Director Emilie Gordenker says the original building, which is owned by the Dutch state, is in such poor condition it needs urgent and extensive repairs to keep its priceless collection and visitors safe. - US News
Meta has appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities – including Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez – to create dozens of flirty social-media chatbots without their permission, Reuters has found. - Reuters
Generative AI, with its ability to spit out seemingly unique content, has divided the music world, with musicians and industry groups complaining that recorded works are being exploited to train AI models that power song generation tools. - APNews
The Guitar Player, housed at Kenwood in London, is signed by Vermeer and accepted as authentic. There’s a slightly different version in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection, long assumed to be a later copy; in 2023, one scholar suggested it was Vermeer’s own copy. Now they can be seen side-by-side. - The Guardian
The world that received “Hamilton” in July 2020, however, was not the world that had made it the toast of the 2016 Tony Awards. The show’s promise of a multiethnic America fueled by immigrant ingenuity seemed, after four years of the Trump presidency, like an Obama-era fantasy. - The New York Times
Despots over the ages devised a lopsided way of funding science that punished blue-sky thinkers and promoted gadget makers. Mr. Trump’s science policies, experts say, follow that approach. - The New York Times
“Yes — we have urged Christians, both locally and across the country, to search their libraries for books that promote sodomy, gender confusion and rebellion against God — and if found, to check them out and never return them as an act of civil disobedience." - News from the States
People carving their initials into the Coliseum, trashing Bernini’s fountain in Rome, driving a car down the Spanish Steps, mounting and humping a nude statue of Bacchus, causing all kinds of damage taking selfies. National ministries pass the buck to each other, leaving local governments to clean up the messes. - Artnet
“Our audience globally is about 55% of what it was before the pandemic. We still have a significant audience. We reached countries across eleven time zones, but whereas we used to have over 400,000 viewers per broadcast, now we have around 200,000.” - El País (Spain) (in English)
“Wintour ended weeks of fashion-world speculation Tuesday when she named Chloé Malle her successor as head of editorial content at Vogue. — Wintour, 75, remains chief content officer for Condé Nast and global editorial director of American Vogue and its 27 editions around the globe.” - AP
“French movie star Gérard Depardieu was summoned to trial before a criminal court in Paris over allegations of rape and sexual assault against actor Charlotte Arnould. … The case dates back to 2018, when prosecutors in Paris opened a preliminary investigation after Arnould accused Depardieu of raping her at his home.” - AP
Classical California, the umbrella organization which operates both KUSC and KDFC in San Francisco, lost $1.1 million in the Trump administration’s rescission of public broadcasting funding. Eight positions, all based in Los Angeles, are being eliminated, though no announcers have been laid off. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
He began acting in his native Canada circa 1980; his big break came with Kevin Costner’s Dances With Wolves, for which Greene was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. He went on to a busy career in television and film, including roles in Maverick, The Green Mile, Skins, and Reservation Dogs. - Variety
“The Los Angeles Philharmonic announced that Salonen would be its first creative director, starting in fall 2026. Simultaneously, the Philharmonie de Paris announced that he would hold its inaugural creativity and innovation chair starting in 2027, while taking on the role of principal conductor of the Orchestre de Paris.” - The New York Times
“The world is burning. Fascism is rising. Countries are falling. And we’re on the brink of incredible technological change, which will either be the end of everything or a new beginning. So, who needs artists?” - The Guardian (UK)
