AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only
DANCE
IDEAS
- Conductor Herbert Blomstedt, 99
Good Morning,
Herbert Blomstedt, who led the San Francisco Symphony for ten years, died at 99 in Gothenburg, Sweden (NPR). He conducted in Detroit and Leipzig this year, in recent seasons from a piano bench.
The Crucible, a 27-year-old industrial arts school in West Oakland, closed without notice and told more than 150 staff and faculty to stop work, then laid them off (KQED). Its union says management ignored its cost-cutting proposals, weeks after the school received over $1.5 million in grants.
Only 9 percent of respondents to the American Alliance of Museums’ survey accept AI in exhibitions, and 43 percent expect humans to produce all museum content (ARTnews). The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art will use AI in a VR recreation of Whistler’s Peacock Room.
Vatican restorers conclude Michelangelo made his own brushes, some with ten heads spanning nearly six inches, to paint the Last Judgment’s parallel hatching the way his chisel cut stone (Artnet).
All of our stories below.
- Stars Flock To Join London Production Of Gisèle Pelicot Trial
Director Milo Rau’s documentary staging of the trial of Pelicot’s husband, who repeatedly drugged her and invited men to rape her, will be produced and livestreamed by the Young Vic, with a cast including Kate Winslet, Brian Cox, Indira Varma, Tobias Menzies, Rosie O’Donnell, Suzy Eddie Izzard, Juliet Stevenson, and others. – WhatsOnStage (UK)
- Why Musicians Are Touring Less
Attending a concert is no longer always just a night out. With the rise of music residencies and select-city tours, artists can save on travel costs while fans are shelling out for what’s being sold as the trip of a lifetime. – CBC
- Soprano Angel Blue Cancels All Remaining Opera Engagements This Season
She didn’t specify a reason in the announcement she made on social media, though she did state that she would keep her concert dates, which she made sure to list on her post. – Opera Now
- What Makes Music “Russian”
The question at stake was how Russian composers could create their own tradition while drawing on established European musical culture. – The Conversation
ISSUES
- Conservators Figure Out One Of Michelangelo’s Best Secret Techniques
Restorers working on the recently-completed cleaning of The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel have deduced that Michelangelo crafted his own special paintbrushes with multiple heads so that he could paint parallel lines quickly — and that he used them for crosshatched strokes that give the fresco a singular dynamism. – Artnet
- Survey: Broad Worry About How Museums Will Use AI
Just 9 percent of respondents accepted the use of AI in museum shows. Nineteen percent were unbothered by the notion that AI could used for brainstorming but not exhibition texts, meanwhile, and 29 percent said they felt no reservations about the usage of AI to write emails sent by museum officials. – ARTnews
- Long-Unseen Old Master Landscape Revealed, Could Fetch $4 Million To $7 Million At Auction
“A Thickly Wooded Landscape With a Rainbow Behind the Trees and a Distant Outcrop to the Right Beneath a Cloud-Laden Sky,” completed around 1520 by Albrecht Altdorfer, is one of the oldest surviving landscapes in European art. It’s expected to sell for £3 million to £5 million next month at Sotheby’s. – The Guardian
- Virginia, DC, Sue To Stop Construction Of Trump’s Arch
The 45-page lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia called the project “flagrantly unlawful,” attorneys general Jay Jones of Virginia and Brian Schwalb of the District of Columbia wrote. – NPR
- Stolen Old Master Painting Is Recovered Thanks To “Wanted” Poster Campaign
A 17th-century painting titled Un Buveur (“A Drinker”) by Willem Cornelisz Duyster, stolen in 1940 from the Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans in France, was located last month at a Swiss auction house. – ARTnews
MEDIA
- Arts Education Incubator “The Crucible” Shuts Down In Oakland
The layoffs deepen the uncertainty surrounding the 27-year-old nonprofit, which closed its 56,000-square-foot West Oakland facility Oct. 25 and canceled classes and events. The board has said it cannot yet say when, or whether, the organization will reopen. – San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
- How Canada Is Benefitting From Trump’s American Brain Drain
For Canada, Trump’s war on facts presents a window of opportunity. “As other countries constrain academic freedoms and undermine cutting-edge research, Canada is investing in—and doubling down on—science,” Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said when announcing the initiative in December 2025. – The Walrus
- New NEA Data On Americans’ Arts Participation
The dataset now spans 2003–2025 and includes newly added data from 2024 and 2025. It is available through the NADAC website for free download and online analysis. – NEA
- How American History Became Divisive
Under this rigid order, there’s no room to interrogate our rocky history, let alone change it for the better. There’s just one nation, under God, indivisible—now, always, and forever. – Mother Jones
- Google Says It Will Shut Off Search For Schools That Reject AI
A.I. features are now a standard part of Google’s commercially available search engine. “Search and A.I. are deeply integrated.” If a school has banned A.I., he added, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.” – The New York Times
MUSIC
- Baillie Gifford Prize For Nonfiction Goes To Edmund Richardson’s “Alexander: God, King, Man”
The “immersive” biography of Alexander the Great, which includes Richardson’s translations of source material from 12 different languages, is the first work about ancient history to win the £50,000 ($67,000) award. – AP
- China Miéville’s “The Rouse” Wins UK’s Goldsmiths Prize For Innovative Fiction
The win of the £10,000 award makes The Rouse the longest novel to take the prize since it was launched in 2013 for fiction that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.” – The Guardian
- Previously Unseen Writing By Harry Houdini Is Published
“Houdini, whose real name was Eric Weisz, was a prolific author, with more than two dozen books, short stories and plays to his name. One of them, an article titled ‘An Interesting Scrapbook,’ … appears for the first time in print on Saturday” — the centennial of his death — “in Strand magazine.” – The Guardian
- AI Translations Have Gotten Very Good. But…
While AI translations are very fluent, fluency doesn’t equal accuracy. Even proficient bilinguals can overlook errors hidden under the surface. – The Conversation
- Russia’s Last Major Independent Newspaper Shuts Down
“’We have been killed,’ reads a statement from the editorial team behind the Russian independent news outlet Novaya Gazeta, as it announced on Friday that it would be ceasing operations. … ‘The newspaper no longer exists. The Russian authorities and the Russian security services have forced our editorial team to cease its operations.’” – Euronews
PEOPLE
- Conductor Herbert Blomstedt, 99
Good Morning,
Herbert Blomstedt, who led the San Francisco Symphony for ten years, died at 99 in Gothenburg, Sweden (NPR). He conducted in Detroit and Leipzig this year, in recent seasons from a piano bench.
