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- Joshua Beamish On Why He’s A(nother) Ballet Company In Vancouver
“While Vancouver offers a wealth of contemporary-dance companies and high-caliber ballet schools, ‘no one is bringing classical ballet here beyond a touring Nutcracker, or producing it on a professional level,’ Beamish says. (The well-established Ballet BC performs mainly contemporary repertoire off-pointe.)” – Pointe Magazine
- Audiences For Public Readings Are Soaring
Across the country, the number of untethered readings disconnected from a specific publisher or magazine has skyrocketed over the past couple of years. These series act as dedicated, consistent spaces for people to come together and listen. – Electric Literature
- Public Statue Of Tina Turner Is The Latest To Be Scorned By Internet
“The way Tina’s fans are reacting really tells you something,” the mayor said. “All this passion, whether they love the sculpture or have some critiques, isn’t just about the art. It shows how incredibly special she is to them and to music history.” – The New York Times
- A Frank Lloyd Wright Movie?
The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has recently struck a licensing deal with Hollywood production company Galisteo Media to bring Wright’s story to the big screen as a movie. – Fast Company
- AI Joins The Argument About Whether This Caravaggio Is Authentic
There are three surviving versions of The Lute Player: one in the Wildenstein collection, one at the Hermitage, both authentic, and one in Britain, known as the “Badminton Lute Player”, which was long considered a copy. An AI analysis now says that the Badminton is genuine and the Wildenstein is a copy. – The Guardian
- Elon Musk Says He’s Building A Wikipedia Competitor
In June, Musk raised eyebrows by promising to “rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge, adding missing information and deleting errors,” using his Grok AI. That’s the same one with a nasty habit of heil-Hitlering. – NiemanLab
- Can’t Stop The Music: Russian Musicians Defy Putin
Musicians have become influential activists and symbols of political resistance, just as they were in the final years of the Soviet Union. The Kremlin has repeatedly tried to suppress the music scene and punish its leaders, a sign that Putin seems to understand the danger they pose. – The Atlantic (Yahoo!)
- SAG-AFTRA Union Responds To Use Of AI “Actor”
“The real issue at play is how our work is exhibited and what kinds of permissions and compensations we get for its use.” – Variety
- Mass MoCA (Yes, The Museum) Is Starting Its Own Record Label
The huge contemporary art museum, in the old factory town of North Adams in Massachusetts’s northeast corner, is launching Mass MoCA Records, which will feature both music recordings from studio sessions, live concerts, and museum residencies as well as spoken-word performances and sound art appearing at the museum. – Artnet
- UK Book Shops Will Now Sell E-Books To Compete With Amazon
The online store Bookshop.org is launching a platform through which independent bookshops in the UK will be able to sell ebooks as an alternative to Amazon’s Kindle offering. – The Guardian
- Stephen King Is The Most-Banned Author In The US
PEN America’s “Banned in the USA,” released Wednesday, tracks more than 6,800 instances of books being temporarily or permanently pulled for the 2024-2025 school year. The new number is down from more than 10,000 in 2023-24, but still far above the levels of a few years ago. – APNews
- Why It’s So Expensive To Run A Show On Broadway
Ultimately what causes shows to take longer to recoup their initial capitalization is the high costs associated with operating a show. It’s well documented that the single largest line item in most shows budgets is the cost of being in the theatre. – Broadway World
- Pennsylvania Academy Of Fine Arts Starts Revitalizing Its Academic Program In Deal With Temple University
Almost two years after it abruptly eliminated its degree-granting programs, PAFA is entering a ten-year partnership with Temple’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture which will enable PAFA to offer academic courses and give Temple MFA students and grads access to PAFA’s studio space and equipment. – The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
- Federal Judge In Florida Rules That First Amendment Doesn’t Forbid Libraries From Removing Certain Books
The suit in question concerned the Escambia County (Pensacola) School Board’s decision to block its libraries from stocking And Tango Makes Three, the well-known children’s book about the male penguin couple who raised a chick together at New York’s Central Park Zoo. – WUSF (Tampa)
- Broadway Actors Are Preparing To Strike Just As Peak Season Is Starting
Actors’ Equity negotiations with the Broadway League are continuing for now, even though the last three-year contract ended on September 28. The number-one issue is healthcare and the contribution the Broadway League makes to the union’s healthcare fund. – Reuters
- Trump White House Dismisses Over Three-Quarters Of National Council On The Humanities
Only four of the 26 members of the advisory body remain; the rest were terminated via a notably terse email from the White House personnel office. Meetings require a quorum of 14 members, and new members must be confirmed by the Senate, so for now the Council is paralyzed. – The Washington Post (Yahoo!)
