Their reasoning: "Patronising claptrap. So, young people will only accept opera if it’s put on in a car park. The lower orders can make do with an aria in a pub. And the rich and middle-aged have their country-house operas. It is deeply depressing." - The Independent (UK)
"Louise Bourgeois, ... Nancy Graves, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein and Frank Stella all relied on Mr. Polich and his team of some 100 artisans to forge baubles as small as a hand's width and behemoths so large that even his cavernous facility could barely accommodate them." - The New York Times
The fun, searing, rapidly movie Everything Everywhere All at Once led with nominations, but some actors, movies, and directors were - explicably or not - snubbed, and some surprises sneaked in at the last minute. - Los Angeles Times
Funding for the King's Theatre rehab had been secured at the project's original budget of £25.7 million, but COVID-related delays, supply chain issues and inflation have increased the cost by £8.9 million — and management says necessary work can't start until the extra money has been raised. - The Scotsman
At the heart of the conflict: What is Austria? "We were trying to look beyond the Western canon as the only idea of what art is and we were also thinking about whom to address. ... We wanted Kunsthalle Wien to address multiple Viennas, not just the old established one." - Hyperallergic
"In a forthcoming book, Why Beethoven, Norman Lebrecht presents evidence that the Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor has been known as Für Elise (For Elise) purely due to a misreading of the dedication on the now-lost 1810 manuscript." - The Observer (UK)
Things didn't go well: "Because an AI program can’t 'be there,' it ends up, like a lazy college freshman, culling what material it can find floating around the internet and regurgitating it in a generic format." And the factual errors weren't great either. - Dallas Morning News
"The test allows users to listen to the audio featured in TikTok videos in the background. Until now, putting TikTok into the background paused playback. The audio portion of TikTok videos is hardly what most creators would consider a podcast. But it's the word the app is using." - Inside Radio
As with ABT Studio, Ailey II, and other companies (largely in the US), BRB2 will offer limited-term contracts (in this case, two years) to dancers just finishing school, giving them experience beyond just the corps de ballet before starting full-fledged careers. BRB2's first UK tour will be this spring. - SeeingDance
"Over a dozen interviews with former Ticketmaster executives, managers, economists, lawmakers, antitrust experts, fans and industry insiders, many agreed that Ticketmaster is enormous and largely unaccountable to fans. But, they said, it is also a mostly effective business with few peers capable of operating at its scale." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
Some, though not all, museums in the UK have started moving away from the term "mummy" to describe deliberately preserved human remains from ancient Egypt and elsewhere. The idea is that "mummified remains" or "mummified person" removes the pop-culture association with old horror movies. - CNN
"Still recovering its credibility after the headline-making FBI raid of its blockbuster Basquiat exhibition last year, the Orlando Museum of Art has been placed on probation by the American Alliance of Museums." - ARTnews
"A person with knowledge of the project who was granted anonymity ... said that as of Thursday, the movie was still on track to be completed with Mr. Baldwin in the lead role and Joel Souza, who was wounded in the shooting, returning as director." - The New York Times
At the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth, two protestors spray-painted the logo of the company Woodside Energy on the perspex shield covering the museum's best-known painting. The point? To bring attention to Woodside's "ongoing desecration" of ancient indigenous rock art in the north of the state. - The Guardian
States and districts nationwide have begun to constrain what librarians can order. At least 10 states have passed laws giving parents more power over which books appear in libraries or limiting students’ access to books, a Washington Post analysis found. - Washington Post
