AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Christine Taylor Conda talks about the importance of the One Score, One Chicago program
Christine Taylor Conda, Executive Director of Education and Community Engagement at Ravinia, talks about the unique impact of their One Score, One Chicago program.
- How Jafar Panahi Keeps Making Films In Iran, Despite Censorship, Official Harassment And Even A Prison Term
The “triple crown”-winning (Cannes, Venice, Berlin) writer-director has developed both coping strategies and outright tricks. For instance, sending one version of a script to the censors’ office while clandestinely filming the other version. – Vulture (MSN)
- How The Atlantic Magazine Is Flourishing While Others Are In Decline
A publication that began in 1857 is defying the trends of a troubled media industry. The Atlantic is returning to publishing monthly two decades after dropping to 10 issues a year and experimenting with a magazine-newspaper hybrid online fueled by its competitive stable of writers. – AP News
- Miami City Ballet’s New Artistic Director Dives Right In
Gonzalo García is only the third artistic director in the company’s history, after founder Edward Villella and predecessor Lourdes Lopez. He only started in the job on August 11, and Lopez had long since planned this season, but García is hard at work. – Pointe Magazine
- Why There Was A Surge Of Art Heists In The 1970s
According to art historian Tom Flynn, the surge in heists in the 1970s “coincides with the boom of the art market”. – BBC
ISSUES
- Why There Was A Surge Of Art Heists In The 1970s
According to art historian Tom Flynn, the surge in heists in the 1970s “coincides with the boom of the art market”. – BBC
- The Rise Of France’s Private Art Foundations
‘Luxury needs this link to the world of culture, because that is what gives it its nobility, its legitimacy, its roots,’ says Jean-Michel Tobelem, a professor of management at the Sorbonne and expert in cultural policy. – Apollo
- Senior Housing Designed To Fight Loneliness Wins Britain’s Top Architecture Award
The Stirling Prize for the country’s best new building of the year, awarded by the Royal Institute of British Architects, has gone to the Appleby Blue Almshouse, a project providing affordable housing for seniors in London’s Southwark borough. It’s the second Stirling Prize for architects Witherford Watson Mann. – Dezeen
- Art Historian Says He’s Figured Out Who Vermeer’s Girl With The Pearl Earring Was
It’s been suggested that she was the artist’s daughter, a servant girl, or even a sibyl from Greek mythology. Scholar Andrew Graham-Dixon writes that he now believes she was the daughter of Vermeer’s most important patrons and was dressed as Mary Magdalene. – The Times (UK)
- Europe’s New Soccer Stadiums Are The Cathedrals Of Our Time
The architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner once said: “A bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is a piece of architecture.” For much of their history, football stadiums used to be more bike shed than cathedral but their time has now spectacularly come. – The Guardian
MEDIA
- UK’s Opposition Greens And Reform Parties Are Running On (Very Different) Culture Issues
Support for both parties is defined by cultural issues. In the case of Reform, by the culture war around immigration and national identity; in the case of the Green Party by the wider picture of the linked issues of social justice and climate change. – The Art Newspaper
- How Artists Are Mobilizing A Resistance
Among them is The People vs Project 2025, a new nationwide movement to mobilise artists and cultural workers through co-ordinated live and streaming performances. – The Art Newspaper
- Data: Humanities Graduates Do Very Well In The Job Markets
Humanities majors in Minnesota are as likely to be employed as are engineering or business majors, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Humanities Indicators Project. And humanities BAs earn 64% more than workers with only a high school diploma. – The Star-Tribune (Mpls)
- One Of Britain’s Major Foundations Restricts Its Arts Fund Despite Its Endowment Growing Past $1 Billion
The Paul Hamlyn Foundation — whose endowment has grown steadily since 2020 and now stands at £916 million ($1.28 billion) — has closed its £6.5 million ($8.7 million) Arts Fund to any new applicants. The Foundation says applications have wildly exceeded available grant money and blocking new applicants is necessary for long-term stability. – Arts Professional (UK)
- Trump Refiles $15 Billion Lawsuit Against Penguin Random House And New York Times
The case — which charges that, with the book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, the publishing house and the newspaper disparaged Trump and undermined his 2024 campaign — was thrown out last month by a Federal judge who called it “improper and impermissible.” – Publishers Weekly
MUSIC
- Another Nobel-Winning Author Turns Out To Have Been A God-Awful Person
Most observers knew that Saul Bellow was no saint, especially after reading his greatest novel, the quasi-autobiographical Herzog. Bellow’s portrait of his protagonist’s wife, a stand-in for his soon-to-be-ex, is very unflattering, but evidence now shows that Bellow himself was far more cruel and violent toward her in real life. – Slate (Yahoo!)
