AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- A Visit To Africa’s Largest Contemporary Dance Festival
“Founded in 1997, the African Dance Biennial has spent nearly three decades rotating across African cities — most recently Maputo, Mozambique, in 2023 — with the aim of raising the visibility of choreographic work on the continent. The three-day event, which closed Sunday, was held at the École des Sables … in Toubab Dialao, Senegal.” – AP
- Trends In Biennale Artists And Their Work
The most-visible type is an artist who digs into the history of colonialism, surfaces some charged document or symbol, and highlights it by doing something poetic with it. The tone is more reflective than truly didactic. Often, the art is channeling the look of an exhibit in a science or history museum. – Artnet
- Conductor Fired From Venice’s Opera House Speaks Out
Beatrice Venezi’s appointment as music director of Teatro La Fenice was greeted with an avalanche of criticism that she was unqualified, hired only because she’s a protégée of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni. Now Venezi says, “The (political) Right needed my clean face; they used me and then threw me away.” – Moto Perpetuo
- Media’s “Find Us” Problem
Broadcast once provided a predictable, repeated structure built into daily life. As the “tune-in” habit has eroded, we haven’t been deliberate enough in designing something to take its place. – Greater Public
- What We Lose When “The Late Show” Goes Away
The cancellation of Colbert’s show right before a deal that needed government approval has given his exit an additional resonance. – The New York Times
ISSUES
- Trends In Biennale Artists And Their Work
The most-visible type is an artist who digs into the history of colonialism, surfaces some charged document or symbol, and highlights it by doing something poetic with it. The tone is more reflective than truly didactic. Often, the art is channeling the look of an exhibit in a science or history museum. – Artnet
- Days Before Opening, Iran Withdraws From Venice Biennale
“On Monday, in a statement, Biennale organizers announced that Iran had dropped out and would no longer be exhibiting its planned pavilion. The announcement comes … amid a fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran. Organizers offered no information as to why Iran had decided to bow out.” – Artforum
- Architecture Critic Mark Lamster Of Dallas Morning News Wins Pulitzer Prize For Criticism
“Lamster won for a series of columns about downtown Dallas that sparked civic debate and revealed how past decisions have shaped the present. A focus of his criticism has been the fate of Dallas City Hall, a celebrated yet controversial work of brutalist design by architect I.M. Pei.” – The Dallas Morning News (MSN)
- Backlash Mounts To Met Gala Because of Bezos Sponsorship
Opposition to the Bezoses started almost immediately after they were announced as financial sponsors in February, and comes amid a surging anti-rich sentiment nationwide and in New York City, the event’s liberal home. – The New York Times
- Could The Met’s Costume Institute Survive The Los Of Its Gala?
Along with this year’s inauguration of the new Condé M. Nast Galleries in the Great Hall, which will house the Costume Institute’s blockbuster shows, the endowment fund represents a drastic transformation in the position of the Costume Institute, not to mention its relationship to the party held in its honor. – The New York Times
MEDIA
- Study: Relocating New Orleans Needs To Start Now Because Of Climate Change
The process of relocating people from New Orleans should start immediately, as the city has reached a “point of no return” that will see it surrounded by the ocean within decades due to the climate crisis, a stark new study has concluded. – The Guardian
- Just How Long Should An Arts Leader Stay?
As one artist told ArtsHub: ‘Artistic director and executive director jobs are so few and far between in Australia that it is no wonder that when someone is appointed to one, they hold on to them for more than 10 years. – ArtsHub
- Backstage Workers’ Union Files Charges Against Kennedy Center Over Layoffs
“The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) has filed charges (with the National Labor relations Board) against the Kennedy Center, accusing management of permanently cutting union jobs as it prepares to close for a two-year renovation at the behest of President Trump.” – TheWrap (Yahoo!)
