AJ Four Ways:
Text Only (by date) | headlines only
- Frank Gehry’s Final Concert Hall Is Taking Shape In Los Angeles
Just two blocks from Gehry’s most famous performance venue, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Kohl Hall at the Colburn School will be a 1,000-seat auditorium with an in-the-round layout, a full-size stage and an orchestra pit so that it can host both concerts and operas. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
- Frankfurt Book Fair: State Of The Publishing Industry
Declining turnover, a rise in reading in the original language, second-hand book sales and the shift to audio and digital subscription models were all “putting pressure on the profitability of the sector.” – The Bookseller
- Indy’s Newfields Museum Director Steps Down
Belinda Tate began at Newfields in 2023, days before the surprise exit of former CEO and president Colette Pierce Burnette and after a years-long spotlight had been on Newfields in part due to controversial language in a 2021 posting of the director job, which led to the resignation of then-CEO and president Charles Venable. – Indianapolis Star
- Adelaide Is A Festival Capital. But Its Middle Class Arts Scene Needs A Reboot
Adelaide holds down the fort as Australia’s festival capital, with Adelaide Fringe and Adelaide Festival among the nation’s top tier for arts and culture. But when Petra Kalive arrived in the city at the beginning of 2025, she found a theatre sector that had been severely diminished by years of funding cuts. – ArtsHub
- Montpellier’s Main Concert Hall Closed Following Storm Damage
The Corum, a conference center-cum-arts complex with three performance spaces, suffered major water damage from heavy rains last week and has been shuttered out of safety concerns. There’s not yet any target date for reopening, and events are being moved to other venues in the city. – Pizzicato
- Trends In Public Radio: Donations Up, Migration To Digital
The survey of more than 17,000 respondents from 49 U.S. public stations during June and July 2026 shows that since 2013, public radio listening has moved from 83% broadcast vs. 16% digital to this year’s 54% broadcast vs. 43% digital, with Jacobs forecasting “those two lines are going to cross [eventually].” – InsideRadio
- Is AI A Brain Or A Database?
Human intuitions and mental models about how technology works govern how people use it. The idea of AI as software – deterministic, fact-retrieving – causes people to misinterpret the outputs they provide. – The Conversation
- Skydance Says It Will Make $6B In Cuts At Combined Paramount/Warner
“It’s important also to say this is not about cost reduction. This is about reengineering how we work. This is about reinventing the business model. So it’s not just synergies and reducing costs; it’s also improving how we perform. – Deadline
- Why Peter Greenaway’s Film With Dustin Hoffman Is Trapped In Post-Production Limbo
Production began (after a false start) on Lucca Mortis in early 2024; despite constant, expensive delays, a first draft version was ready by the end of that year. Then bigger difficulties arose: there are now two different versions of the movie (retitled Tower Stories), neither complete, along with an ugly contract dispute. – The Guardian
- Traditional Georgian Dance Makes For Hair-Raising Fight Scenes In Met Opera’s “Macbeth”
“It’s the type of dancing that makes you gasp. Jumps that originate from — and land on — the kneecaps. Turns that propel the body across a room as if powered by a motor. … It’s electrifying and extraordinarily athletic — and a surprising choice for Verdi’s take on Shakespeare’s tale.” – The New York Times
- Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater Goes All-In On Streaming
“Called Watch Wilma, the digital theater platform will offer limited runs of shows filmed and staged at the Wilma and partner organizations, including Philadelphia’s Azuka Theatre and Pittsburgh’s City Theatre, for audiences both nationally and internationally.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
- Stolen Renoirs Have Been Recovered, Six Suspects Arrested
Two paintings, “Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano” and “Young Woman at the Well,” have been reclaimed by police after having been stolen last month from the Renoir Museum in Cagnes-sur-Mer, near Nice. (Two other paintings were dropped and left behind by the thieves while they were absconding.) – AP
- Artist Manager For Rock Stars To Be Kennedy Center’s Next Programming Chief
“Rick Canny, … a longtime talent manager who worked with several prominent rock stars from the 1980s and ‘90s, … will soon be elevated to an executive artistic director position, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.” – CNN (MSN)
- Van Gogh Museum And Dutch Government Settle Dispute; Renovation Can Begin
“After almost three years of negotiations, the Van Gogh Museum … and the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science have finalised a successful mediation and settlement agreement, paving the way for the €104 million ‘Masterplan 2028’ renovation project,” which will begin in the fall of 2028. – ThePrint
- Cooper Union Finds A New Lessee/Owner New York’s Chrysler Building
“New York’s iconic Chrysler Building, standing on land owned and leased by the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, is transferring ownership to the commercial real-estate company Tishman Speyer and other investors, who are planning an extensive overhaul of the Art Deco landmark after years of neglect.” – ARTnews
- Theaster Gates Bought America’s Last China Factory
Good Morning,
Theaster Gates, the artist whose installations sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, has bought Pickard China, the last U.S. maker of high-end porcelain: a 12-person factory in Antioch, Illinois, producing a quarter of what it did in the 1970s (NPR). Meanwhile a historian in Edinburgh has found that Till the Bells Ring, a 46-minute talkie written in Scots, premiered in October 1926, a year before The Jazz Singer, widely thought of as the first talkie; two of its reels sit unscreened in the BFI archive (The Guardian).
Canadian poet Anne Carson won the Nobel Prize in Literature for work that, “in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms” (AP).
The Kennedy Center is closed to the public as “dangerously dilapidated,” yet about 100 National Symphony musicians keep rehearsing in its concert hall, entering by routes management calls safe (The New York Times). Leon Botstein, who led Bard College for 50 years, resigned every remaining post after congressional investigators surfaced an email he sent Jeffrey Epstein (The Guardian). And the U.S. share of major-studio TV spending has fallen from 94% to 64% in 25 years, according to a union-commissioned study (Los Angeles Times).
