The late author's estate has announced the creation of the Jack Kerouac Foundation, which will raise funds to build the center — which will present exhibitions, spoken word performance, music, lectures, and conferences — at the church Kerouac attended growing up in Lowell, Mass. - MSN (The Boston Globe)
This massive release isn’t something entirely worth celebrating. Instead, it’s a pointer to the sheer absurdity of American copyright law, which long ago came under the thumb of the entertainment industry and distant heirs of artists determined to preserve what is essentially a windfall. - Los Angeles Times
You've got some benefactors' names all over the buildings of your non-profit, and then those donors, because of how they made their money, become pariahs. Awkward! Gladwell's "modest proposal" to prevent this situation — based in Scripture, no less — involves a simple change in tax law. - Oh, MG
With the return of audience capacity limits and distancing rules due to the Omicron surge, and with performances being cancelled on short notice if company members test positive, the government announced £21 million in aid before Christmas and added £45 million last week. - The Scotsman
"More than 20 acts have pulled out of the 2022 Sydney festival, just 48 hours before opening night, boycotting the festival over a sponsorship deal with the Israeli embassy." - The Guardian
The Under the Radar Festival (theater), Prototype (opera), and Exponential Festival (multiple genres) — much-anticipated events in what was once a barren January calendar — have called off this year's live performances due to the staffing and logistical problems caused by the Omicron variant. - The New York Times
Politicians, media commentators, and scholars from both left and right all seem to agree that the French political debate has been contaminated by American ideas. - Catalyst Journal
As millennials age into the solid middle of the culture here at the end of 2021, they’re getting to experience that disorienting slip with some of the most beloved pop culture of their youths, and most particularly the pop culture that was celebrated during the presidency of Barack Obama. - Vox
The Lincoln Center complex, which opened in 1962, was a citadel. Critics noted that it was designed to separate itself from the Black and Latino people who still lived in the area, particularly in the New York City Housing Authority’s Amsterdam Houses, which were built in 1948 as part of an earlier eminent domain project. - Gothamist
Omicron is spreading, sequin prices have gone up, and it may well rain; nevertheless, after last year's cancellation, the Mummers Parade is going ahead, even if the string bands, brigades, and fancies have to skimp a bit on costumes. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Among the properties that adapters can now use free of charge are A.A. Milne's original Winnie-the-Pooh, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, the debut poetry collections of Langston Hughes and Dorothy Parker, Garbo's silent movie The Temptress, and a mother lode of early sound recordings. - Smithsonian Magazine
For years, aesthetes and directors of development have been frustrated by the lack of interest that software industry execs have shown in directing their charitable donations to the arts. In the Bay Area, that has started to change. - San Francisco Chronicle
The dictatorship's censors were all too thorough: scenes were even cut from It's a Wonderful Life — and the doctored version of that film is turning up on television. Same with books. Here's how and why this has happened … - The Guardian
Swimming has been officially banned since 1923. More than two-thirds of all French have a negative perception of the river. And yet when French officials unveiled their ambitions for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris this month, the Seine was treated like a resurrected national monument. - Washington Post
The Council of State, the country's top administrative court, found insufficient justification for prime minister Alexander De Croo's COVID-related order closing theaters, concert halls, and cinemas while leaving restaurants, bars, and Christmas markets open. - Variety
