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- The City Of Boston Gets A New Arts Chief
“Many cities are facing affordability crises, lack of access to physical space for creative work, and tighter budgets. It’s more important than ever to have leaders who can engage planning and policy systems and ensure the creative sector is at the table.” – WBUR
- Inside The Project To Remake Paris’ Catacombs
Over the past five months, architects, designers, technicians and masons have been renovating this vast tomb — installing new lighting and ventilation systems, restoring the bone walls, and preparing new audio guides. – The New York Times
- UK Bans Ye (Kanye West) From Entering Country
“The rapper formerly known as Kanye West was barred Tuesday from entering the U.K., where he was scheduled to headline the Wireless Festival in July, after a backlash over Ye’s history of antisemitic remarks.” – AP
- Why It’s So Difficult To Get Our Heads Around AI
Artificial intelligence is both a technology and a theology, and in its latter aspect, it too often resembles a doctrinal dispute among an assortment of shrieking priests. – The Nation
- Justice Department Settles Investigation Into Broadway Touring
The Justice Department has quietly resolved a yearslong investigation into possible anticompetitive practices by a major player in the lucrative touring market for Broadway shows, saying it decided not to prosecute the company. – The New York Times
- Alternative Conservative Entrance Exam Gains Traction In US Schools
The CLT stands out because it mainly features passages from noted philosophers, religious scholars, scientists and authors in the canon of Western literature, including Plato, St. Augustine, Dante and Shakespeare. Students can take the test at a traditional testing site or online at home. – Washington Post
- How Larry McMurtry Convinced E. Annie Proulx To Let Him Adapt “Brokeback Mountain” For The Screen
“Proulx (said) she had already gotten ‘a couple of anything-you-want film tenders.’ But Larry had said the magic word: ‘West.’ Some would-be producers saw a story of forbidden love that could be set anywhere. Larry, like Proulx, saw the tale rooted in one specific place.” – TheWrap (Yahoo!)
- Betty Buckley, Broadway’s First Grizabella In “Cats”, Writes About The New Drag-Ball Production
“Cats has always been a ballroom: Distinct personalities enter the floor, presenting their style and story, and a community watches to see who commands the room. This new production doesn’t impose anything foreign onto the musical. For me, it illuminates what was always there.” – The New York Times
- Major Arts Institutions In Minneapolis-St. Paul Are (Mostly) Bouncing Back
After some very challenging years, the Walker Art Center, Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Minnesota Opera have all posted budget surpluses; while the Minnesota Orchestra’s deficit has grown, earned income and attendance are both up. – The Minnesota Star Tribune (MSN)
- Can This New Theater For Magic Revive Chicago’s Magnificent Mile?
“There are a lot of maybes involved in The Hand & The Eye, the 36,000-square-foot magic-themed entertainment and dining complex set to open this month inside the distinctively eccentric McCormick Mansion on the corner of Ontario and Rush Streets alongside the struggling Magnificent Mile.” – Chicago Tribune (Yahoo!)
- U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Proactively Changed Material After Trump Returned To Office
“Unlike his posture toward the Smithsonian, Trump has not publicly commented on the USHMM’s content. … But two former museum employees who left amid the changes told POLITICO they believed the museum was altering its content preemptively, so as to not draw unwanted negative attention from the Trump administration.” – Politico
- Temple University’s Next Arts Partner: Opera Philadelphia
“Students will sit in on Opera Philadelphia rehearsals and attend master classes by opera artists, and emerging vocalists will have the opportunity to audition as cover artists (understudies) for small or non-singing roles in Opera Philadelphia productions.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
- Trump White House Says Halting Construction Of Ballroom Is National Security Risk
“In a motion filed on Friday, US National Park Service lawyers say that the federal judge’s order to suspend construction of the new facility is ‘threatening grave national-security harms to the White House, the president and his family, and the president’s staff.’” – The Guardian
- Good Morning
Is it wrong to write a book with AI? The New Yorker asks the question directly, and today’s stories suggest that the real problem isn’t the answer — it’s that nobody agrees on what “real” means anymore. Bollywood is racing ahead with AI filmmaking while Hollywood’s union rules hold it back (Reuters). A writing teacher wrestles with whether we can even police AI in prose (The Third Hemisphere). And AI translators are fluent in dozens of languages but see the world through a single cultural lens (The Conversation).
Meanwhile, Es Devlin gathered artists and tech researchers at a kiln to make clay pots and talk about AI (The Guardian) — as if the answer to the machine question might be found in your hands. The Writers Guild apparently thinks stability is the answer: it’s agreed to a tentative four-year deal with studios, the longest in modern Hollywood history (The Hollywood Reporter).
All of our stories below.
- Why Did the Boston Symphony Decide Not To Hire Leonard Bernstein? Did that Decision Change the Course of American Music?
Serge Koussevitzky and Leonard Bernstein. Photo: Heinz Weissenstein, Whitestone Photo, courtesy of BSO ArchivesToday’s Boston’s “The Arts Fuse” carries an investigative piece of mine exploring how the Boston Symphony trustees decided not to hire Leonard Bernstein as the orchestra’s Music Director in 1949 even though he was the
- Can An Artist Retreat Over Clay Pots Suggest A Direction For AI?