- The New Workplace Surveillance Wants To Keep Your Emotions In Check
“It is not that hard for me to imagine a near future in which workers in all industries are pushed to work not only harder and more, but more happily and more agreeably. This is the new era of employee surveillance: invisible, AI-supercharged, always on.” – The Atlantic
- All The President’s Men Is Now Fifty
Why does that matter? Robert Redford, for one, “insisted that fearless owners were every bit as important in preserving democracy as the reporters he and Hoffman helped glamorize.” – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
MUSIC
- 2026 Pulitzer Prizes For Books Go To Jill Lepore, Yiyun Lin, Amanda Vaill, Daniel Kraus, Brian Goldstone, Juliana Spahr
Kraus’s Angel Down took fiction honors; Goldstone’s There Is No Place for Us won for general nonfiction; Lepore’s We the People took history honors; Vaill’s study of the Schuyler sisters, Pride and Pleasure, won for biography; Li’s Things In Nature Merely Grow won for memoir; Spahr’s Ars Poetica was honored for poetry. – Literary Hub
- Mass Author Walkout Imperils Prestigious Australian Publisher
At least 17 authors have ended their contracts with UQP or vowed not to work with the publisher again, after a series of events stemming from responses to the Israel-Gaza war culminated in last week’s cancellation of a children’s book by the Indigenous poet Jazz Money. – The Guardian
- How Booker-Nominated Author Katie Kitamura Reads
“Even a book that I know I wouldn’t enjoy now would still be interesting to read, to figure out how both it and I had changed. And there is always the possibility that I would enjoy it after all. Books are always surprising you.” – The Guardian (UK)
- The Struggle To Protect Mauritania’s Medieval Library Town
Chinguetti developed as a trading post on the trans-Sahara caravan route to Timbuktu — and, as in Timbuktu, over the centuries Chinguetti families came to amass important collections of medieval manuscripts on religion, law, and science. Now, as the population dwindles and the desert sand encroaches, preserving these collections is a challenge. – The Dial
- Idaho Legislature Changes Book Ban As Court Challenges Continue
The three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit wrote that HB 710 enables a “system of informal censorship” and potentially “encourages formal censorship through the legal process. The First Amendment does not tolerate either outcome.” – Publishers Weekly
PEOPLE
- A Visit To Africa’s Largest Contemporary Dance Festival
“Founded in 1997, the African Dance Biennial has spent nearly three decades rotating across African cities — most recently Maputo, Mozambique, in 2023 — with the aim of raising the visibility of choreographic work on the continent. The three-day event, which closed Sunday, was held at the École des Sables … in Toubab Dialao, Senegal.” – AP
- Trends In Biennale Artists And Their Work
The most-visible type is an artist who digs into the history of colonialism, surfaces some charged document or symbol, and highlights it by doing something poetic with it. The tone is more reflective than truly didactic. Often, the art is channeling the look of an exhibit in a science or history museum. – Artnet
- Conductor Fired From Venice’s Opera House Speaks Out
Beatrice Venezi’s appointment as music director of Teatro La Fenice was greeted with an avalanche of criticism that she was unqualified, hired only because she’s a protégée of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni. Now Venezi says, “The (political) Right needed my clean face; they used me and then threw me away.” – Moto Perpetuo
- Media’s “Find Us” Problem
Broadcast once provided a predictable, repeated structure built into daily life. As the “tune-in” habit has eroded, we haven’t been deliberate enough in designing something to take its place. – Greater Public
- What We Lose When “The Late Show” Goes Away
The cancellation of Colbert’s show right before a deal that needed government approval has given his exit an additional resonance. – The New York Times
PEOPLE
- A Visit To Africa’s Largest Contemporary Dance Festival
“Founded in 1997, the African Dance Biennial has spent nearly three decades rotating across African cities — most recently Maputo, Mozambique, in 2023 — with the aim of raising the visibility of choreographic work on the continent. The three-day event, which closed Sunday, was held at the École des Sables … in Toubab Dialao, Senegal.” – AP
- Trends In Biennale Artists And Their Work
The most-visible type is an artist who digs into the history of colonialism, surfaces some charged document or symbol, and highlights it by doing something poetic with it. The tone is more reflective than truly didactic. Often, the art is channeling the look of an exhibit in a science or history museum. – Artnet
- Conductor Fired From Venice’s Opera House Speaks Out
Beatrice Venezi’s appointment as music director of Teatro La Fenice was greeted with an avalanche of criticism that she was unqualified, hired only because she’s a protégée of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni. Now Venezi says, “The (political) Right needed my clean face; they used me and then threw me away.” – Moto Perpetuo
- Media’s “Find Us” Problem
Broadcast once provided a predictable, repeated structure built into daily life. As the “tune-in” habit has eroded, we haven’t been deliberate enough in designing something to take its place. – Greater Public
- What We Lose When “The Late Show” Goes Away
The cancellation of Colbert’s show right before a deal that needed government approval has given his exit an additional resonance. – The New York Times
THEATRE
VISUAL
- The Tiniest Particles In The Universe Don’t Tell You What The Universe Is
We are taught from a young age that matter is made of atoms, built from particles such as electrons, and electrons are not built from anything else. For this reason, these particles are sometimes said to be fundamental. But are they? Is the Universe really made from the smallest constituents? – Aeon
- So Maybe That AI Bubble Wasn’t Real After All
The worry that the country is building too many data centers now coexists with the fear that we won’t have enough of them to satisfy the public’s growing appetite for these products. And the company previously known as OpenAI’s junior competitor has become possibly the fastest-growing business in the history of capitalism. – The Atlantic
- When AI Surrounds Us, What’s The Point Of Human Minds?
“As great as humans are, we can still be impressed by how birds navigate, how ants cooperate, and how spiders hunt. Each of these animals has been shaped by its environment to be smart in a different way.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Stop Saying Satire Is Dead
“Can satire really change anything? Isn’t it a limp, almost quaint kind of protest?” – LitHub
- Wait, Portland Has Another New Analysis Saying Two Concert Halls Would Be Just Fine
Competing studies find that Portland can support one performing arts center or maybe two performing arts centers, or not. And of course, “Portland has appointed a number of advisory committees to study the choices more closely before holding public hearings to make a final decision.” – Oregon ArtsWatch
