Excellence is not a neutral concept. Its not a fixed standard hovering above culture, waiting to be discovered. It's a construct. When we pretend otherwise, when we speak of excellence as if it were objective and settled, we obscure the real question. - Emil Kang
Our rage for hormone therapies, supplements, beauty procedures, and longevity interventions suggest we’re all competing in the Enhanced Games now. - Daniel Kunitz
“The Onion has more than 53,000 subscribers paying as much as $9 a month. The publication has a new deal to sell its papers at Barnes & Noble, and is expecting about $6 million in revenue this year — up from less than $2 million in early 2024.” - The Wall Street Journal (MSN)
When he directed the Bolshoi Ballet (2004-08) and after, he had a grand plan to stage the entire canon of great Russian ballets and classical scores. But, though St. Petersburg-born, he grew up in Kyiv, and his parents still live there. Putin’s invasion has changed both his life and his career. - Financial Times
“Thomas Schumacher, who led Disney Theatrical Group for decades and helped it produce enduring musical theater hits like The Lion King and Aladdin, changing Times Square and Broadway itself, is leaving the company.” - AP
Her 1960s paintings about Hollywood actors, movie violence, and gender are now thought to be key to the Pop art movement, though she was widely recognized only in later life. She was also at various times an Obie-winning playwright, Emmy-winning screenwriter, actress, cabaret singer, and professional wrestler. - ARTnews
The painting, Portrait of a Lady by 18th-century artist Giuseppe Ghislandi, was spotted in a photo from a house in Mar del Plata owned by the daughter of an advisor to Hermann Goering, who extorted it from the Amsterdam art dealer Jacques Goudstikker before the latter fled Europe in 1940. - The Independent (UK)
“It’ll be paused for a couple of hours while the ministerial order is rewritten,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith told reporters on Tuesday. “The direction will be to take books with pornographic images out of the libraries and to leave the classics alone. I think there was some misunderstanding of the order.” - The Guardian
“Kim Sajet, who left her role as director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery after a high-profile clash with President Donald Trump in June, has landed a new post at the helm of the Milwaukee Art Museum.” - Artnet
Seven days a week, he has a video call with two fellow editors for his online outlet, called Steady — and then he gets down to writing and editing content for the newsletter, which goes out to well over half a million subscribers three times a week. - The New York Times
The creative director post is the first major initiative by Kim Noltemy, who became L.A. Phil president and chief executive last summer, and with it she proposes a possible rethink of the very nature of how a symphony orchestra might operate in the future. - Los Angeles Times
Over three years, the broadcaster will build the High Plains Civic Media Network, a system of part-time contributors (some of them volunteers), coordinated by a small editorial team, to provide news and features for its coverage area in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles, eastern Colorado, western Kansas and southwestern Nebraska. - Nieman Lab
By training artificial intelligence to detect emotional signals in more than 600,000 European paintings spanning 600 years, the researchers found that collective shifts in artistic mood often aligned with historical moments of prosperity, hardship, or upheaval, from the rise of trade networks to the disruptions of new technologies. - Artnet
The current strategy of merely making A.I. bigger is deeply flawed — scientifically, economically and politically. Many things from regulation to research strategy must be rethought. One of the keys to this may be training and developing A.I. in ways inspired by the cognitive sciences. - The New York Times
I’ve rarely run across something that refuses to let me see it just one way, but one such resistor is “The Wizard of Oz” at Sphere in Las Vegas. The beloved 1939 film starring Judy Garland has been stretched and morphed and adapted to fit the enormous dome-shaped venue. - The New York Times
