Hirst attached NFTs to 10,000 of those works and sold them for $2,000 each; a buyer could keep the NFT or get the real-life painting but not both. 5,820 buyers are hanging onto their NFTs, so Hirst is burning the canvases. The title of this endeavor: "The Currency." - The Guardian
"Last month, ... a British tourist was sentenced to 15 years in an Iraqi prison for taking a dozen pottery shards from an unguarded archaeology site. Now, the man's conviction has been overturned and he is set to be released from confinement." - Artnet
Arts Council England's Transfer Programme is pushing companies to move away from the capital into the underserved rest of England. But those whose work is mostly outside the capital already say that moving would block them from getting London funding but with no guarantee of Transfer Programme money. - The Stage
Before this year, the controversies around the Greek-born conductor were usually over his music-making, which classical mavens tend to either adore or loathe. But his hand-picked orchestra and choir, called MusicAeterna, are based in and supported by Russia, so institutions elsewhere are under pressure to avoid them. - The New York Times
Julius Eastman: the fierce black queen iconoclast, scorned and consigned to oblivion in his day, is finally being celebrated for his unabashed talent and the sheer audacity of his inimitable genius. - Arts Fuse
From Timbaland to Sting to the next rapper to say inshallah, Arab culture has been a persistent influence on American music. But songs actually in Arabic have never been a presence on the charts. - Los Angeles Times
Today, they comprise the third largest sector of the U.S. economy: well over 1.5 million nonprofits employ roughly 12.5 million people as of 2017, the latest year for which comprehensive data is available, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies. - The Baffler
This process transformed improbable rumors into seemingly solid facts, backed by evidence from different sources and accepted by political and religious leaders. - Lapham's Quarterly
Why can it feel as though the entire ecosystem of content that we interact with online has been engineered to influence us in ways that we can’t quite parse, and that have only a distant relationship to our own authentic preferences? - The New Yorker
We humans are besotted by intelligence, especially our own. And yet “intelligence is not the miracle of evolution we like to think it is. - The Wall Street Journal
Says one member, "We call them instruments, some people call them office machines, some people call them sculptures. It's got a limited range of sounds, so you really have to work at what you are trying to extract out of it." - CBS News
The Putin regime has dealt Russian culture a crushing blow, just as the Russian state has done to its artists, musicians, and writers so many times before. People in the arts are forced to sing patriotic songs or emigrate. The regime has in effect “canceled” culture in my country. - The Atlantic
"This is the future an emerging number of publishing startups are after — aiming to change the value of a book from a $10 Amazon purchase to a $100 investment opportunity, while creating a market of readers excited to see the books they love succeed." - Esquire
We need not consume drugs or get inebriated to be met on a daily basis with sights and behaviours to which the only reasonable reaction is an alternation between ‘wow!’ and ‘oh my god…!’ - 3 Quarks Daily
"Library workers across Oklahoma's Metropolitan Library System (MLS) were shocked this week after receiving instructions to avoid using the word 'abortion' and not to help patrons locate abortion-related information on either library computers or their own devices." - Vice