Es Devlin is calling order on a group of artists, AI researchers, spiritual leaders, academics and experts from global tech gathered at the kilns to discuss AI and make pots at the AI and Earth conference organised by the artist and stage designer. – The Guardian
- Pepsi Pulls Sponsorship Of UK Festival To Protest Booking Of Kanye West. Now The Prime Minister Has Weighed In
Keir Starmer joined criticism of the festival at the weekend, saying it was “deeply concerning” that West had been booked to perform “despite his previous antisemitic remarks and celebration of Nazism”. – The Guardian
- It’s Our Phones That Have Caused Our Brains To Rot. Not AI
Even if you spend very little time online, there’s little you can do outside the logic of the internet. It is a force that warps our reality, a cosmic background noise that is everywhere and nowhere — something inhuman that’s subtly reshaping our language, our politics, even our minds. – The New York Times
- The Industrial Revolution Killed Jobs. To Fill Idle Time With What, Was The Question
It might repay us to take a moment, not just from our jobs but also from our leisures, to make some to-do about doing nothing. – The American Scholar
- Book Science And The Art Of Preserving Old Books
Book scientists are working tirelessly with an array of technologies — including microscopes, multispectral imaging and artificial intelligence — to recover, understand and preserve many valuable ancient texts. – The Conversation
- When The WPA Placed Art At The Center Of Democracy
The WPA provided for culture workers through Federal One, encompassing the Federal Art, Music, Theatre, and Writers’ Projects. But the social benefits of painting a mural were less obvious than those of planting a tree. – ARTnews
- America’s Most-Visited Museums In 2025
Despite unsteadiness across the museum industry, the country’s most-visited institutions remained relatively stable. – NPR
- Should UK Government Fund Comedy?
Leading figures from the world of comedy have met the government to make the case for comedy, including that it be recognised as an art form in its own right to improve funding access and policy development. – BBC
- Ellisons Intend To Fund Warner Bros. Deal From Gulf States
Per the outlet, the corporation is seeking signed equity commitments of close to $24 billion, for which Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has agreed to contribute approximately $10 billion. – Deadline
- When Thinking About AI And Authorship, What Is Real?
The further artists move out of amateur hour and into the professional realm, of course, the more we expect their work to reflect their “real” capabilities. But what is real? – The New Yorker
- Trump’s Presidential “Library” Is A Grift
The design language is neither stately and trim in the Republican mode, nor bold and innovative, as preferred by Democrats. It is, instead, generically contemporary, a glass tower struggling for some kind of distinctive shape or symbolic form, like so many towers built in Dubai or China. – Washington Post
- The Fake Fans Problem
In the dream world of an executive, fandom is something like a parasitic disease — contagious through mere exposure, trafficking quickly between hosts with immediate contact and little to no external intervention. – Words from Eliza
- Can The Louvre’s New Director Right The Ship?
The former head of the Château de Versailles, Christophe Leribault arrived after Des Cars’s desperate five-month struggle to save her job came to an end. A string of management failures had been confirmed in stinging reports from various bodies and parliamentary hearings in the wake of the heist. – The Art Newspaper
- Translation Isn’t Just Words, It’s World View. AI Translators So Far Aren’t Good At That
Linguistic diversity among AI systems is real and growing. Cultural worldview diversity, however, has not kept pace. – The Conversation
- Musicians Say Touring Has Become Unsustainable
Independent venue closures, social media algorithms, streaming royalties and the rise of generative AI have contributed to a wider ecosystem that artists say is becoming increasingly difficult for working musicians to weather — and which they say makes the sustainability of touring more crucial than ever. – NPR
- Bollywood Is Rushing Headlong Into AI
While union rules constrain Hollywood’s use of the technology, Indian cinema is racing ahead, pitting efficiency against questions of creative authenticity and audience acceptance. – Reuters
- Uffizi Hit By Cyberattack
The Uffizi said it had been targeted by a cyberattack on February 1, but added that nothing had been stolen and no information lost. It also denied that the hackers had obtained security maps or that employees’ phones had been infiltrated. – Reuters
- Italian Court Orders Netflix To Refund All Subscription Price Hikes
The lawsuit was brought by Italian consumer advocacy group Movimento Consumatori, which alleged that the price hikes violate the Consumer Code, Italian legislation that aims to protect consumer rights. – Ars Technica
- What An Elite College Degree Really Buys
So the people who go to the fanciest colleges tend to have the most successful careers—this is not exactly news. The question of why this is the case, however, is surprisingly tricky to answer. – The Atlantic
- How Do We Police AI In Writing?
Although I don’t buy the claim that AI is “inevitable” in some theoretical sense, I also feel like the current incentives in media and publishing, as Max Read recently argued, make it highly unlikely it won’t be used by some writers at some stage of the writing process. – The Third Hemisphere
