AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Just How Big is the Culture Economy?
Most arts policy debates happen at one scale. Most cultural activity happens at another. It turns out the gap between those two scales — between the world that the arts, funding fights, and nonprofit board meetings live in, and the world where most people actually encounter culture — is so large that it’s worth pausing to measure.
The post Just How Big is the Culture Economy? appeared first on diacritical.
- Disney, CBS, Venice: Pressure Is the Point
Good Morning:
A pattern keeps showing up today: institutions getting squeezed over what they broadcast, show, or teach. The FCC has formally opened a license-renewal investigation of Disney’s broadcast properties, and Disney is “playing it cool” rather than fighting back (Deadline). Stephen Colbert went on the record questioning CBS’s claim that his show was canceled for purely financial reasons: “less than two years before, they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed” (The New York Times). And in Venice, the workaround for Russia’s pavilion is a tortured compromise — open to the press during the preview, then closed to the public for the rest of the run (Artforum).
Cory Doctorow, in a long essay, names the broader condition: enshittification has crossed from platforms into the physical world — homes, cars, the places we work and shop (Literary Review of Canada). Same diagnosis from a different angle: who gets to capture and degrade the systems we depend on.
A counterweight: the Minnesota Orchestra and its musicians settled a two-year contract months ahead of schedule, with hiring concessions to close a $2M gap (Pioneer Press).
From the recovery file: a lost copy of Caedmon’s Hymn — the oldest surviving poem in English — has turned up in a Roman library (The Guardian).
All of our stories below.
- VP of Human Resources, Tennessee Performing Arts Center
This is a pivotal moment to join TPAC as Vice President of Human Resources. As the organization prepares for transformational growth with the development of a new East Bank campus, the VP of Human Resources is being reimagined from a traditional administrative function into a strategic architect of organizational design. This leader will serve as the organization’s most important champion of culture, talent, and human capital by guiding TPAC’s staff through this period of exciting and complex evolution.
The VP of Human Resources reports to the Managing Director and works in close partnership with the President & CEO, CFO, and senior leadership team. This is a full-time, exempt position requiring three days per week in the downtown Nashville office with up to two days of remote work.
- In Defense Of Liam Scarlett, Five Years After His Suicide
Clarissa Hard argues that, with no hard evidence of serious sexual misconduct ever revealed, the gifted young choreographer should not have been made a total pariah and driven to take his own life. – The Critic (UK)
- FCC Starts Investigation Of Disney Broadcast License
As expected, Brendan Carr and the FCC on Tuesday unleashed license-renewal hell on The Walt Disney Co. However, with another Jimmy Kimmel brouhaha erupting with Donald Trump and MAGAland, the Josh D’Amaro-led Disney is playing it cool and playing along, at least for now. – Deadline
ISSUES
- NJ Father/Daughter Team Convicted Of $2M Art Fraud
Erwin Bankowski, 50, and Karolina Bankowska, 26, admitted in federal court in Brooklyn to wire fraud conspiracy and misrepresenting Native American–produced goods. The pair, a father and daughter, now face up to 20 years in prison, along with at least $1.9 million in restitution. – ARTnews
- Zimbabwe’s Plundered Iconic Stone Birds Are Finally Returned
Known as the Zimbabwe Bird, it has long been a symbol of national identity, but behind it lies a complex tale of displacement, colonial plunder and restitution. – BBC (MSN)
- What Has Gone Wrong With Architecture
Architecture is a Fox’s discipline. It sits between capital, politics, infrastructure, climate, design, engineering, art, psychology, and economics. Its task is to hold these domains together, manage complexity, and, at its best, make spaces and places in which we can live better together. – Time
- The Death Of Art Schools
Rather than treating education as a public good, elected officials shift the burden onto individuals, underfund institutions, and protect a system that redistributes wealth upward. Financialization destroys the relation between education, citizenship, and the public world that the university is supposed to build. – Hyperallergic
- How Do You Put The Venice Biennale’s Central Exhibition Together After Its Curator Died?
