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- 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
- Robert Wilson, An Explanation (By The Artist)
“I like to tell stories,” Wilson declares early in his book, and he is very good at it. – BookForum
- 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
- Change of Subject: Cold Turkey’s Latest Offer<a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/11/change-of-subject-cold-turkeys-latest-offer.html" title="Change of Subject: Cold Turkey’s Latest Offer” rel=”nofollow”>When
- 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)
- And Now… Your Classical Music Concert In Virtual Reality
“In 45 minutes, I swam through oceans, plodded through snow, saw a cathedral grow around me and watched as a craggy mountainside spawned a gang of nefarious gremlin creatures. It was unrelentingly stimulating.” – The New York Times
- 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
- 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
- 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
- K-Pop’s Firm Control Of Its Young Star Performers
The contracts banned such behavior as having an “insincere attitude,” entering “inappropriate romantic relationships” or criticizing the record label. – The New York Times
- 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
- The Former Director Of The Paris Opera Ballet Is Now Choreographing For The Folies Bergère
Said ex-director is Benjamin Millepied, also known as a former New York City Ballet star, founder-director of L.A. Dance Project, choreographer for the movie Black Swan, and Natalie Portman’s ex-husband. He’s staging three shows, each built on the music of great singer-songwriters, at the Folies this month. – The Times (UK)
- Russell Brand Convicted Of Rape And Sexual Assault
The British actor-comedian was convicted of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault involving four women. He was acquitted of two rape counts and one count of attempted indecent assault. The incidents happened more than 20 years ago. – AP
- Art Dealer Brent Sikkema’s Ex-Husband Sentenced To Life In Prison For His Murder
“Daniel Sikkema was found guilty in May of charges tied to a murder-for-hire plot … that took place in Rio de Janeiro in January 2024. After a two-week trial in New York, Daniel was convicted of three charges: murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country.” – ARTnews
- How The Various US TV Networks Covered The “Blue Tsunami”: Analysis
“The networks were following the same returns, and by the end of the evening, the same political story was taking shape. What differed was how they told it — and how quickly they moved from counting votes to explaining what went wrong for Republicans and what comes next for Democrats.” – TheWrap (Yahoo!)
- 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
- Conductor Herbert Blomstedt, 99
Over his seven-decade career, he was music director or principal conductor of the flagship orchestras in Oslo, Danish and Swedish Radio, Dresden, San Francisco, and Leipzig — then spent his 80s and 90s as a surprisingly energetic and much-beloved guest conductor all over Europe, the US, and East Asia. – NPR
- Virginia and DC Sue to Block Trump’s Arch
Good Morning,
Virginia and the District of Columbia sued to stop construction of Trump’s 250-foot arch, which would stand between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial at twice the memorial’s height. Work could start this week, and the suit calls the approval process “hurried and preordained” (NPR).
A Bogotá judge ordered Colombia’s National Museum to restore 63 objects the new right-wing government removed on Oct. 15 as “political indoctrination,” including a pride flag and the pen, made from a bullet, that signed the 2016 peace agreement (The Art Newspaper).
The Phoenix Symphony ended its season on Nov. 1 and laid off all 66 musicians after years of deficits. Players, board and staff now say they may resume performing this month, though a $6.5 million gift is on hold (KJZZ).
La Bola Negra, a drama inspired by Federico García Lorca, is now the third-highest-grossing Spanish film ever at €36.7 million (Variety). For decades Lorca’s family and scholars kept his homosexuality out of print; his brother’s 1980 biography never uses the word (The Guardian).
After years of searching, the archaeological dig at Troy yielded its first musical instrument in more than 150 years of digging: a bone flute from about when Homer composed the Iliad (Smithsonian).
All of our stories below.
- Production Coordinator
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music seeks a Production Coordinator to join the Production team. Along with the Director of Production and the Production Manager, the Production Coordinator will assist in the management of all recitals, concerts, masterclasses and events across both SFCM buildings – the Ann Getty Center for Education and the Ute and William K. Bowes, Jr. Center for Performing Arts.
Reporting to the Director of Production, the Production Coordinator will act as lead Production representative for the Pre-College program, as well as any other event(s) to which they are assigned, and will be the main liaison between SFCM’s event team and the artists and organizers of the event.
Job Duties
- Assist the Director of Production in advancing event logistics and set-up needs
- Under the supervision of the Director of Production, implement and lead all logistics for an event such as executing stage changes and operating lighting, acoustic panels
- Ensure compliance with workplace and event policies
- Maintain efficient and effective communication with event staff, performers, and other stakeholders to ensure an event runs smoothly
- Serve as event production lead in rotation with Director of Production & Production Manager
- Works closely with the Pre-College & Continuing Education team to coordinate all production needs during Saturday Pre-College activities
- Assist the House Manager with crowd control as needed
- Work 1-2 evening events per week, as assigned
- Other duties as assigned
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- 2,800-Year-Old Bone Flute Discovered In Ruins Of Troy
The relic is the first musical instrument found at the site in 156 years of excavations. – Smithsonian Magazine
- After 20 Years, “Spring Awakening” Creators’ Second Musical Is Finally Making Its Mark
With their Broadway debut a smash hit, Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik expected their next musical, Nero (about the Roman emperor), would go far But, after a 2006 production in San Francisco, the piece got nothing more than workshops and showcases for producers. At long last, Nero is having its London premiere. – The Guardian
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- How One Dancer Brought Ballet To A Post-Industrial English Town
In the early years, Darius James said he would cover the word “ballet” on the van they took to do community workshops because he feared it would put people off before trying. – BBC
- Federico García Lorca Has Finally Become A Queer Icon In Spain Itself
While the Anglosphere has long seen the poet-playwright as a gay icon, that side of his life and work was for decades suppressed within his homeland. Any scholar who dared discuss the subject would be denied access to the family archives (and likely harassed by the Franco regime). That has finally changed. – The Guardian
- 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