AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Sagrada Familia Might Have Topped Out, But Big Challenges Ahead
“The biggest [challenge] will be Glory Facade, which is the main facade. Maybe it will take 10 years, but we don’t yet have a fixed schedule.” – Dezeen
- Fox To Acquire Roku
The transaction combines Fox’s sports, news, and entertainment content and the Tubi streaming service with Roku’s connected TV platform, The Roku Channel, first-party data and direct relationship with more than 100 million global streaming households, the deal partners touted. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Attack: FCC Opens Early Comment Period On ABC License Renewal
The early renewal order represents one of the most significant actions the Trump administration has taken against a media company, a potential regulatory death-blow to go alongside the myriad legal actions taken against the press and access restrictions placed upon journalists. – The Guardian
- AI Company Makes Industry-Wide Licensing Deal
David Israelite said the Udio agreement is the first industry-wide licensing deal struck with a major AI music company, and the first to “value songs and sound recordings equally” when it comes to AI training. – Music Business Worldwide
- The Kennedy Center Sign Is Restored. But There’s A Bigger Issue
My biggest concern is that the Kennedy Center will remain nominally open—as in, I’ll be free to walk through the doors and perhaps buy a coffee at the cafe—but there will be few, or even no, performances to see. – Washingtonian
ISSUES
- Sagrada Familia Might Have Topped Out, But Big Challenges Ahead
“The biggest [challenge] will be Glory Facade, which is the main facade. Maybe it will take 10 years, but we don’t yet have a fixed schedule.” – Dezeen
- Behold The New Obama Library
After standing in the glow of this new South Side landmark, I admittedly feel like a buzzkill focusing on documents, kind of like visiting the Sistine Chapel and contemplating the plumbing. – The Atlantic
- Living ‘FridaMania’ In Kahlo’s Hometown
“Frida died – but she didn’t pass away. She was like a rocket. She just went up and up.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Why The Art Workers Coalition Still Resonates Across The Art World
“Among their demands were a section of the museum dedicated to Black (and, in a later, amended statement, Puerto Rican) artists, an artist committee granted curatorial power, a ‘rental fee’ paid to artists for the exhibition of their work and free admission for all.” – The New York Times
- The 91-Year-Old Venezuelan Artist Says No To Weaving With Electronic Machines
“Mora, who is 91 and tiny, wearing head scarves around her weathered face, has clung to a mix of ancestral Indigenous and Spanish traditions.” – The New York Times
MEDIA
- The Kennedy Center Sign Is Restored. But There’s A Bigger Issue
My biggest concern is that the Kennedy Center will remain nominally open—as in, I’ll be free to walk through the doors and perhaps buy a coffee at the cafe—but there will be few, or even no, performances to see. – Washingtonian
- What The Kennedy Center Might Have Been
Imagine a scenario in which Bernstein and the Kennedys — John and Jackie both — bequeathed a proactive White House arts component prioritizing American achievement, past and present. It would have shaped the goals of the envisioned national cultural center. It almost happened. – ArtsFuse
- They Just Had To Take That Man’s Name Off The Kennedy Center From Behind A Curtain
After blowing the deadline and begging for more time – and being denied – workers took Donald J. Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center on Friday night. But “a spokeswoman for the center, said the institution was … evaluating ‘legal options.’” – The New York Times
- Kennedy Center As De-Trumpification Warning
Trump’s threat to walk away from the Kennedy Center suggests an additional danger: He could lose interest and doze off, as if at yet another Cabinet meeting or NBA Finals game, leaving parts of the government to fend for themselves. – The Atlantic
- Trump Kennedy Center Board Appeals Judge’s Order On Removing Trump’s Name
The board voted Thursday to seek a stay of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s May 29 ruling that said Trump’s name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center. – NPR
MUSIC
- If People Aren’t Reading, Why Are Bookstores Thriving?