Only days after she was diagnosed with liver cancer last year, curator Koyo Kouoh passed away. Nevertheless, the Biennale’s flagship show will open next month under her name and chosen title, “In Minor Keys.” A five-person team of Kouoh’s assistants and advisers has tried to channel her work. – The New York Times
MEDIA
- A Change To Portland’s Widely-Disliked Arts Tax
“’We’ve not identified a way to make (the tax) not annoying,’ said Council President Jamie Dunphy, the architect of the new policy. ‘But we’ve found ways to make it less annoying.’” The proposed change: fewer people paying more money. – Oregon Public Broadcasting
- How Chicago’s Arts Institutions Are Coping With Federal Funding Cuts
“The defunding of arts and humanities programming across the state has left leaders skeptical as to whether government funding can be a reliable source in the future.” – Crain’s Chicago Business
- Ireland’s Artist Basic Income May Not Account For Artists With Disabilities
“Ó Ceallacháin says many artists with disabilities feel as though they need to “]exist between ‘professional enough’ to be a ‘real’ artist for the Department of Culture and ‘disabled enough’ to receive support from the Department of Social Protection.” – Irish Times
- The Deep, Inescapable Unease Of The New Michael Jackson Biopic
And ‘unease’ is too kind a way to put it: “Everything left unsaid still lingers between the lines, sandwiched between the formidable melodies of his greatest hits, like toxic ooze leaking out from the middle of two slices of Wonderbread.” – Salon
- News Publishers Are Trying To Prevent AI Scraping, But They’re Killing A Valuable History Service
Talk about the baby and the bathwater: “History needs stewards. The people of the Internet Archive do an outstanding job of preserving irreplaceable work and making it available to journalists and researchers.” – Nieman Lab
MUSIC
- Lost Copy Of Oldest Surviving English Poem Turns Up In Rome
“Scholars from Trinity College Dublin uncovered the manuscript that contains Caedmon’s Hymn at the National Central Library of Rome. Bede, the medieval theologian revered as the father of English history, recorded the nine-line poem in the eighth century.” – The Guardian
- State Legislatures Tweak Library And School Laws Concerning Books (To Protect Them)
“We’ve had success in blue states that want to protect from book banning at the local level, but these efforts have moved to purple or even red states, to the point of Alaska now moving this forward.” – Publishers Weekly
- “Ghost Imaging” Recovers Text Of 1,500-Year-Old Biblical Manuscript
The 6th-century Codex H included a Greek-language copy of the New Testament’s letters of St. Paul. Sometime in the Middle Ages, though, the monks of Mt. Athos broke the book up and re-used the parchment. Fragments have since been identified, but the original text on them was considered irretrievable — until now. – Artnet
- Docs: Adelaide Writers Week Sacrificed To Save Arts Festival
Adelaide writers’ week was sacrificed to save the 2026 Adelaide festival, an event that ploughs more than $60m into South Australia’s economy each year, documents show. – The Guardian
- How AI Looks Set To Change The Actual Printing Of Books
“A new report from the Book Manufacturers’ Institute on the state of the book industry predicts that printing is on the cusp of potential major changes.” – Publishers Weekly
PEOPLE
- Just How Big is the Culture Economy?
Most arts policy debates happen at one scale. Most cultural activity happens at another. It turns out the gap between those two scales — between the world that the arts, funding fights, and nonprofit board meetings live in, and the world where most people actually encounter culture — is so large that it’s worth pausing to measure.
The post Just How Big is the Culture Economy? appeared first on diacritical.
- Disney, CBS, Venice: Pressure Is the Point
Good Morning:
A pattern keeps showing up today: institutions getting squeezed over what they broadcast, show, or teach. The FCC has formally opened a license-renewal investigation of Disney’s broadcast properties, and Disney is “playing it cool” rather than fighting back (Deadline). Stephen Colbert went on the record questioning CBS’s claim that his show was canceled for purely financial reasons: “less than two years before, they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed” (The New York Times). And in Venice, the workaround for Russia’s pavilion is a tortured compromise — open to the press during the preview, then closed to the public for the rest of the run (Artforum).
Cory Doctorow, in a long essay, names the broader condition: enshittification has crossed from platforms into the physical world — homes, cars, the places we work and shop (Literary Review of Canada). Same diagnosis from a different angle: who gets to capture and degrade the systems we depend on.
A counterweight: the Minnesota Orchestra and its musicians settled a two-year contract months ahead of schedule, with hiring concessions to close a $2M gap (Pioneer Press).
From the recovery file: a lost copy of Caedmon’s Hymn — the oldest surviving poem in English — has turned up in a Roman library (The Guardian).
All of our stories below.
- VP of Human Resources, Tennessee Performing Arts Center
This is a pivotal moment to join TPAC as Vice President of Human Resources. As the organization prepares for transformational growth with the development of a new East Bank campus, the VP of Human Resources is being reimagined from a traditional administrative function into a strategic architect of organizational design. This leader will serve as the organization’s most important champion of culture, talent, and human capital by guiding TPAC’s staff through this period of exciting and complex evolution.
The VP of Human Resources reports to the Managing Director and works in close partnership with the President & CEO, CFO, and senior leadership team. This is a full-time, exempt position requiring three days per week in the downtown Nashville office with up to two days of remote work.
