Eight months after cutting 14% of its staff, WBUR is eliminating "Radio Boston," a one-hour weekday show focused on local and regional affairs. Management says no jobs will be lost and "Radio Boston" staff will be moved to increase local coverage on "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered." - The Boston Globe
Heritage Auctions, based in Dallas, slapped a $3 million estimate on the slippers. Pre-sale bidding had taken the price up to $1.55 million before fierce phone bidding propelled it to $10 million within three minutes. - ARTnews
When an artist is inevitably asked “what’s the meaning behind this song?” and they give a literal answer, it immediately closes down the different ways a listener can interpret it. - The Conversation
The median annual income for self-employed visual artists currently stands at just £12,500, 40% less in real terms than they were earning in 2010. More than half of visual artists take on additional jobs, 51% of which are in non-creative fields. - The Conversation
"After years of battles in school and public libraries, the campaign by conservative-leaning 'parent rights' groups has succeeded in casting a nationwide chill over the market for children's books they deem inappropriate, greatly diminishing sales and opportunities for authors to promote their work." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
Nearly half of teens in the U.S. are online almost constantly, and the platform they’re using the most is YouTube, a new study from the Pew Research Center has found. - TechCrunch
By the end of the war, 26,984 freight cars of artworks from French collections had left Paris, their contents destined for temporary storage in mines in Germany and Austria. - The Wall Street Journal
"Taking a stand in the national debate on banning sexually explicit books from school libraries, Gov. Phil Murphy on Monday signed a law that will dictate how school boards in New Jersey will evaluate sensitive and controversial materials and protect librarians from legal challenges." - NJ.com
"Archeologists have discovered what they believe to be the tomb of Saint Nicholas, the (third-century) philanthropic Greek bishop and inspiration behind Santa Claus. The six-foot-long limestone sarcophagus was found within the two-story annex of St. Nicholas Church in Demre, Antalya, Turkey, long considered the final resting place of the Saint. - Euronews
Just a day before the catastrophic 2017 blaze that nearly destroyed Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, a smaller fire broke out in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Neither organ suffered major damage, but both had toxic dust fill their thousands of pipes — and both are now resounding once more. - The New York...
As usual, the annual index lists the top 20 large cities, top 10 medium-sized and top 10 small communities. Because the numbers crunched are per-capita figures and are adjusted for cost of living, some individual rankings might be surprising (e.g., Minneapolis-St. Paul and Nashville ahead of Chicago and Los Angeles). - SMU DataArts
Just seven years after two major donations doubled the size of the museum's Old Dutch/Flemish holdings, a group of works is headed to Christie's. Said the chief curator of paintings, "Our (review) revealed that some pictures were similar to, even duplicative of, other works by the same artists at the MFA." - Artnet
That's the annual gala opening the season at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, which (by long tradition) happens on December 7. And there are always major celebrities and politicians, fabulous clothes, demonstrators for a variety of causes, and a big media circus. Oh, and superstitions. - The New York Times
Next month, LAMDA (London Academy of Musical and Dramatic Art) will open a location in midtown Manhattan with both office and flexible studio space. While there won't be full courses there, LAMDA will offer a set of short courses and masterclasses as well as New York auditions for its London program. - BroadwayWorld
Luis May Ku, a native Mayan artist and teacher in the Yucatán Peninsula, spent years researching Spanish colonial documents, interviewing village elders about their traditional methods, and experimenting with recipes in order to recreate Maya blue, an ancient synthetic pigment which is unusually durable. - Al Jazeera
