The company's bookstore division, which has 500 retail outlets in cities and towns throughout the UK, has seen declining revenue for years, leading to reduced spending on inventory and maintenance, leading to ever-lower customer traffic in the usual downward spiral. - Publishers Weekly
The National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, is ending its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs as a result of an executive order (EO) issued by President Donald Trump on Monday, January 20. - Hyperallergic
I could see just fine. (A colleague quipped that sitting any closer wasn’t going to make a show better or worse.) And I understood why it’s called standing at attention: My senses felt heightened and my focus was sharp. - Washington Post
The Tangs’ increasing prominence seems due to several key capital projects simultaneously coming to fruition and the couple’s effort to counter the anti-Asian discrimination and violence that escalated during the pandemic. - The New York Times
Ms. Rutter, 68, the center’s president since 2014, guided the organization through the coronavirus pandemic, oversaw an expansion of its campus, added hip-hop and comedy to its offerings and lured the Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda to be music director of the National Symphony Orchestra. - The New York Times
The Education Department said on Friday that it would no longer investigate schools that remove books from their libraries, emphasizing its new stance by dismissing 11 pending civil rights complaints related to book bans in public schools. - The New York Times
The idea of there being something fundamentally stable about an artist, independent of outside forces, makes sense. It’s what allows them to experiment with style and genre and persona and still be legible to their audiences. - The New York Times
Instead of functioning as a means of top-down compliance and control, A.I. can help us understand ourselves, act on our preferences and realize our aspirations. In this way, perfect recall isn’t just a tool for remembering the past. It’s also a compass that provides a clearer understanding of our goals and improves our decision-making. - The New York Times
Included in the losses are more than 30 notable buildings whose pedigrees span the 20th century and a who’s who of domestic architecture—from Arts & Crafts pioneer Henry Mather Greene to modernist icon Richard Neutra—representing an incredible repository of American home-design history. - The Wall Street Journal
Lion dances for Lunar New Year are part of “an art that dates back to the Han Dynasty and is said to bring good fortune and ward off evil spirits, but it is hard to pull off.” - NPR
“One of the prevailing narratives of this year’s awards season leading up to the Oscars has been that of the return to the limelight of beloved veteran actors who the public thought had disappeared for good.” - El País
The deal, which supposedly ameliorates some of the damage from last year’s audiobook-music bundling plan by the streaming giant, “also marks the first direct license between Spotify and a major publisher in several years.” - Variety
“At stake is the future of a defining industry that helps make Los Angeles a vibrant creative capital, employing tens of thousands of workers in a wide variety of fields.” - The New York Times
