AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- In Defense Of The Fourth Wall
Good Morning,
A defense of the proscenium arch is a defense of limits. Dominic Dromgoole calls the old box “liberatingly restrictive” — a form like the sonnet or the 12-bar blues, the frame Chekhov and Brecht needed something to push against (The Guardian). Two stories show what happens when a limit goes. Live Auto-Tune is now a routine stage instrument, no longer a confession (The New York Times), and in China AI video generation is already cranking out the smartphone micro-dramas Hollywood keeps warning itself about (Los Angeles Times). Removing a constraint isn’t removing a form. The question is which form replaces it — see Jill Lepore’s tech billionaires, who read science fiction as blueprint rather than warning (The Atlantic).
The Smithsonian’s frame is being redrawn from outside. Lonnie Bunch’s resignation opens the first secretary search that starts with the White House already dictating what the exhibits should say (Washington Post) — while the institution puts up a 9/11 exhibit Congress ordered it to build, for an administration that accuses it of distorting history (Washington Post). Quieter but structural: Operabase, the scheduling backbone the entire opera industry runs on, has been sold to an events company (The Violin Channel). Shared infrastructure is now somebody’s product.
France reports the Bayeux Tapestry lost two threads out of 70 meters on its way to London (Le Monde).
All of our stories below.
- ‘Tribute in Light’ Phantom Presence of the Missing Twin Towers
<a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/09/tribute-in-light-phantom-presence-of-the-missing-towers.html" title="‘Tribute in Light’
Phantom Presence of the - Cockroach Milk, Underpants Soil Testing, A Scientific Definition Of Kissing: The 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes
“Winning work highlighted during the 36th annual award ceremony” (which was in Zurich this year rather than Boston) “included hilarious research on the aerodynamics of nose blowing, gently stepping on venomous snakes, confirming that teenagers do indeed smell worse than babies and other side-splitting scientific undertakings.” – Smithsonian Magazine
- Toronto International Film Festival Shifts Emphasis To Film Dealmaking
In a tumultuous time for the industry, this transformation could help keep TIFF in the conversation, but as ticket prices rise, what does it all mean for the heart of this festival: the filmgoing public? – CBC
- The Advantages Of The Proscenium Stage
At this point in history, many of us think of the proscenium as conventional, perhaps limiting or even dull. Yet director Dominic Dromgoole describes it as “liberatingly restrictive,” like the sonnet form or the 12-bar blues. After all, the revolutionary work done by Chekhov and Brecht happened on proscenium stages … – The Guardian
ISSUES
- High Tension As Charlie Kirk Statue Unveiled In Times Square
Shouting and a shoving match erupted as Italian-American artist Sergio Furnari unveiled his unpermitted life-size bronze memorial to slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in Times Square on Thursday. – ARTnews
- Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Getting Ready To Open
All eyes are on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi as it prepares for opening on December 11 after two decades of delays. – ARTnews
- Okay, So Maybe The Bayeux Tapestry Had A Tiny Little Bit Of Damage While Being Moved
As French Culture Minister Catherine Pegard put it, “A break of two threads over a length of 70 meters was reported. … So today, if we say it is in the same state after having arrived in London as it was when it left Bayeux, I think we’re not very wrong.” – Le Monde
- “A Woman Going Places” — The New Statue On London’s Fourth Plinth
Ten feet tall, on a 13-foot-high platform, made of bronze, painted, and striding with purpose. Tschabalala Self’s Lady in Blue is this year’s sculpture for the empty fourth column in Trafalgar Square. – CNN
- Louisville’s Speed Museum Gets A New Leader
The Speed Art Museum, which is Kentucky’s oldest and largest museum with around 15,000 objects in its collection, will celebrate its 100th anniversary next year. – ARTnews
MEDIA
- Lonnie Bunch Resignation Throws Smithsonian Into Uncharted Leadership Waters
Previous searches have largely revolved around professional qualifications. This one begins after Trump has spent more than a year demanding changes to the Smithsonian’s exhibits and leadership — and as Republicans and Democrats are already staking out competing visions for Bunch’s successor. – Washington Post (MSN)
- How The Smithsonian Prepared Its 9/11 Anniversary Exhibit As Trump’s White House Keeps The Pressure On
After the attacks, Congress charged the Institution with documenting them and preserving the physical record. A quarter-century on, with the White House constantly accusing the Smithsonian of distorting American history, its 9/11 exhibit is especially fraught — and especially important. – The Washington Post (Yahoo!)