The Crucible, a 27-year-old industrial arts school in West Oakland, closed without notice and told more than 150 staff and faculty to stop work, then laid them off (KQED). Its union says management ignored its cost-cutting proposals, weeks after the school received over $1.5 million in grants.
Only 9 percent of respondents to the American Alliance of Museums’ survey accept AI in exhibitions, and 43 percent expect humans to produce all museum content (ARTnews). The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art will use AI in a VR recreation of Whistler’s Peacock Room.
Vatican restorers conclude Michelangelo made his own brushes, some with ten heads spanning nearly six inches, to paint the Last Judgment’s parallel hatching the way his chisel cut stone (Artnet).
All of our stories below.
- Stars Flock To Join London Production Of Gisèle Pelicot Trial
Director Milo Rau’s documentary staging of the trial of Pelicot’s husband, who repeatedly drugged her and invited men to rape her, will be produced and livestreamed by the Young Vic, with a cast including Kate Winslet, Brian Cox, Indira Varma, Tobias Menzies, Rosie O’Donnell, Suzy Eddie Izzard, Juliet Stevenson, and others. – WhatsOnStage (UK)
- Why Musicians Are Touring Less
Attending a concert is no longer always just a night out. With the rise of music residencies and select-city tours, artists can save on travel costs while fans are shelling out for what’s being sold as the trip of a lifetime. – CBC
- Soprano Angel Blue Cancels All Remaining Opera Engagements This Season
She didn’t specify a reason in the announcement she made on social media, though she did state that she would keep her concert dates, which she made sure to list on her post. – Opera Now
- What Makes Music “Russian”
The question at stake was how Russian composers could create their own tradition while drawing on established European musical culture. – The Conversation
PEOPLE
- Conductor Herbert Blomstedt, 99
Good Morning,
Herbert Blomstedt, who led the San Francisco Symphony for ten years, died at 99 in Gothenburg, Sweden (NPR). He conducted in Detroit and Leipzig this year, in recent seasons from a piano bench.
The Crucible, a 27-year-old industrial arts school in West Oakland, closed without notice and told more than 150 staff and faculty to stop work, then laid them off (KQED). Its union says management ignored its cost-cutting proposals, weeks after the school received over $1.5 million in grants.
Only 9 percent of respondents to the American Alliance of Museums’ survey accept AI in exhibitions, and 43 percent expect humans to produce all museum content (ARTnews). The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art will use AI in a VR recreation of Whistler’s Peacock Room.
Vatican restorers conclude Michelangelo made his own brushes, some with ten heads spanning nearly six inches, to paint the Last Judgment’s parallel hatching the way his chisel cut stone (Artnet).
All of our stories below.
- Stars Flock To Join London Production Of Gisèle Pelicot Trial
Director Milo Rau’s documentary staging of the trial of Pelicot’s husband, who repeatedly drugged her and invited men to rape her, will be produced and livestreamed by the Young Vic, with a cast including Kate Winslet, Brian Cox, Indira Varma, Tobias Menzies, Rosie O’Donnell, Suzy Eddie Izzard, Juliet Stevenson, and others. – WhatsOnStage (UK)
- Why Musicians Are Touring Less
Attending a concert is no longer always just a night out. With the rise of music residencies and select-city tours, artists can save on travel costs while fans are shelling out for what’s being sold as the trip of a lifetime. – CBC
- Soprano Angel Blue Cancels All Remaining Opera Engagements This Season
She didn’t specify a reason in the announcement she made on social media, though she did state that she would keep her concert dates, which she made sure to list on her post. – Opera Now
- What Makes Music “Russian”
The question at stake was how Russian composers could create their own tradition while drawing on established European musical culture. – The Conversation
THEATRE
VISUAL
- Our Primal Need To Be Needed
We have a real need to be needed. And yet many forces—thinking machines, aging, economic and social dislocation—appear to be making us feel redundant. Are we building a world in which no one is particularly necessary? Do we already live in such a world? – The New Yorker
- Defining The Artificial State
We have not a single piece of meaningful legislation in the United States Congress about artificial intelligence. We have essentially nothing about social media. This is something that we’re now battling out in the courts. – The Walrus
- The Telephone’s Role In Changing Intimacy
This may strike you as a little paranoid. The rise of the telephone, in the past century and a half—from the rotary diallers at home and the boxes in the street to the smartphones in every pocket—is associated with a change that, broadly speaking, we consider positive. – The New Yorker
- Physical Witness Becomes More Important In The Age Of AI
For a time, the photograph or moving image acquired its own evidential authority: seeing something recorded was, with reasonable caveats, grounds for accepting that an event had occurred. – The Conversation
- Naming That Sense Of Civic Disconnect Of Values
How do we give shape to this disquiet? We might call it fatigue, burnout, or ‘just needing a break from the world’, but often it’s grief – mourning for a faith we once had in fellow citizens to recognise a certain decency or sense of fairness. It isn’t partisan; it’s human, and it has a name. – Psyche