- The Archaeology Of Unearthing The World’s Oldest Stories
Nowadays, we can unearth bones, extract DNA, even map ancient migrations, but only in myths can we glimpse the inner lives of our forebears—their fears and longings, their sense of wonder and dread. Linguists have reconstructed dead languages. Why not try to do the same for lost stories? – The New Yorker
- Los Angeles Times Is Losing Horrifying Amounts Of Money
“The business made a loss from operations of $41.8m in the year ending 29 December 2024 and a total net loss before taxes of $48.1m. This followed a reported loss of more than $30m in 2023. In the (first half of) this year, the (newspaper) made a further $17.3m loss from operations.” – Press Gazette (UK)
- Study: Libraries Draw People To Downtown
A recent study published by the Urban Libraries Council explores the idea that libraries can draw people to city centers that have been suffering from the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. – Bloomberg
- Colm Tóibín: Why I Set Up A Press To Publish László Krasznahorkai (And The Question I Shouldn’t Have Asked)
“In 2006, when I came home all enthusiastic about his work, he still had no UK publisher. … The view in London was that he was too difficult; no publisher could take the risk.” (The ill-chosen question was at the Edinburgh Book Festival five years later.) – The Guardian
PEOPLE
- Christine Taylor Conda talks about the importance of the One Score, One Chicago program
Christine Taylor Conda, Executive Director of Education and Community Engagement at Ravinia, talks about the unique impact of their One Score, One Chicago program.
- How Jafar Panahi Keeps Making Films In Iran, Despite Censorship, Official Harassment And Even A Prison Term
The “triple crown”-winning (Cannes, Venice, Berlin) writer-director has developed both coping strategies and outright tricks. For instance, sending one version of a script to the censors’ office while clandestinely filming the other version. – Vulture (MSN)
- How The Atlantic Magazine Is Flourishing While Others Are In Decline
A publication that began in 1857 is defying the trends of a troubled media industry. The Atlantic is returning to publishing monthly two decades after dropping to 10 issues a year and experimenting with a magazine-newspaper hybrid online fueled by its competitive stable of writers. – AP News
- Miami City Ballet’s New Artistic Director Dives Right In
Gonzalo García is only the third artistic director in the company’s history, after founder Edward Villella and predecessor Lourdes Lopez. He only started in the job on August 11, and Lopez had long since planned this season, but García is hard at work. – Pointe Magazine
- Why There Was A Surge Of Art Heists In The 1970s
According to art historian Tom Flynn, the surge in heists in the 1970s “coincides with the boom of the art market”. – BBC
PEOPLE
- Christine Taylor Conda talks about the importance of the One Score, One Chicago program
Christine Taylor Conda, Executive Director of Education and Community Engagement at Ravinia, talks about the unique impact of their One Score, One Chicago program.
- How Jafar Panahi Keeps Making Films In Iran, Despite Censorship, Official Harassment And Even A Prison Term
The “triple crown”-winning (Cannes, Venice, Berlin) writer-director has developed both coping strategies and outright tricks. For instance, sending one version of a script to the censors’ office while clandestinely filming the other version. – Vulture (MSN)
- How The Atlantic Magazine Is Flourishing While Others Are In Decline
A publication that began in 1857 is defying the trends of a troubled media industry. The Atlantic is returning to publishing monthly two decades after dropping to 10 issues a year and experimenting with a magazine-newspaper hybrid online fueled by its competitive stable of writers. – AP News
- Miami City Ballet’s New Artistic Director Dives Right In
Gonzalo García is only the third artistic director in the company’s history, after founder Edward Villella and predecessor Lourdes Lopez. He only started in the job on August 11, and Lopez had long since planned this season, but García is hard at work. – Pointe Magazine
- Why There Was A Surge Of Art Heists In The 1970s
According to art historian Tom Flynn, the surge in heists in the 1970s “coincides with the boom of the art market”. – BBC
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Just How Do We Measure The Complexity Of AI?
How do we assess whether AI is “reasoning” like humans do? Is it “truly intelligent”—but what does that mean? Even if we don’t understand its inner workings, could we still accurately predict its impact before unleashing it on the world? – The Point
- Our Long History Of Artificial Intelligizing
If philosophy formalized reasoning, literature explored its consequences. Stories about artificial beings reveal the hopes and terrors of living with intelligent doubles. Western traditions gave us the myth of Pygmalion, who fell in love with his statue, and Ovid’s tales of moving statues and enchanted beings. – 3 Quarks Daily
- Abundance Of Choice Is Our Modern Religion. It Has Some Serious Downsides
Philosophers and political theorists say it promotes selfish individualism and discourages collective action around issues that affect us all. And sociologists add that societies that prize choice too much tend to blame those with only poor or limited options for their own misfortunes. So much for choice as consistently synonymous with freedom. – Aeon
- AI Has Been Trained With What’s Online. Not All Knowledge Is Online
These systems may appear neutral, but they are far from it. The most popular models privilege dominant epistemologies (typically Western and institutional) while marginalising alternative ways of knowing, especially those encoded in oral traditions, embodied practice and the languages considered ‘low-resource’ in the computing world. – Aeon
- How To Understand What We Used To Call The Idiot Savant
In the past (autism became a diagnostic category only in 1943), the ‘idiot savant’ was a paradox, who confounded categorisation because there was no unified way of comprehending how such exceptional musical and numerical skills might co-exist alongside their polar opposite: profound disability. – Aeon
