AJ Four Ways:
Text Only (by date) | headlines only
- Jay Maisel, Photographer Of Miles Davis And So Many More, Dies At 95
“While not necessarily his best photograph — he wished it had been sharper — the Davis picture became part of a portfolio of remarkable depth.” – The New York Times
- The Current President Of The United States Wants To Install A ‘Colossus’ Statue Of The First President
Of course, the “request” came on conservative social media site Truth Social. It “underscores a perception that he sees himself as curator-in-chief of the nation’s national museum.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Is Talk Of Extinction Simply Meant To Distract Us From The True Threats Of AI?
Timnit Gebru: Sometimes “I read quotes to people about artificial intelligence that I’ve gathered in my research, and I ask, What decade was this statement made in? Sometimes people get it right, but a lot of times they do not, because it all sounds the same.” – Wired
- The Warnermount Talks Will Continue Next Month
Hm: “A judge has instructed Paramount, California attorney general Rob Bonta, and the Writers Guild of America to sit down and talk face-to-face in a month.” – Vulture
- Just How Much Is Your TV Spying On You?
Oh, says the company doing the spying, not that much. “The word ‘continuously’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as Gamers Nexus demonstrated on LG TV keeping extensive logs of ambient conversations.” This seems fine. – The Verge
- Learning, Or Re-Learning, The Story Told By The Bayeux Tapestry
What could justify moving the fragile tapestry to Britain this year? Probably politics: “Foot by foot, fiber by fiber, this is the material proof of England’s entwinement with the continent 21 miles from its coast.” – The New York Times
- When Competent Is Free, What Costs?
This Week’s Highlights:
This week’s stories kept circling a question: what is worth paying for once competence is free? Fast Company declared — average work now carries almost no market value (Fast Company). But the counter-evidence arrived is all around us. Nature magazine asked whether AI could ever make an Einstein relativity-level discovery and suggested the gap is a creative leap no amount of data could produce (Nature). Students told The Walrus they miss the struggle that made a grade mean something (The Walrus). So scarcity is migrating from output to effort, judgment, and provenance.
Another cultural pattern is more consequential. Operabase, the scheduling database the opera world runs on, is now an events company’s product (The Violin Channel). The BBC is renegotiating the charter that permits it to exist, largely out of public view (The Guardian). And authors say agents and publishers are claiming shares of the Anthropic settlement before the checks even clear (TechCrunch). Whoever owns the infrastructure sets the terms, and culture is discovering how little of its own it holds.
But the construction sector is ever-durable. Europe’s largest dance center is rising in Rotterdam (Gramilano), Brussels and Abu Dhabi finally have opening dates for new culture buildings, and Hollywood posted its biggest summer on record, at least before inflation (Variety).
All this week’s stories below, organized by topic.
- Elizabeth Sobol shares how the arts transform human emotional and physical wellbeing
Elizabeth Sobol, CEO of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, talks about how the arts can transform human emotional, physical and social wellbeing.
- ‘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
- How AI Has Been Transforming China’s Movie Industry
The Chinese film and video industry is being transformed by AI-driven storytelling, fueled by rapid advances in video generation software, and at ground zero are the so-called micro dramas that play out on millions of smartphones. – Los Angeles Times
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Auto-Tune As An Everyday Performance Tool
The debate has come a long way since the advent of Auto-Tune, when artists like Cher and T-Pain had hits that used the technology to turn their recorded vocals into something markedly robotic. – The New York Times
- 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
- Mexico’s First Female Professional Sculptor, Geles Cabrera, Has Died At 100
“When Cabrera began her long career, few other women in Mexico were taken seriously as artists, and sculpture was something that only men were expected to do. While she enjoyed some early recognition, … major institutions only started noticing her pioneering work much later in her life.” – ARTnews
- 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
- 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)
- US Supreme Court Orders Blue State AGs to Respond To Red State Paramount Antitrust Objections
The SCOTUS deadline is one day after the dozen blue states are set to argue against the David Ellison-owned Para’s desire for a $1.88 billion bond in front of a federal judge in Oakland. – Deadline
- Operabase Is Acquired By Events.com
The go-to web platform for finding scheduling information about opera worldwide, Operabase developed the technology to convert fragmented information from different companies into a machine-readable, searchable record. Available in 31 languages, it has been online for three decades and is used by virtually the entire industry. – The Violin Channel
- The Day the Twin Towers Vanished in a Shroud of Ash<a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/09/the-day-the-twin-towers-vanished-in-a-shroud-of-ash.html" title="The Day the Twin Towers Vanished in a
- A Whiteface Incident At Finnish National Ballet
Brazilian dancer Nayara Lopes of Philadelphia Ballet spent this past season with FNB in Helsinki. In February, she was rehearsing the role of Cupid in Don Quixote when she was asked to wear white makeup for the staging. (As one might expect, she is now back in Philadelphia.) – Dance Magazine
- 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
- FCC Approves Transfer Of Penn State’s NPR Station
“The Federal Communications Commission has approved the transfer of WPSU’s broadcast licenses from Penn State University to news/talk WHYY Philadelphia (90.9), clearing the principal regulatory hurdle for a transaction designed to preserve public media service across central and northern Pennsylvania.” – Inside Radio
- 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!)
- Sacha Baron Cohen In Quentin Tarantino’s First Stage Play (Wait, What?)
The play, titled The Popinjay Cavalier and set in Europe in the 1830s, will be produced by Sonia Friedman in London’s West End next spring. – Deadline
- “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
- The Acrobats Who Entertain Drivers Stuck In Nairobi’s Horrendous Traffic Jams
“Nairobi’s street acrobats first began appearing in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they have since become normalized at traffic stops in and around the city, with acrobats taking advantage of gridlocks to perform in exchange for cash tips. It is how they earn a living.” – AP
- 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
- How, And Why, The BBC Must Renegotiate The Terms Of Its Existence Every Decade
The BBC’s charter, the legal document which enables the national broadcaster’s existence, must be renewed every ten years. That renewal results from a multi-year negotiation, with plenty of public participation, between the network and the national government — a process largely hidden from public view. – The Guardian
- For The First Time, Netflix Will Report Box Office Numbers
Netflix will start reporting box office grosses with its upcoming expected Oscar contender, “La Bola Negra,” a queer drama from directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi that the mega-streamer acquired after its acclaimed premiere at Cannes earlier this year. – The Wrap