- FCC Considers Relaxing Limits On How Many Media Outlets Corporations May Own
“The agency voted to take public comment … on a rule that limits a company from owning more than two stations in a market, and a restriction on mergers between any two of the four major broadcast networks. Such a review … is mandated by Congress every four years.” – Deadline
- Despite Federal Government Shutdown, Smithsonian, Kennedy Center And D.C. Monuments Are Open — For Now
The Smithsonian museums and National Gallery will remain open for as long as leftover cash-on-hand lasts, which will be at least through Monday. Kennedy Center events are privately financed and should proceed as scheduled. As for the monuments, it depends … – The Washington Post (MSN)
- Paris’s Picasso Museum Is Adding A Sculpture Garden
“Named ‘Picasso 2030,’ the project will create a space devoted to the artist’s sculptures by connecting a garden area behind the museum to an adjoining public park. Slated to open in 2030, the garden will span roughly 25,000-square-feet and be freely open to the public.” – Artnet
- Wild At Heart: Daphne Du Maurier, One Of English Lit’s Most Misunderstood Authors
“From the pages of After Midnight emerges a sense of du Maurier that’s far from the meek, naive narrator of Rebecca. These stories are the work of a protean, restless, and rather dangerous spirit with a decidedly pagan bent and a craving for solitude” — as well as a decided ambivalence about gender and sexuality. – Slate (Yahoo!)
- This Women Artist Was More Famous Than Rembrandt In Their Day. Why Did We Forget About Her?
Today, The Night Watch is one of the most famous paintings of all time, its creator lionized as one of the greatest artists to ever live. Meanwhile, the Koerten “thread painting” that once commanded a higher price than Rembrandt’s group portrait is lost, and its creator is virtually unknown to the general public. – Smithsonian Magazine
- Murder Investigation Launched As A Star Of France’s Early Music Scene Is Found Dead
Denis Raisin Dadre, 69, a recorder virtuoso and specialist in Renaissance reed instruments, founded Ensemble Doulce Mémoire in 1990 and developed an impressive array of programs in performance and on disc. His lifeless body was discovered in his apartment in Tours; drugs were found at the scene. – RTBF (Belgium) (via Google Translate)
- This Year’s Most-Anticipated Book Started As FanFic And Has A Movie Deal
SenLinYu, 34, started off writing Harry Potter fanfiction that blew up online during the pandemic, racking up more than 20m downloads. Sen’s Draco and Hermione (“Dramione”) fanfic, heavily inspired by The Handmaid’s Tale, has now been rewritten – with third-party IP necessarily removed – and published traditionally as Alchemised. – The Guardian
- Did Italy’s Agnelli Family Replace Art With Fakes During An Inheritance Dispute?
Italian prosecutors are investigating claims that members of the Agnelli family arranged for works by Monet and de Chirico to be replaced with forgeries in their villas during an inheritance dispute. – The Times
- Two Years Ago The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Declared Bankruptcy. Now It’s Back
On the road to their return, the musicians took on side jobs, staged free community concerts and fought to bring the symphony back through legal action. – CBC
- The Best International Feature Oscar Is Broken. Any Solution Could Make It Worse.
“The deadline for countries to submit movies for the 2026 Oscars’ international feature category arrives Wednesday. And, as usual, the submissions — each country gets to select one film — have produced no shortage of grievances and outrage.” – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
- Can TikTok Build Interest In Classical Music?
The program will support and elevate a select cohort of 10 U.K.-based creators passionate about classical music who are already making content about the genre on TikTok. The application to be part of Crescendo is now live here through Oct. 30. – Variety
- Public Media’s Moment To Shine (Or Not)
Public media stations reach 99% of the country’s population with free, noncommercial, local news, music and information. Yet their greatest strength — broadcast dominance built over decades — has become their most significant vulnerability. – Poynter
- Public Broadcasting Lost Federal Funding. But Public Broadcasting Continues
Although the massive wave of federal funding cuts may sometimes seem insurmountable for private donors to offset, cuts to public broadcasting are not so severe that private philanthropy cannot overcome them. – Washington Monthly
- The August Paris Opera Ballet Walks On The Wild Side For Its U.S. Tour
The world’s oldest ballet company is known to most of the world for the precise, pristine classicism. At home, though, it’s been performing cutting-edge contemporary work for years, and it’s bringing to the States a new work by perhaps the most un-Paris Opera Ballet choreographer out there, Hofesh Schechter. – The New York Times
- Living With People Whose Ideas You Don’t Like
We are indeed going to have to live with each other, barring apocalyptic violence—but we already have been for quite some time, and doing so has not required revisionist history of the sort we are now witnessing about one Charles James Kirk in particular. – Boston Review
- Father Of The Internet: We Created The Internet And Gave It Away For Free. What Happened?
Today, I look at my invention and I am forced to ask: is the web still free today? No, not all of it. Trading personal data for use certainly does not fit with my vision for a free web. – The Guardian
- What The AI Actor Tilly Says About The Bland State Of Movies Today
It is not on screen for long and perhaps vanishes just before you sense something’s off, but as things stand, “Tilly” doesn’t look obviously less real than many of the performers who appear on screen today. – The Guardian
- Italian Police Seize 21 Works From Dalí Exhibition As Suspected Forgeries
“The works were part of an exhibition, ‘Salvador Dalí, tra arte e mito’ (Salvador Dalí, between art and myth”) that had been on show in Rome for the first half of the year and last week opened at Parma’s Palazzo Tarasconi.” – AP
- Artisans Use Medieval Techniques To Restore One Of England’s Grandest Old Cathedrals
“York Minster is one of a very few cathedrals in Britain to have a full-time team of stonemasons working alongside about 50 glaziers, carpenters, painters, gilders and specialist electricians, all focused on preserving a building whose construction began in the early 13th century.” – The New York Times