- Arts Centre Melbourne Workers’ Conflicts To Win Better Pay
Where in most other industries bargaining occurs between workers and employers, in subsidised cultural institutions wage negotiations are often inseparable from questions of government support. – The Conversation
- Can The 9/11 Museum Keep Going Like This?
“As one of New York’s most popular cultural destinations, it faces a number of challenges: how to evolve its sensitive content, reach a generation with no memory of the tragedy, and secure its financial future as former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, its primary benefactor, ages.” – The New York Times
- The Making Of American Sophistication
Sophistication, one begins to think, is a thing won against the grain of privilege—a substitute for it, a social sleight of hand. A “classy” entertainer is almost never someone from the upper classes; sophisticated people are mostly smart people passing as rich people. – The New Yorker
MUSIC
- Young Africans Are Sparking A Renewal Of Interest In African Languages
“Experts say the revival in some of them is driven partly by second- and third-generation Africans in the diaspora finding it easier to reconnect with their roots and communicate with older relatives, thanks to social media, online learning and entertainment.” – AP
- A New Survey Of Readers To Find Out How They Discover Books
The survey will talk to 5,000 book buyers and profile them by genre, covering how they discover books across every channel—including social media and other digital tools—where and how they buy, and their mix of print, e-book, and audio, with a deeper look at audio habits, subscription behavior, etc. – Publishers Weekly
- The Market For Non-Fiction Is Collapsing
The nonfiction collapse has profound implications for the industry. Nonfiction, historically, has always been seen as the more stable part of the business for logical reasons. The demand for nonfiction has always felt more predictable than fiction. – Dear Head of Mine
- Helen Vendler On Inhabiting Poetry
Vendler spent a lifetime – which ended in April 2024 – writing about lyric poetry. She believed literary criticism was about the pleasure of describing complex things and conveying the joy of understanding them to others. – London Review of Books
- Robert Pinsky Wins Poetry Foundation’s $100,000 Ruth Lilly Prize
“Pinsky, an acclaimed poet and translator who served as U.S. laureate under the auspices of the Library of Congress from 1997-2000, won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. He has long enjoyed recognition beyond the poetry world, even making public appearances with fellow New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen.” – AP
PEOPLE
- In Defense Of The Fourth Wall
Good Morning,
A defense of the proscenium arch is a defense of limits. Dominic Dromgoole calls the old box “liberatingly restrictive” — a form like the sonnet or the 12-bar blues, the frame Chekhov and Brecht needed something to push against (The Guardian). Two stories show what happens when a limit goes. Live Auto-Tune is now a routine stage instrument, no longer a confession (The New York Times), and in China AI video generation is already cranking out the smartphone micro-dramas Hollywood keeps warning itself about (Los Angeles Times). Removing a constraint isn’t removing a form. The question is which form replaces it — see Jill Lepore’s tech billionaires, who read science fiction as blueprint rather than warning (The Atlantic).
The Smithsonian’s frame is being redrawn from outside. Lonnie Bunch’s resignation opens the first secretary search that starts with the White House already dictating what the exhibits should say (Washington Post) — while the institution puts up a 9/11 exhibit Congress ordered it to build, for an administration that accuses it of distorting history (Washington Post). Quieter but structural: Operabase, the scheduling backbone the entire opera industry runs on, has been sold to an events company (The Violin Channel). Shared infrastructure is now somebody’s product.
France reports the Bayeux Tapestry lost two threads out of 70 meters on its way to London (Le Monde).
All of our stories below.
