It sure feels like that sometimes. But "if nothing ever changes, then we are all locked inside the iron cage of the present tense. ... There’s no agency. No choice." - LitHub
"Success for me isn’t that we can sell out 92 percent of the house, it’s that we can sell out a run of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron. That’s success in an audience. Our audience is loyal. They come back. They are stimulated and entertained at the same time." - Van Magazine
It's a history of Caravaggio's wild escapades and violent temper, a tale of armed knights bursting in to a cardinal's palace, and then a lot of centuries of who knows what, before they ended up in Avignon. - History Today
Of course, it's also paying out millions (and there are the people who left the service over its podcasting contracts with right-wing figures). But the company believes they'll start making a profit from podcasts, and their associated ads, very soon. - The Hollywood Reporter
The pitch from ruangrupa: "The lumbung, the common rice store traditionally found in Indonesian villages, built and shared by everyone. They wanted Documenta to be a lumbung, treating artists as partners and creating resources that would live on beyond the show." - The New York Times
Merryl Goldberg hand-encoded names, addresses, and other details of the Phantom Orchestra, a group of Jewish refuseniks and Christian activists trying to help Jews and others escape the USSR, in composition notebooks - hidden from the prying eyes of Soviet officials. - Wired
Theresa Ruth Howard, guest curating at the Kennedy Center, "envisioned gathering an international lineup of dancers for something that’s rare in the traditional ballet world: to work in a space where being Black is the norm rather than the exception." - MSN (Washington Post)
"The smile has always been with us then, and it would appear it's always been the same. It seems only one step further to claim that the smile has no history. But this would be far from the truth. In fact, the smile has a fascinating, if much-neglected past." - Aeon
As offices relocated to, well, every employee's home, a lot of new and relatively inexpensive space opened up across the country. Public media took notice. - Current
Well, at least in Australia: both researchers and museum execs there report that attendance goes up when it's rainy, and new-ish major arts festivals during the antipodean winter are pulling in crowds, even in chilly Tasmania. - Arts Hub (Australia)
That is, they should consider the benefits of becoming creative therapists. After all, art, performance, and (especially) music-based therapies have a lot of research-based backing as effective. And, importantly, therapy can be a consistent source of income for artists. - ArtsHub
"Archivists and librarians at the ABC are in shock after management unveiled plans to abolish 58 positions and make journalists research and archive their own stories. ... The research library staff will continue to help investigative programs ... but will not be available to assist daily news or ABC co-productions." - The Guardian
"A major lost painting by a follower of the Italian Renaissance painter Filippino Lippi hidden in plain sight in a London bungalow" of a 90+-year-old woman was discovered & sold to pay for her nursing home memory care. - Artnet
Last month a Saudi man took a wrong turn and drove his rented Maserati down the steps — then he tried to reverse the car back up, taking some chunks out of the marble. This week, an American couple tried to wheel their scooters down the steps and caused more damage. - Artnet
That sure seems like the plan. "It’s all part of a new strategy that we’re calling 'the Spotify machine'," said Spotify CEO Daniel Ek. Sounds, uh, interesting. - Axios
