ceramics, researchers found barrels of grain and an array of high-end European-made goods ranging from chandeliers to stemmed glasses. They also discovered a box filled with mysterious substances, possibly coffee, tea, cocoa or medicine. – Smithsonian
MEDIA
- Pennsylvania Reverses Decision Not To Fund Smallest Arts Organizations
“Last year, the (Pennsylvania Council on the Arts) renamed itself Pennsylvania Creative Industries and reorganized its funding criteria, making organizations with budgets under $100,000 ineligible for grants. … (Last Thursday) the council approved a new program called Spotlight, which makes state funding available to organizations with budgets between $10,000 and $100,000.” – WHYY (Philadelphia)
- California Universities Abandoned The SAT. It’s Been A Disaster
A huge share of STEM and economics faculty across the UC system is now in open revolt—demanding that California’s public universities at least look at standardized-test scores before offering admission. – The Atlantic
- Trump Administration Asked National Park Visitors To Report “Negative” History Info. Visitors Did Something Different.
What most respondents considered negative was the effort itself. One visitor called it “un-American.” Another criticized the idea of “having Americans call in and snitch on each other.” One person wrote, “Hey Donald Trump! Trying to erase history doesn’t mean it didn’t still happen!” – AP
- Report: Arts Audiences Are Growing In Australia
The survey, conducted since 2009 and last published in 2022, has found that almost all Australians (98%) engage with the arts in some capacity – whether through music, reading, festivals, creating art, digital engagement or live attendance – and more Australians are recognising the positive impact of the arts on the economy and ourselves. – Limelight
- Arguing For The Arts: Careful What You Claim
Why aren’t people more careful when it comes to making claims about the benefits of the arts? Quite frankly, because shoddy research and even shoddier interpretations can have positive results in convincing policy makers of the importance of the arts—whether for economic development, educational outcomes, good health, and a variety of other public goods. – Nightingale Sonata
MUSIC
- U.S. Authors’ Incomes Are Down. New Study Looks At Why.
“(The Authors Guild research) found that only 25% of print books and e-books read in the past month were bought new or through a paid subscription. … Average author earnings, now pegged at about $10,000 annually, have declined about 42% since 2009, the year Kindles first entered the market.” – Publishers Weekly
- Collateral Damage From Trump’s Iran War: W.H. Smith, The Big Airport-Bookstore Chain
“The retailer, which operates 1,200 outlets globally in airports, railway stations and hospitals, … has already experienced a fall in revenues in its UK airport operation due to the conflict in the Middle East, (and) said North America had now also been affected.” – The Guardian
- Forgotten Manuscript By JRR Tolkien Found In Oxford Library
“The Lord of the Rings author’s translation of a medieval religious text from the early 13th century had lain forgotten in the Bodleian Libraries’ collections until now. His reworking of Sawles Warde, an early Middle English prose homily, which he titled Soul’s Ward …, is to be published for the first time.” – The Telegraph (UK)
- As Russia’s War Rages On, Kyiv Hosts A Busy Literary Festival
“A sign of the nation’s complete engulfing by war was the presence of so many soldiers on the stages; writers who had become soldiers, soldiers who had become writers. The Russia-Ukraine war has dragged on so grievously, and for so long, that entire publishing cycles have turned since 2022.” – The Guardian
- Have You Ever Really Looked Carefully At The Declaration Of Independence?
It’s poetry, philosophy and polemic, all in a little more than 1,300 words and all represented in its second and most famous sentence. – The New York Times
PEOPLE
- Wigmore Hall And Apple Music Launch New Digital Platform For Artists
Under a new artist-first model, Wigmore Hall will pay the full production costs for every release and will take no share of the recording income, passing on 100% of royalties received directly to the performing artists. – Gramophone
- EU Investigating Paramount/Warner Financing
The European Commission is investigating the $111 billion Paramount-WBD deal under the EU’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation, looking at the approximately $24 billion being fronted for the takeover by the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. – Variety
- After Strikes And Fiery Rhetoric Last Time, Why Were Hollywood Contracts So Easy This Year?