All of the stories we collected below.
- What The Bayeux Tapestry Is Really About
One might subtitle the embroidered narrative “The Importance of Respecting an Oath.” Or, perhaps, simply “FAFO.” – Prospect (UK)
- Documented: How Much Of LA’s TV Production Business Has Left
Over the last quarter-century, with the rise of streaming and the offshoring of production, the U.S. share of major-studio spending on TV episodes has fallen from 94% to 64%, according to a report commissioned by seven entertainment industry unions. – Los Angeles Times
- Getting Duncan Sheik’s Final Musical To The Stage Just Days After His Death
“What I am doing,” says music supervisor Or Matias of Memoirs of Amorous Gentlemen, now in previews on Broadway, “is putting the puzzle pieces together in a way that best serves the evolution that (we need) during previews.” Says book writer Leah Nanako Winkler, “I feel like I’m trying to finish this painting.” – TheaterMania
- Music Fraudster Jailed For Using Thousands Of Bots To Fake Stream Music Tracks
He had created “hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs,” then dispersed billions of automated streams among them so that the bots could avoid raising any red flags by all targeting the same song at once. All together, the fake songs generated substantially more streams than some of the most popular artists today. – Ars Technica
- Pangram Says Use Of Its AI Detector Is Increasing
Many still dispute the validity and accuracy of AI detection tools. The Atlantic’s Matteo Wong wrote that “while Pangram is accumulating the power to end reputations and careers, the tool does make mistakes, perhaps to a greater extent than is currently understood”. – Bookseller
- How Defunding Arts Education Brought About Civic Unraveling
The Bicentennial offered everyday people in the middle of the map novel opportunities to appreciate and deliberate what America was, and it succeeded in this because it conducted more than a history lesson: Art was surprisingly paramount in this event of collective self-identification, historical commemoration, and political convocation. – ARTnews
- A Ballet Where The Onstage Pianist Calls The Shots
In 2012, superstar pianist Lang Lang contacted choreographer Stanton Welch hoping to collaborate. The result was Sons de l’âme, an evening-length ballet in which the onstage pianist plays Chopin while the dancers execute their steps in time with whatever tempos the pianist chooses. Here Welch talks about how the piece has developed. – Gramilano
- For Lifelong Learning, It’s Better With Partners
The internet is full of resources for self-directed learning: for any subject, you can easily find blog posts about essential texts, links to university syllabi, and hours of YouTube lectures. When I attempted to make use of these guides, however, I often found myself disengaged and unfocused. – Psyche
- How Venice Built The World’s First Ghetto
In 1516, the Venetian Senate voted to create the world’s first ‘ghetto’. All Jews then living in the city – as well as any others who might come later – were ordered to move immediately to a small island in the northeastern sestiere of Cannaregio. It was anything but appealing. – Aeon
- What’s Special About Anne Carson’s Work
At a time when scholarship and creative writing are often treated as separate pursuits, Carson has shown how deeply they belong together. Her work is a reminder that thought and imagination don’t compete with one another, but continually enrich each other. – The Conversation
- Theaster Gates Has Bought An Old-School Porcelain Factory
Pickard China in Antioch, Illinois is the last remaining manufacturer of high-end porcelain in the US — and with a shrinking market, aging and deteriorating equipment, and the retirement of the last Pickard family owner, the factory’s future seemed grim. Then Gates decided to make Pickard China part of his artistic practice. – NPR
- How Data Visualization Tells Stories
Because data, and how we present it, tells a story, it’s important to transform results responsibly into visuals. A good visualization can show you really interesting patterns in your data; however, a bad visualization, like truncating the Y-axis or choosing the wrong type of plot, can lead you or your audience to the wrong conclusions. – The Scientist
- Why Annie Dillard Deserved A Nobel
She deserved the prize, first of all, as the major practitioner of literary nonfiction. The committee has historically overlooked this genre. – 3 Quarks Daily
- The Growing Popularity Of Audiobook Walking Clubs
Audiobook walking clubs are now emerging around the country, turning an activity typically enjoyed solo into a low-pressure social event. For about an hour, everyone listens to a book of their choosing as they walk, then gathers afterward to compare notes, trade recommendations, and—in many cases—make plans to see each other again. – Time
- Maybe “The Jazz Singer” Wasn’t The First Talkie After All
“The 46-minute feature film (Till the Bells Ring), featuring spoken parts and synchronised sound throughout, premiered in Edinburgh in October 1926, a year before The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, hit New York’s screens to widespread fanfare and took its place in the history books.” – The Guardian
- Despite Being Shut Down, Voice Of America Still Costs $1.6 Million Per Week
“It’s been more than a year since the Trump administration dismantled Voice of America, the largest U.S. international broadcaster, saying ‘taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda.’ Yet the agency is costing the government millions even as it stopped operations.” – Fortune
- UK Conservatives Plan To Cut £1 Billion From Culture Budget If Elected
“Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has revealed that her party plans to cut budgets extensively if it wins the next election, including slashing £1bn from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.” – The Stage (UK)
- Leon Botstein Resigns All His Remaining Positions At Bard College
The move came less than a day after a particularly damning email message from Botstein to Jeffrey Epstein became public and a Congressman called for an investigation. Botstein had been president of the college for 51 years until last May and was still a professor and a mainstay of Bard’s music programs. – The Guardian
- Trump Administration Says Kennedy Center Is Too Dangerous For Public But Safe Enough For National Symphony To Rehearse There
“So far, none of the musicians have encountered collapsing concrete garage decks, falling 2,500-pound roof sections or ‘electrical explosions’ — risks the center’s management says lurk everywhere.” – The New York Times