The Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative began in 2010, initially to help mitigate the damages to museums, churches, and archives in Haiti due to that January's earthquake. And there's been need for SCRI's services ever since, especially this year in Ukraine. - Smithsonian Magazine
The magazine's archive editor, Erin Overbey, was fired last Friday for (per the termination letter) "a pattern of conduct that is disruptive to the operation of the company and undermines the journalistic ethics of our magazine." Here's how things got to this point. - The Daily Beast
"Eldridge Industries is taking over the Golden Globe Awards, which will be turned into a private entity separate from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's charitable and philanthropic programs, which will be managed as a non-profit entity." - Variety
"The 52-year-old Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård succeeds — and bears some resemblance to — Osmo Vänskä, a Finnish conductor who, at age 48, arrived in Minnesota by way of Scotland with a history of Sibelius recordings, a lively podium presence and unruly hair." - The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
There are reasons to be troubled by the prospect of tech companies like OpenAI controlling the major means of artistic production in the future. - Wired
More artists than ever before are releasing music, the report says, but this does not mean more are successful. Analysis published by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) shows the number reaching one million UK streams per month remains low, about 1,700. - BBC
As Van Dijk has observed, in our digital society, evaluation of cultural products has become synonymous with crowd evaluation. On websites or in newspapers and magazines, rating culture produces a diverse range of big data. - Journal of Cultural Analytics
The demand to “stay informed” creates and nurtures that feeling of helplessness. By now, it’s common knowledge that social media is exquisitely crafted to make people feel terrible, but it’s also being increasingly recognized that mainstream news media is just as bad. - 3 Quarks Daily
The logistics of international orchestral touring are formidable at the best of times. But the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra’s tour is probably going to set some kind of record, given the speed with which it has had to be planned, the state of health and travel in the world it has been planned for. - Irish Times
The ways three major productions this summer have cast the role — a disabled white actor (England's Royal Shakespeare Co.), an able-bodied Black actress (New York's Shakespeare in the Park), and an admired white male Shakespearean (Canada's Stratford Festival) — feed right into current debates. - The New York Times
When the reporters approached him and asked about his performance, a woman sitting beside him said they didn't speak English. As the man was holding his violin down, with his bow away from the strings, violin music began playing from his speaker. - KOMO
The money from the bonds, to be paid back over 30 years from a property tax increase, would go toward capital projects, including artist and staff housing, for 15 institutions, including the Bass Museum, Miami City Ballet, the New World Symphony, and the Fillmore and Colony Theaters. - MSN (Miami Herald)
The Austrian-Iranian Alexander Ali Rahbari took to Instagram to announce the news stating that he was appointed by Putin supporter Valery Gergiev and will conduct 10 performances next season. - OperaWire
"(It's) a powerful exploration of the harshness of the rural landscape, with an ecological message that still resonates. ... In many ways, it defined a particular branch of US cinema – one that became particularly popular in the 1970s, and expressed an abject fear of those who lived outside of cities." - BBC
As Smithsonian officials celebrated the deaccessioning of works held by its African Art museum, they ignored another 21 Benin sculptures in the collection of the National Museum of Natural History. - Washington Post