The top factor, perhaps, was the ongoing fallout from Hollywood’s contraction. It’s no small thing that, since 2022, studios have tightened their belts and downsized their slates, reducing the job opportunities available for average industry workers. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Pennsylvania Reverses Decision Not To Fund Smallest Arts Organizations
“Last year, the (Pennsylvania Council on the Arts) renamed itself Pennsylvania Creative Industries and reorganized its funding criteria, making organizations with budgets under $100,000 ineligible for grants. … (Last Thursday) the council approved a new program called Spotlight, which makes state funding available to organizations with budgets between $10,000 and $100,000.” – WHYY (Philadelphia)
- Survey: Nearly Half Of Mid-Career Women Are Considering Leaving The Arts
While the inaugural survey revealed gaps in leadership roles and pay for women, this edition offers a more detailed picture of the structural pressures determining who is—and, crucially, who isn’t—able to build a sustainable long-term career in the arts. – Artnet
PEOPLE
- Wigmore Hall And Apple Music Launch New Digital Platform For Artists
Under a new artist-first model, Wigmore Hall will pay the full production costs for every release and will take no share of the recording income, passing on 100% of royalties received directly to the performing artists. – Gramophone
- EU Investigating Paramount/Warner Financing
The European Commission is investigating the $111 billion Paramount-WBD deal under the EU’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation, looking at the approximately $24 billion being fronted for the takeover by the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. – Variety
- After Strikes And Fiery Rhetoric Last Time, Why Were Hollywood Contracts So Easy This Year?
The top factor, perhaps, was the ongoing fallout from Hollywood’s contraction. It’s no small thing that, since 2022, studios have tightened their belts and downsized their slates, reducing the job opportunities available for average industry workers. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Pennsylvania Reverses Decision Not To Fund Smallest Arts Organizations
“Last year, the (Pennsylvania Council on the Arts) renamed itself Pennsylvania Creative Industries and reorganized its funding criteria, making organizations with budgets under $100,000 ineligible for grants. … (Last Thursday) the council approved a new program called Spotlight, which makes state funding available to organizations with budgets between $10,000 and $100,000.” – WHYY (Philadelphia)
- Survey: Nearly Half Of Mid-Career Women Are Considering Leaving The Arts
While the inaugural survey revealed gaps in leadership roles and pay for women, this edition offers a more detailed picture of the structural pressures determining who is—and, crucially, who isn’t—able to build a sustainable long-term career in the arts. – Artnet
THEATRE
VISUAL
- If It’s Art And People Like It, Then…
Our reigning cultural ideology has been poptimism—the idea that if a lot of people like a work of art, then it has to be good. Now sloptimism, which holds that if there’s a lot of art out there and people are engaging with it then how bad can it be? – The New Yorker
- How Good Is AI At Spotting Talent? Soccer Teams Are Working On It
For decades, the beautiful game depended on the human eye: a scout on the sideline, attentively watching, waiting for that something special. That process, however, is becoming increasingly data-driven. – The Conversation
- Why We Crave Social Interaction
Among humans, “you can feel lonely at a party, or you can feel fine alone in your office.” Whatever the ideal degree of togetherness, Tye and others think that an animal’s need to balance time alone and time with others represents a kind of homeostasis: an equilibrium that’s critical for survival. – Knowable
- We Have Entered The Imagination Era
We have moved beyond the Information Age and are now firmly rooted in what I call the Imagination Era, a time when ideas and thinking differently are our primary currency. In this landscape, technology is not replacing our humanity; it is demanding that we deepen it. – Fast Company
- How America Lost Control Of Its History
A nation defined by blood and soil—built around a shared religion or ethnicity—can survive divergent narratives. To a country built on an idea, though, and bound together by a shared understanding of our history, the inability to tell a common story might well prove fatal. – The Atlantic
