Since April 2025, two months after Trump’s takeover, Rick Canny has been a senior adviser to the Center, which has now amended his consulting contract to appoint him artistic director “in a designated executive consulting capacity.” Memos indicate that Canny wants authority to make a lot of changes. - The Washington Post (MSN)
Comedians now routinely give their audiences hours of new material every week, in exchange for subscription and advertising revenue that, while amounting to much less than what box offices and network sales departments once commanded, also goes more substantially and directly to the artists. - The New Yorker
I’m not the only author to have found myself stuck in a Zoom book club with fake readers. Countless writers with published books have been receiving invitations from reading communities that start to unravel after a basic Google search. - The Dial
Police are still looking for the Louvre’s stolen trove of 19th-century jewelry, though French authorities arrested eight people in connection with the crime last October. But the subsequent heists across Europe suggest the Louvre heist wasn’t a one-off and might have emboldened copycats. - The Wall Street Journal
Roundabout Theater Company had planned for next spring a large-scale Broadway revival of The Full Monty. That has been postponed, and Roundabout has scheduled a star-studded production of the Romanian-French absurdist playwright’s Rhinoceros, about a town whose inhabitants are turning into half-blind, ill-tempered horned pachyderms. - The New York Times
“The Public Media Bridge Fund has raised about $87 million and stabilized 186 public radio stations that serve about 30 million people in the United States. (Now begins) PMC’s new $38 million fundraising effort to help stations become more financially sustainable without federal funding.” - AP
“The Market Street Arts & Theater District will initially focus on the 900 block of Market Street between Fifth and Sixth streets, with plans to activate one to two vacant or underused spaces; add lighting, banners and public art as part of beautification efforts; fund pop-up performances and other arts programming.” - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)
We already knew that the cost would be huge — €1.15 billion for the overhaul and a temporary venue at the former Tempelhof Airport — but Philharmonie management announced that the project is expected to last from 2032 to 2040. (And that’s before overruns.) - AP
Lion Green Road, designed by Mary Duggan Architects with Ruff Architects in the outer London borough of Croydon, “demonstrates how more homes than you might imagine can be constructed on the most unpromising of sites in a sympathetic way, without sacrificing greenery, views and public access – and keeping plenty of parking, too.” - The Guardian
For 43 years, he wrote hundreds of reviews, profiles and features, first for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, then the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer. Music criticism was his second career: he worked for more than three decades as an electrical engineer for PECO, the region’s electricity and gas utility. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
Because these scammers have hit on an M.O. to which writers are particularly susceptible, that’s why. And there are a lot of hopeful writers out there, so the scammers can ask for small amounts of money (making it look low-risk to the targets), and make bank on volume. - The Dial
“We have everything we need to be happy,” the hero of Fahrenheit 451 observes, “but we aren’t happy.” Maybe that’s the ultimate lever to pull: the growing awareness that our devices are exhausting and eroding us. - The American Scholar
