The trend started last July when the Metropolitan Museum of Art — New York’s largest art museum — raised its adult admission price to $30, a $5 increase. Others followed, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, with Art Institute of Chicago now one of the most expensive. - The New York Times
The board voted 4-1 to fire longtime library director Terri Lesley after months of tension surrounding her refusal to weed out the library’s shelves based on a vague new policy aimed at shielding children and teens from sexual content. - The Daily Beast
The West Kowloon Cultural District was meant to be funded by income from adjacent office buildings — but, since COVID, the office market is weak, WKCD is hemorrhaging cash, and the government, which set up a US$3 billion endowment in 2008, appears unlikely to help. - South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
The expansive project, titled “Inside a Genius Mind,” is a collaboration with 28 institutions around the world. It features 3,000 drawings, including 1,300 pages of the Old Master’s famed codices, such as the 12-volume Codex Atlanticus. - Artnet
"To be sure, stand-up artists gathered in Montreal like summer camp for their industry have been looking with great interest to the stalled contract talks in Hollywood between actors and writers and North American producers for settlements. But their livelihoods aren't necessarily riding on the outcomes." - The Hollywood Reporter
Giovanna Sardelli will serve as the company’s artistic director, after a brief turn in the position on an interim basis following the departure of artistic director Tim Bond, who left to take the reins of Oregon Shakespeare Festival. - American Theatre
"(The app's fast creation and launch) has become something of a marvel inside Meta. … Many see its quick rise as a reminder that well-executed product launches might not need all the bureaucratic trappings that a company with some 66,000 employees had grown accustomed to." - MSN (The Washington Post)
As well as overseeing the British Museum during the Covid pandemic, Hartwig Fischer has faced growing controversy over one of the institution’s cultural highlights – the Parthenon marbles, also known as the Elgin marbles – amid calls for the ancient sculptures to be returned to Greece. - The Guardian
"(The show) made perfect sense. Kids are wigged-out surrealists by nature; it takes grown-ups to regiment their impulses into predictable TV formats. ... Maybe a 5-year-old could imagine something like Pee-wee's Playhouse, but only a genius like Reubens could do it as an adult." - The New York Times
The opening ceremony, rather than being in a stadium, will be a parade of boats down the river through the city, and authorities say that about 570 (60%) of the bookstalls must be temporarily moved in order to provide adequate security. The stalls' proprietors are protesting vigorously. - The Guardian
Says the 88-year-old actress, who had already revealed her macular degeneration, "You just deal with it. Get on. It's difficult for me if I have any length of a part. I haven't yet found a way. Because I have so many friends who will teach me the script." - CNN
"Though (the researchers) agree that the illegal trade in antiquities is a matter of serious concern, they argue that the reiteration of and reliance on this unsubstantiated claim only serve to undermine credibility and attempt to quantify the harm of illegal trading in the wrong terms." - Hyperallergic
The classical label's founding father and son, Ted and Simon Perry, insisted for years that they'd allow their recordings to be accessed only by purchase of a physical disc or a download. With the purchase of Hyperion by Universal Music this past March, the change was inevitable. - Classical Music (UK)
They don't exactly have a history of making great decisions: "Hollywood has a history of treating evolving consumer habits first as a threat to theatrical dollars and then as a tool to be co-opted in the pursuit of earning ever-greater profits." - The Atlantic
Hillary Simms, the first woman in the American Brass Quintet, would like to solve that by inspiring more girls and women - which involves ending the "token woman in brass" idea. "We are pitting ourselves against each other, which is the absolute opposite of what we need." - The New York Times