- In Defense Of Liam Scarlett, Five Years After His Suicide
Clarissa Hard argues that, with no hard evidence of serious sexual misconduct ever revealed, the gifted young choreographer should not have been made a total pariah and driven to take his own life. – The Critic (UK)
- FCC Starts Investigation Of Disney Broadcast License
As expected, Brendan Carr and the FCC on Tuesday unleashed license-renewal hell on The Walt Disney Co. However, with another Jimmy Kimmel brouhaha erupting with Donald Trump and MAGAland, the Josh D’Amaro-led Disney is playing it cool and playing along, at least for now. – Deadline
PEOPLE
- Just How Big is the Culture Economy?
Most arts policy debates happen at one scale. Most cultural activity happens at another. It turns out the gap between those two scales — between the world that the arts, funding fights, and nonprofit board meetings live in, and the world where most people actually encounter culture — is so large that it’s worth pausing to measure.
The post Just How Big is the Culture Economy? appeared first on diacritical.
- Disney, CBS, Venice: Pressure Is the Point
Good Morning:
A pattern keeps showing up today: institutions getting squeezed over what they broadcast, show, or teach. The FCC has formally opened a license-renewal investigation of Disney’s broadcast properties, and Disney is “playing it cool” rather than fighting back (Deadline). Stephen Colbert went on the record questioning CBS’s claim that his show was canceled for purely financial reasons: “less than two years before, they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed” (The New York Times). And in Venice, the workaround for Russia’s pavilion is a tortured compromise — open to the press during the preview, then closed to the public for the rest of the run (Artforum).
Cory Doctorow, in a long essay, names the broader condition: enshittification has crossed from platforms into the physical world — homes, cars, the places we work and shop (Literary Review of Canada). Same diagnosis from a different angle: who gets to capture and degrade the systems we depend on.
A counterweight: the Minnesota Orchestra and its musicians settled a two-year contract months ahead of schedule, with hiring concessions to close a $2M gap (Pioneer Press).
From the recovery file: a lost copy of Caedmon’s Hymn — the oldest surviving poem in English — has turned up in a Roman library (The Guardian).
All of our stories below.
- VP of Human Resources, Tennessee Performing Arts Center
This is a pivotal moment to join TPAC as Vice President of Human Resources. As the organization prepares for transformational growth with the development of a new East Bank campus, the VP of Human Resources is being reimagined from a traditional administrative function into a strategic architect of organizational design. This leader will serve as the organization’s most important champion of culture, talent, and human capital by guiding TPAC’s staff through this period of exciting and complex evolution.
The VP of Human Resources reports to the Managing Director and works in close partnership with the President & CEO, CFO, and senior leadership team. This is a full-time, exempt position requiring three days per week in the downtown Nashville office with up to two days of remote work.
- In Defense Of Liam Scarlett, Five Years After His Suicide
Clarissa Hard argues that, with no hard evidence of serious sexual misconduct ever revealed, the gifted young choreographer should not have been made a total pariah and driven to take his own life. – The Critic (UK)
- FCC Starts Investigation Of Disney Broadcast License
As expected, Brendan Carr and the FCC on Tuesday unleashed license-renewal hell on The Walt Disney Co. However, with another Jimmy Kimmel brouhaha erupting with Donald Trump and MAGAland, the Josh D’Amaro-led Disney is playing it cool and playing along, at least for now. – Deadline
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Cory Doctorow: Why The World Is Suddenly Becoming Enshittified
“The internet is getting worse, fast. The services we rely on, they’re all turning into piles of shit. Worse, the digital is merging with the physical, which means that the same forces that are wrecking our platforms are also wrecking our homes and our cars, the places where we work and shop. – Literary Review of Canada
- AI: A Philosophy About Language
The underlying intelligence of a large language model isn’t a function of its architecture, its parameter count, or the volume of compute thrown at its training. It is not even about the training data. It is a function of the social complexity of the civilization whose language it digested. – The Ideas Newsletter
- New Google Paper Argues AI Will Never Be Conscious
The paper shows the divergence between the self-serving narratives AI companies promote in the media and how they collapse under rigorous examination. – 404 Media
- Why AI Is Struggling With Creativity
Many generative AI programs geared toward creative fields have encountered a common problem: rapid initial adoption, followed by declining sustained engagement. – The Conversation
- Why It’s So Difficult To Agree On Truth
These different notions of truth shape everyday discourse as well as philosophical debate. They might help explain why some arguments feel pointless, why political debates circle endlessly, and why certain disagreements never quite meet on common ground. – Psyche
