In the 2010s, China built new museums with a frenzy. According to the China Museums Association, 1,563 new museums opened between 2009 and 2014. They face an increasingly chaotic censorship regime as well as the fallout from zero Covid policies, a global downturn and a collapsing property market. - The Art Newspaper
Unionized employees of the Art Institute of Chicago museum (AIC) and its affiliated school, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), have secured their first contract, which guarantees wage increases “across the board” over a four-year period. - ARTnews
The event, hosted by the Professional Non-Profit Theater Coalition, is poised to “shine a spotlight on the challenges facing the theater industry, showcase the value and importance of professional non-profit theater, and call on Congress to save American theater.” - The Hill
"From another musician, I learned that my experience was not unique. This trusted colleague speculated I might suffer from musician’s focal dystonia. I was embarrassed that I had never heard of it." - Aeon
"The Marinellis have been handcrafting bronze bells (in the mountains of southern Italy) since at least the 11th century, although archaeological findings at nearby Benedictine monasteries suggest the Marinellis' craft could date as far back as the 9th century." - Atlas Obscura
Journalism is trying to understand and harness GenAI’s power. There are countless experiments to computationally fabricate headlines, stories, images, videos, podcasts, broadcast personalities, and even interviews through easy-to-use off-the-shelf technologies that until recently were the stuff of industry prototypes and computer science labs. - NiemanLab
"As ambassadors of the country where breakdancing originated 50 years ago, members of Team USA have something to prove — and potentially to lose — when the hip-hop dance form makes its official debut at the Paris Games in 2024." - AP
As of 2023, more than three-quarters of U.S. adults report feeling stressed at work, almost 60% experience elements of burnout, and almost 20% feel they work in a “toxic” environment, according to the American Psychological Association. We often normalize these problems, turning them into topics for happy-hour venting sessions, but they are not trivial. - Time
Ivo van Hove is bringing his video-heavy style to Jesus Christ Superstar in Amsterdam. Jamie Lloyd (loves Pinter, hates scenery) is staging Sunset Boulevard in London. Sammi Cannold's feminist Evita played Boston and D.C. Bill Rauch and Zhailon Levingston are turning Cats into a queer drag ball. - The New York Times
"In the U.S., bringing a heritage language back into a family usually comes down to the efforts of individuals. The parents I spoke with who taught their children a heritage language that they themselves didn’t speak fluently had essentially organized their own lives around the effort." - MSN (The Atlantic)
We’ve always been an international industry, but the pandemic has really illuminated that fact in some ways, both in physical production, as well as in content distribution. And that’s a good thing. - Variety
"After Birmingham city council declared itself in effect bankrupt this month, there has been growing speculation about what assets could be sold to help balance its books, with concern for the Library of Birmingham and the city’s main museum and art gallery." - The Guardian
"The three-time Oscar-nominated Polish director is going ahead with her defamation suit against minister Zbigniew Ziobro after Ziobro refused to apologize for public comments in which he compared Holland’s new film, the refugee drama Green Border, to 'Nazi propaganda.'" - The Hollywood Reporter
"The decision to do the film the way I did (came from) working in a country that uses police, and its military forces to block freedom of expression and freedom of work for journalists and documentary makers. Fiction becomes the only way to show what’s going on." - The Hollywood Reporter