- ‘Tribute in Light’ Phantom Presence of the Missing Twin Towers<a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/09/tribute-in-light-phantom-presence-of-the-missing-towers.html" title="‘Tribute in Light’
Phantom Presence of the - Cockroach Milk, Underpants Soil Testing, A Scientific Definition Of Kissing: The 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes
“Winning work highlighted during the 36th annual award ceremony” (which was in Zurich this year rather than Boston) “included hilarious research on the aerodynamics of nose blowing, gently stepping on venomous snakes, confirming that teenagers do indeed smell worse than babies and other side-splitting scientific undertakings.” – Smithsonian Magazine
- Toronto International Film Festival Shifts Emphasis To Film Dealmaking
In a tumultuous time for the industry, this transformation could help keep TIFF in the conversation, but as ticket prices rise, what does it all mean for the heart of this festival: the filmgoing public? – CBC
- The Advantages Of The Proscenium Stage
At this point in history, many of us think of the proscenium as conventional, perhaps limiting or even dull. Yet director Dominic Dromgoole describes it as “liberatingly restrictive,” like the sonnet form or the 12-bar blues. After all, the revolutionary work done by Chekhov and Brecht happened on proscenium stages … – The Guardian
PEOPLE
- In Defense Of The Fourth Wall
Good Morning,
A defense of the proscenium arch is a defense of limits. Dominic Dromgoole calls the old box “liberatingly restrictive” — a form like the sonnet or the 12-bar blues, the frame Chekhov and Brecht needed something to push against (The Guardian). Two stories show what happens when a limit goes. Live Auto-Tune is now a routine stage instrument, no longer a confession (The New York Times), and in China AI video generation is already cranking out the smartphone micro-dramas Hollywood keeps warning itself about (Los Angeles Times). Removing a constraint isn’t removing a form. The question is which form replaces it — see Jill Lepore’s tech billionaires, who read science fiction as blueprint rather than warning (The Atlantic).
The Smithsonian’s frame is being redrawn from outside. Lonnie Bunch’s resignation opens the first secretary search that starts with the White House already dictating what the exhibits should say (Washington Post) — while the institution puts up a 9/11 exhibit Congress ordered it to build, for an administration that accuses it of distorting history (Washington Post). Quieter but structural: Operabase, the scheduling backbone the entire opera industry runs on, has been sold to an events company (The Violin Channel). Shared infrastructure is now somebody’s product.
France reports the Bayeux Tapestry lost two threads out of 70 meters on its way to London (Le Monde).
All of our stories below.
- ‘Tribute in Light’ Phantom Presence of the Missing Twin Towers<a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/09/tribute-in-light-phantom-presence-of-the-missing-towers.html" title="‘Tribute in Light’
Phantom Presence of the - Cockroach Milk, Underpants Soil Testing, A Scientific Definition Of Kissing: The 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes
“Winning work highlighted during the 36th annual award ceremony” (which was in Zurich this year rather than Boston) “included hilarious research on the aerodynamics of nose blowing, gently stepping on venomous snakes, confirming that teenagers do indeed smell worse than babies and other side-splitting scientific undertakings.” – Smithsonian Magazine
- Toronto International Film Festival Shifts Emphasis To Film Dealmaking
In a tumultuous time for the industry, this transformation could help keep TIFF in the conversation, but as ticket prices rise, what does it all mean for the heart of this festival: the filmgoing public? – CBC
- The Advantages Of The Proscenium Stage
At this point in history, many of us think of the proscenium as conventional, perhaps limiting or even dull. Yet director Dominic Dromgoole describes it as “liberatingly restrictive,” like the sonnet form or the 12-bar blues. After all, the revolutionary work done by Chekhov and Brecht happened on proscenium stages … – The Guardian
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Cockroach Milk, Underpants Soil Testing, A Scientific Definition Of Kissing: The 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes
“Winning work highlighted during the 36th annual award ceremony” (which was in Zurich this year rather than Boston) “included hilarious research on the aerodynamics of nose blowing, gently stepping on venomous snakes, confirming that teenagers do indeed smell worse than babies and other side-splitting scientific undertakings.” – Smithsonian Magazine
- Flock’s Vision Of Surveillance Everywhere
Flock was reported to have a valuation of more than eight billion dollars, with its biggest investor being the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Around forty per cent of the United States’ law-enforcement agencies now have contracts with the company, and a reported hundred and thirty thousand cameras monitor roads in every state but Alaska. – The New Yorker
- Today’s Tech Billionaires Learned The Wrong Lessons From Science Fiction
As young people, the future billionaires were spending hours (under their covers with flashlights, I imagine) consuming stories about killer robots or Mars colonies. What they seemed not to get—maybe couldn’t get—was that these were cautionary tales, stories that projected deep societal worries into space or onto a future many millennia away. – The Atlantic
- What Jonathan Swift Warned Us About Reading
“Far from merely raising a reactionary fist in the air at the new science, Swift identified an attitude that is still around today — and one that has created many of the greatest challenges now facing educators.” – The Dial
- When “Average-Level” Work Is Worth Nothing
When competent work is available at nearly zero cost, it provides little competitive advantage. We have seen versions of this value shift before: Cloud computing changed the skills required to manage infrastructure and GPS reduced the value of navigational skills. AI brought on a similar reset across a broader range of knowledge work. – Fast Company