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- Geneva’s Orchestre De La Suisse Romande Names Tugan Sokhiev Principal Conductor
“The initial three-season appointment will begin with the 2026–27 season, marking the conductor’s first major long-term leadership position since stepping down from his posts at the Bolshoi Theatre and the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse in 2022.” – Moto Perpetuo
- French Superstar Patrick Bruel Detained By Police Over Multiple Sexual Assault Charges
“The singer became a major star across the French-speaking world in the 1980s and 1990s with a string of hits that became part of French popular culture. He also appeared in more than 40 film and television productions. … (He faces) allegations by at least 13 women of rape, attempted rape and sexual assault.” – AP
- Wilma “Billie” Tisch, 98, One Of New York’s Leading Cultural Philanthropists
The wife of Larry Tisch, one of the brothers who made Loews into a conglomerate, she oversaw the donation of millions of dollars to Jewish and cultural organizations, notable among them the WNYC Foundation, the Tisch Children’s Zoo in Central Park, and the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. – The New York Times
- Hampshire College Confirms It Will Offer Final Semester This Fall
‘Hampshire College says it has secured financing that will allow it to complete a fall 2026 semester before closing for good, reversing concerns raised last week that the school might not have enough money to carry out the process.” – Boston.com
- How America Lost Control Of Its History
A nation defined by blood and soil—built around a shared religion or ethnicity—can survive divergent narratives. To a country built on an idea, though, and bound together by a shared understanding of our history, the inability to tell a common story might well prove fatal. – The Atlantic
- AI Backlash: Reaching For Vinyl
Good Morning,
Three stories today circle a backlash to AI: when the machines flood the zone, people reach for what they can hold. A wave of artists is now producing deliberate “anti-slop” — work whose entire value proposition is that a human sweated over it (The Guardian). The Walrus argues the real scandal of that prize-winning AI story wasn’t the machine but how fast everyone rushed to defend or dismiss it, instead of asking what we actually want from art (The Walrus). Meanwhile in downtown LA, Dataland opens as the first museum built entirely around AI-generated art (Los Angeles Times).
The counter-move is showing up at the cash register. Tired of streaming’s churn, audiences are buying physical media again (ABC); vinyl keeps climbing, even as the making of records turns out to be an environmental mess (Yahoo).
Elsewhere, a group of states is lining up to sue over the Paramount-Warner deal (Gizmodo), and an artist recounts the Kennedy Center meltdown from the inside (NPR). And the Tonys crowned Schmigadoon best musical and Liberation best play (The New York Times).
All of our stories below.
Doug
- What I Saw From Inside The Kennedy Center Meltdown
Palermo also said Trump’s Truth Social post about handing control back to Congress sounded like an attempt to distance himself from an institution. He adds that he believes the Trump administration has driven the center into bankruptcy. – NPR
- Austin Opera seeks Director of Artistic Administration
Reporting to the General Director & CEO, the Director of Artistic Administration oversees Austin Opera’s artistic staff and works closely with the executive leadership (General Director & CEO, Music Director, and Chief Advancement Officer) and the artistic and production teams to plan and execute season programming at the Butler Performance Center and Long Center. Ensuring the seamless operations of multiple, concurrent artistic programming streams, the Director of Artistic Administration is a key partner in fulfilling the company’s strategic goals to provide outstanding arts experiences that reflect the Austin community.
Please go to https://austinopera.org/about/join-austin-opera/ to see a full job description.
- The Problem With Responses To AI Creations
At its core, this is a debate about values. A short story implies a human artistic act with intentional imaginative labour—the exact practice whose future is now at risk if the literary world doesn’t take a stand. – The Walrus
- Will People Embrace The First AI Art Museum?
Dataland — a museum built with artificial intelligence — arrives as debates explode across socio-political lines about the impact of the advancing technology on our culture, cognition, communication, economy, environment and careers, including in the arts. – Los Angeles Times
- Tired Of Streaming, People Are Turning To Physical Media
“Ten years ago, the average age of people walking in here were, 40, 50, 60. Now [its] 20 and 22, we are even getting teenagers.” – ABC
- States Say They Will Sue To Block Paramount/Warner Deal
If Paramount doesn’t lock this down by October, it’s on the hook to pay shareholders a near-$6.9 million daily fee. – Gizmodo
- Paramount Launches A Games Studio
Paramount Games Studio launches as Paramount Skydance is awaiting regulatory approval on its pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. WBD has its own in-house video game studio, which produces titles based on Harry Potter, “Game of Thrones,” the DC Universe and more WBD IP. – Variety
- Sotheby’s Tried To Quietly Sell A Pollock For $50M. It Didn’t Go Well
According to one source familiar with the effort, Sotheby’s could not find enough bidders to get the auction off the ground. The auction was ultimately called off, though it remains unclear whether the painting was returned to Glimcher, sold privately, or remains with Sotheby’s. – ARTnews
- Audiobook Sales Up 9 Percent In 2025, To $2.4B
General fiction accounted for the largest share of audiobook revenue at 27%, with science fiction/fantasy, romance, and mysteries/thrillers/suspense rounding out the top genres. The fastest-growing genres in 2025 were humor, general fiction, and children’s, including YA. – Publishers Weekly
- The Artists Producing ‘Anti-Slop’ In Response To Generative AI
“That spirit of rejection seems to be coalescing into its own design aesthetic – a move towards the conspicuously handmade, the janky, even the primitive.” – The Guardian (UK)
- Trying To Remember Which Memes Were Important Back In The Day?