“The bookstore boom is a story about a certain educated, culturally aspirational demographic doing what it has always done, while the literacy crisis unfolds elsewhere, namely in under-resourced schools, rural communities, and households without the discretionary income to browse a charming bookshop on a Saturday afternoon.” – LitHub
- Ruth Ozeki Knows The Power Of A Good Book
And that good book is Charlotte’s Web. – The Guardian (UK)
- If You Want To Read More Books This Summer, Here’s How To Do It
“I have this daydream where I go to the park and read under a tree. The sun is shining. It’s not too hot. The ground beneath me is comfortable. I have snacks on hand, I’m hydrated, and I am captivated by the book in front of me.” – NPR
- Debut Authors Take Home Women’s Prize For Fiction, Nonfiction
The fiction award is well-known (as is, in this case, the award winner), but the Women’s Prize added the nonfiction award in 2023 to help redress an imbalance in nonfiction award winners in the UK. – The Guardian (UK)
- Oh, The Drama: Someone Tries To Trademark A Bookstagram Term, And It Does Not End Well
Can ‘Hot Girls Read’ be trademarked? One creator thought so. “She is using the trademarking this common phrase to retroactively target small businesses who very likely had the idea before her, or at the very least had it around the same time as her.” – Slate
PEOPLE
- Sagrada Familia Might Have Topped Out, But Big Challenges Ahead
“The biggest [challenge] will be Glory Facade, which is the main facade. Maybe it will take 10 years, but we don’t yet have a fixed schedule.” – Dezeen
- Fox To Acquire Roku
The transaction combines Fox’s sports, news, and entertainment content and the Tubi streaming service with Roku’s connected TV platform, The Roku Channel, first-party data and direct relationship with more than 100 million global streaming households, the deal partners touted. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Attack: FCC Opens Early Comment Period On ABC License Renewal
The early renewal order represents one of the most significant actions the Trump administration has taken against a media company, a potential regulatory death-blow to go alongside the myriad legal actions taken against the press and access restrictions placed upon journalists. – The Guardian
- AI Company Makes Industry-Wide Licensing Deal
David Israelite said the Udio agreement is the first industry-wide licensing deal struck with a major AI music company, and the first to “value songs and sound recordings equally” when it comes to AI training. – Music Business Worldwide
- The Kennedy Center Sign Is Restored. But There’s A Bigger Issue
My biggest concern is that the Kennedy Center will remain nominally open—as in, I’ll be free to walk through the doors and perhaps buy a coffee at the cafe—but there will be few, or even no, performances to see. – Washingtonian
PEOPLE
- Sagrada Familia Might Have Topped Out, But Big Challenges Ahead
“The biggest [challenge] will be Glory Facade, which is the main facade. Maybe it will take 10 years, but we don’t yet have a fixed schedule.” – Dezeen
- Fox To Acquire Roku
The transaction combines Fox’s sports, news, and entertainment content and the Tubi streaming service with Roku’s connected TV platform, The Roku Channel, first-party data and direct relationship with more than 100 million global streaming households, the deal partners touted. – The Hollywood Reporter
- Attack: FCC Opens Early Comment Period On ABC License Renewal
The early renewal order represents one of the most significant actions the Trump administration has taken against a media company, a potential regulatory death-blow to go alongside the myriad legal actions taken against the press and access restrictions placed upon journalists. – The Guardian
- AI Company Makes Industry-Wide Licensing Deal
David Israelite said the Udio agreement is the first industry-wide licensing deal struck with a major AI music company, and the first to “value songs and sound recordings equally” when it comes to AI training. – Music Business Worldwide
- The Kennedy Center Sign Is Restored. But There’s A Bigger Issue
My biggest concern is that the Kennedy Center will remain nominally open—as in, I’ll be free to walk through the doors and perhaps buy a coffee at the cafe—but there will be few, or even no, performances to see. – Washingtonian
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Juneteenth Is A Big Deal In Parts Of Mexico
Why? It all goes back to enslaved people escaping their captors across the South, and fleeing to Spanish-controlled Florida. – NBC News
- What America’s Treasure To Trash To Treasure Pipelines Say About All Of Us
After WWII, “single-family homes spread across the nation like fireweed. In a distinctively American architectural feature, many of them were joined to a small dungeon dedicated to the tidy storage of automobiles—and other items.” – The Atlantic
- Please! Bring Back The Gatekeepers
Gatekeeper, here, doesn’t mean the patriarchal bogeyman of progressive fever dreams. It means the picky curator who maintains a necessary membrane between your half-formed, typo-addled thoughts and the wider world. It means the tastemaker who triages opinions and batters the better ones into readable form. – The Walrus
- The Great Divide: Creativity Before And After AI
On one side are texts produced before the arrival of generative LLMs. On the other, everything that has followed—texts that might still be useful, even compelling, but that will always face a lingering suspicion of not being entirely human, of having been smoothed by systems trained to predict the word that comes next. – LA Review of Books
- Has The 21st Century Been A Creative Blank Space?
The years from 2000 to 2025 as a period of creative emptiness and stagnation so intractable that it will be remembered (or, rather, is being remembered, through the anticipation of remembrance) as voided time, a dark age. – Yale Review
