“Last Friday, (he) signed an executive order calling for the dismantling of seven federal agencies. Chief among them was the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which provides critical funding to museums, libraries, and archives. Now, less than a week later, Trump appointed a new head of the agency, Keith E. Sonderling.” - ARTnews
“The National Trust has frozen all but essential recruitment and is pausing some projects as it faces a £10 million jump in labour costs this year as a result of higher employment costs stemming from last autumn’s budget.” - The Guardian
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed, opens new tab with the U.S. Copyright Office that an image created by Stephen Thaler's AI system "DABUS" was not entitled to copyright protection, and that only works with human authors can be copyrighted. - Reuters
As the rules and criteria for grants have abruptly changed, many organizations in Philadelphia are taking a watch-and-wait stance, some, like the Black-founded-and-run Philadanco, more nervously than others, like the Philadelphia Museum of Art. One group has decided, for now, not even to apply for NEA grant money. - WHYY (Philadelphia)
While officials presented the move — which comes amid a larger trend of consolidation in higher learning — as a way to ensure Cornish’s future, it has created uncertainty and anxiety for Cornish staff and faculty, who will all be laid off at the end of May. - Seattle Times
West Ada School District administrators stood firm on their statement that the sign — which displays an array of hands with different skin tones, below the words “everyone is welcome here” — violated the district’s policy on content-neutral displays. - Seattle Times
"Somebody replied that, in a break with the past, the center would be doing some shows not affiliated with Actors’ Equity, the union representing actors. The person said that the change “opens us up for a whole bunch of more options as well as a lot more money.” - The New York Times
The companies Tapestry Opera and Nightwood Theatre are the anchor tenants at the Jackman Performance Centre, which includes a flexible performance space as well as offices and other facilities in the city’s Rosedale neighbourhood. - Ludwig Van
The Irish Pub Company has created over 2,000 pubs in more than 100 countries, in places from Berlin to Bahrain to Nigeria to Novosibirsk to Tokyo to Tulsa to Tashkent. This isn’t a prefab bar-in-a-box business; the pubs are custom-designed, with the owner having final choice on the many details. - Smithsonian Magazine
“It’s in tremendous disrepair, as is a lot of the rest of our country, most of it because of bad management,” Trump told reporters Monday after he toured the Kennedy Center and met for the first time as chair of its board. - The Hill
“If the federal government can show up and demand a university department be shut down or restructured, then we don’t have universities in this country.” - The Hill
"If the PRC's developers have unfettered access to data and American companies are left without fair use access, the race for AI is effectively over," the company wrote in its policy proposal. "America loses, as does the success of democratic AI." - Futurism
One order signed Friday night calls for the agencies — some of which are focused on minority business enterprises, museum and library services, and homelessness prevention — to “be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” - Washington Post
Gemini 2.0 Flash will uncomplainingly create images depicting celebrities and copyrighted characters, and — as alluded to earlier — remove watermarks from existing photos. - TechCrunch
“Throughout the years, we've certainly had vocal audience members or community members who've questioned some programming choices. … But what we have never encountered is elected officials trying to dictate what we should and should not be showing.” - NPR