The British Film Institute has your back. – The New York Times
- Petit Cabinet #7: ‘Just Two More Times to Sleep’<a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/06/petit-cabinet-7-just-two-more-times-to-sleep.html" title="Petit Cabinet #7: ‘Just Two More Times to
- Minneapolis Gets A Massive Land Art Mural
Franco-Swiss artist Saype “said he decided to pick Minneapolis for the project during the federal immigration enforcement surge after seeing neighbors helping each other.” – Minnesota Public Radio
- Why Is Philly’s Gem Of A Bridge So Badly Neglected?
“The University Avenue Bridge was designed and built as a prime specimen of the City Beautiful aesthetic. … Today, the bridge that connects West Philadelphia and Grays Ferry is a monument to decrepitude.” – Philadelphia Inquirer
- What’s Gone Deeply Wrong With Social Media
“Something seems to have broken down in the functionality of the internet, between Facebook’s erratic algorithm and Google search results now headed by fabricated, AI-generated content and sponsored ads.” – El País English
- When Los Angeles Turns The Cameras On Itself
“There’s something really ugly and beautiful about Los Angeles, I think, and that’s what these films capture – the idea that anything could happen here, that people could become overnight famous in LA for something they did really well or something really horrible.” – NPR
- The New School In Manhattan Lays Off Nearly 90 People
It’s a body blow to the institution’s humanities sectors. “All 19 impacted faculty members were in the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and the New School for Social Research.” – Hyperallergic
- Vinyl Is Back, But It’s Also Polluting The Planet
“Modern vinyl records are crafted with PVC resin, which makes up more than 75% of an average disk The synthetic polymer itself is made of chlorine and fossil fuel-derived feed stock.” Um, yikes? – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
- Eight Great Moments From The Tonys Stage
Bernadette Peters, Neil Patrick Harris, P!nk, Bowen Yang, André DeShields, and Leslie Odom Jr. added extra glam to a star-studded night – one that also featured strong performances from the casts of Schmigadoon! and Ragtime. – Boston Globe
- What Steven Spielberg Has Taught Critic Wesley Morris
“Thank you for daring and caring and trying to show us the light, to keep the lights on, as the artistic system you worshiped and symbolized and helped redefine renounces itself.” – The New York Times
- Do We Really Care If Memoirs Are Truthful?
“The facts may not totally line up, but the emotions are all present and accounted for.” – Washington Post (MSN)
- At The Tonys, Schmigadoon Wins Best New Musical; Liberation Wins Best New Play
Schmigadoon! winning might give it an economic boost, though Liberation has closed. Other big winners are Ragtime and Death of a Salesman. – The New York Times
- Writers, Directors, Critics, And Superfans Choose Their Favorite Spielberg Films
“He came of age in the American new wave era but in spirit belonged neither to that nor fully to Hollywood’s golden age studio system that preceded it.” – The Guardian (UK)
- The Strangest Skills 38 Tony Nominees For Their Roles
“Broadway actors need to shine in all sorts of ways. Some are obvious (mastering an accent). Some are surprises (mastering a horse).” – The New York Times
- Sure, Write What You Know, But Write What Scares You
“When you sense a story, or glimpse a scene, or feel a character coming to life, you stop, step back, consider what in that might scare you most. … Let that dread jolt you loose. Then—and this is key for me—find a way to make it worse.” – LitHub
- The Tony Awards, Updated Live
In case you can’t tune in … – Playbill
- A New Documentary Shows Just How Much Movie-Makers Can’t Handle The Reality Of Michael Jackson
Capitalizing on his name is one things, as the fictional Michael heads to a billion-dollar take at the box office, but Netflix is also, rather disgustingly, cashing in. – HuffPost
- The 1980s Centered A Neon-Colored End Of The World, And Now It’s All Coming To A Theatre Near You
Revisiting the 1980s, a decade whose “reality pulsed with cultural Balkanization, financial erosion, systemic disinvestment, and televised neurosis, the American theatre conjures a cultural imagination crowded with the outsiders, monsters, con artists, hungry things, and chosen kindred of the analog twilight.” – American Theatre
- An Appreciation For Kanya King, Who Changed And ‘Revolutionized’ Black British Culture
The founder of the Mobo Awards was “engaging, self-effacing, funny, modest. Someone with so much to brag about but who was so humble. Her superpower, it turns out, was kindness and warmth.” – The Guardian (UK)
