These systems may appear neutral, but they are far from it. The most popular models privilege dominant epistemologies (typically Western and institutional) while marginalising alternative ways of knowing, especially those encoded in oral traditions, embodied practice and the languages considered ‘low-resource’ in the computing world. - Aeon
“(She and her husband, Dan,) through their distribution company, New Yorker Films, and such prominent Manhattan theaters as … Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, were a prolific force behind the transformation of movies in the 1960s and ‘70s from popular entertainment to an art form regarded with the seriousness of literature or painting.” - AP
The musicians' most recent contract expired August 31, 2025. Since then, the union has been trying to achieve a new contract that includes increased wages, increased healthcare contributions, and employment and income security. - Playbill
Amid all the headlines about falling ratings, production cutbacks and monetary losses, it's easy to forget that late-night TV programs have historically occupied a singular space in pop culture that viewers couldn't easily find anywhere else. - NPR
“About 150 original bronzes have been returned to Nigeria over the last five years. … Their public display inside the $25m state-of-the-art museum in the city of Benin … was to be the crowning moment of an almost century-long effort to reclaim Africa’s stolen art.” An uplifting story — the reality is messier. - The Guardian
“There’s a part of me that feels a responsibility to these listeners. I get all kinds of emails, stuff that I would never have expected, from people who I helped to get sober, who I helped pull off the ledge of depression. ... They live in my head.” - The New York Times
Fiona Benson, an editor of Exeter University’s Ukrainian Wartime Poetry Project, was invited to BookForum in Lviv by Arthur Dron’, a poet and war hero. On the second day, a siren sounded, everyone went down into a bomb shelter, and Russian missiles struck. - The Guardian
That’s not to say, mind you, that the moai walked by themselves. A new paper published by two archaeologists lays out, through observation and experiment, how the Rapa Nui people likely rigged up the moai and walked them from the quarry to their platforms. - Artnet
Roughly 96% of the classical music on terrestrial radio in the U.S. is broadcast on public radio stations — and those stations often have crucial symbiotic relationships with the classical music scenes in their listening areas. Michael Andor Brodeur considers what’s at stake. - The Washington Post (MSN)
The Broadway League, which represents Broadway producers and landlords, is currently in tense negotiations with two different unions: Actors’ Equity (performers and stage managers) and AFM Local 802 (musicians). Here’s an explainer covering what’s at issue and what could happen if an actual strike is called. - TheaterMania
“The two-page typewritten manuscript signed by Kerouac in green ink is titled ‘The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing’ and is dated 15 April 1957, five months before … On the Road was published. It was discovered last year during the disposal of items owned by (mafia don) Paul Castellano." - The Guardian
As AI becomes more embedded in music creation, the challenge is balancing its legitimate creative use with the ethical and economic pressures it introduces. Disclosure is essential not just for accountability, but to give listeners transparent and user-friendly choices in the artists they support. - The Conversation
In the past (autism became a diagnostic category only in 1943), the ‘idiot savant’ was a paradox, who confounded categorisation because there was no unified way of comprehending how such exceptional musical and numerical skills might co-exist alongside their polar opposite: profound disability. - Aeon
An estimated one-third of Navajo Nation members make and sell art for a living, and in Zuni Pueblo, as many as 85 percent of households include a working artist. Yet for more than a century, Native artists have been subject to a marketplace that undervalues their work and rips off their designs. - Mother Jones
The Smithsonian manages 21 museums around Washington, DC, and in New York, as well as the National Zoo and 14 research facilities. It had previously said it could rely on remaining funds from past fiscal years to remain open, originally for “at least” five days past the 1 October shutdown. - The Art Newspaper
