This question—why parents and taxpayers should support public schools that teach content that conflicts with their most cherished beliefs—has reverberated across the decades, sometimes registering only as a faint echo and sometimes, such as today, resounding at top volume. - The Point
Criticism in the broadest sense is a key tactic for maintaining a nonrigid, noncomplacent orientation toward the world. You’re always stepping back and looking at everything afresh, never taking anything for granted, never turning a blind eye to your own complicities and flaws—ideally, anyway. - ArtForum
That there is more than one way to interpret numbers might seem obvious, but is worth repeating at a time when, once again, historians claiming that they will emulate the supposedly ‘hard’ sciences are in a position to get huge grants and hire armies of assistants. - Aeon
Arts funding, under the current government, is a zero-sum game. There’s no new money, beyond a tiny, 2% rise in the ACE budget. If the Tories really wanted to “level up” funding for the arts they would increase provision in Bolsover without knocking someone else back. - The Guardian
During an 11-week national tour, each member of the company was responsible for approximately seven tonnes of carbon emitted. The average per-capita emission in Australia over a year is about 21 tonnes (far above the global average of 4.5 tonnes). - The Guardian
While podcast consumption is holding steady overall among public radio fans, Jacobs Media's just-released Public Radio Techsurvey 2022 shows some warning signs for public media that their audience may be “cooling” on podcasts. - Inside Radio
A London-based project called Oxia Palus has already produced speculative versions of works by van Gogh, Modigliani, and Picasso which the artists later painted over; now it's using DALL-E 2, the text-to-image AI software, to reconstruct Old Master paintings we know of only by description. - Artnet
For those blessedly anchored in the real world, here is a brief summary of a case that began as a passionate-yet-niche dispute between scholars and has reverberated—or been manufactured—into a broader referendum on academic and free speech in the United States. - Van
Traditional-values groups are demanding the removal or restriction of books with explicit sex education, and books that unflinchingly document LGBTQ realities and the Black American experience. Challenges of library books have jumped fourfold, from 416 books in 2017 to 1,597 book challenges in 2021. - NPR
"Indiana University for the last 40 years has been trumpeting early performance practice. Now there are maybe 20 or so extraordinary pockets of incredible culture, from Texas up to Seattle and from Maine down to Miami. I think Juilliard is now the cutting edge, standing like a beacon." - Early Music America
This isn’t to say that white creators ought not create Black characters at all, but that there is something particularly gut-wrenching about the artificial fabrication of Black entertainers. - The Guardian
"The art of drag has firmly entered the mainstream, turning some performers into global celebrities. But go back half a century and the picture was different. On the fringes, performers' lives were often strewn with difficulties. ... Five veteran drag queens share their experiences from decades on the scene." - The Guardian
We go straight to “amazing”. Or “awesome”. In both cases, as usual, I think we’re on safe ground blaming the Americans. They too, surely, are behind “thank you so much”. It’s now used so often that the “so much” adds nothing; it’s just a standard thank you. - The Guardian
"People in bayou country have long learned to live under adverse weather conditions. But things have gotten much worse in recent years. Rising sea levels, erosion and storm after storm have flooded entire communities. For some French speakers, Hurricane Ida was the last straw, and now many are moving away." - PRX's The World
Known at its 2008 opening mainly for its building, one of the last major designs by I.M. Pei, the MIA has completed an 18-month "reimagination and reinstallation of its permanent collection galleries," with which it means to re-establish itself as one of the Mideast's most important museums. - The Art Newspaper
