“Britain’s National Gallery announced Tuesday that it will use a whopping £375 million ($510 million) in donations to open a new wing that, for the first time, will include modern art, … to be constructed on land beside its Trafalgar Square site that is currently occupied by a hotel and offices.” - AP
Hanks, 69, was to receive the prestigious Sylvanus Thayer Award, which recognizes an “outstanding citizen” who did not attend West Point and has a distinguished record of service that exemplifies the academy’s ideals: “Duty, Honor, Country.” A ceremony and parade were scheduled for Sept. 25. - Washington Post
In the end, matters of “style” are not matters of “taste,” in some shrugging, subjective sense. They are matters of value. Classical minimalism, meant to evoke modest virtue and restrained power, is a good style for a democratic state. Eclectic traditionalism, remade on an elephantine scale, is the style of totalitarianism. - The New Yorker
What digital platforms take away is more than just our attention being “continuously partial” — they also limit the deeper kind of reflection that allows us to engage with life and ourselves fully. They make us lose the capacity to inhabit silence and confront the unfilled moment. - The Conversation
It is rooted in the widespread perception that they have become ideological monoliths, barely tolerating the expression of any conservative opinions on campus. It has to do with the rapidly growing endowments of the largest universities, which now command a degree of tax-exempt wealth that seems to many people out of all proportion. - Persuasion
For the last couple of decades, we’ve seen a growing assault on critical inquiry, academic freedom, and safety, alongside the casualization of labor, rising tuitions, severe budget cuts to humanities and other non-STEM fields, and the financialization of higher education. - Boston Review
Might London’s most civilised music venue have the answers that classical music needs if it is to claim the audience that is undoubtedly there, as well as the freedom that – for any serious art – is even more vital than subsidy? - The Spectator
According to the Agence France-Presse, “Gelb is actively exploring other sources of raising funds including licensing agreements of its intellectual property, as well as naming rights to the Met building at Lincoln Center.” - OperaWire
Writers aren’t getting this settlement because their work was fed to an AI — this is just a costly slap on the wrist for Anthropic, a company that just raised another $13 billion, because it illegally downloaded books instead of buying them. - TechCrunch
As one of the foremost arts institutions in the US, the Met gets the funds it needs, and its partner gets the imprimatur they seek. But does the “artwashing” undercut the Met’s own principled (and admirable) stands elsewhere, such as its support of Ukraine and against Russian artists who defend Putin? - Parterre
“Government websites are stripping away references to trans people, history, and art. Book bans are targeting trans authors in conservative states, eradicating their work from curricula and library circulation.” And then there’s the NEA. - The New Yorker
“It depicts a judge in a traditional wig and black robe hitting a protester lying on the ground, with blood splattering their placard.” A bit too accurate, perhaps? The courts appear to be covering it already. - BBC
At the Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest, Hungary, "about 20,000 books and many valuable manuscripts have been missing since the end of World War II.” But some books have, with great effort and care, made their way back. - The New York Times
