“A full-time job should serve the basic things you need to take care of yourself, housing, food, health, even mental health. I’ve struggled to buy shoes, which I need as I spend all day in the galleries. Why should my coworkers and I have to go to Goodwill for shoes?” - ARTnews
The Stradivarius on which Joseph Joachim played the world premiere of Brahms's Violin Concerto will be auctioned on February 7, and Sotheby's is estimating its value as between $12 million and $18 million. (The current record was set in 2011: $15.9 million for the Lady Blunt Stradivarius.) - Artnet
UK Theatre joint chief executive Claire Walker warned that “unplanned increases in staffing costs” were adding to a theatre sector already at “risk”. - The Stage
Loftis goes to the New Jersey Symphony from his position as Chief Advancement and Revenue Officer of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO), where he oversaw the fundraising, marketing, special events, and analytical research departments. - Symphony
The reality was that none of the people allegedly working for the Ashland Daily Tidings existed, or at least were who they claimed to be. The bylines listed on Daily Tidings articles were put there by scammers using artificial intelligence, and in some cases stolen identities, to dupe local readers. - Oregon Public Broadcasting
"Efforts to defund NPR and PBS … (along with) their member stations and their primary funding mechanism, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting … have been raised by Republicans and successfully batted away by public media defenders with annual regularity for decades. This time could be different." - Semafor
Lately, “new Berlin” has become shorthand for an under-visited European city that is cheap, fun, and up-and-coming. Ever since creeping gentrification and a massive rise in tourism have thrown into question the German capital’s status of the world’s “coolest” city, people have been racing to determine its successor. - The New Republic
They generate a cumulative economic impact of $368 billion, a figure comparable to the GDP of Hong Kong and more than the entire economic output of Finland, New Zealand, or Greece. - Fast Company
“We, the undersigned musicians, wholeheartedly oppose major record labels’ unjust lawsuit targeting the Internet Archive,” the Musicians for Fairness and Preservation Open Letter reads. “We don’t believe that the Internet Archive should be destroyed in our name.” - Engadget
The regional government for Berlin intends to cut its cultural budget by 12%, and other state and municipal governments are similarly strapped. The German federal government is holding back as well, and with the coalition government just having collapsed, there's no budget for 2025 at all yet. What can arts managers there expect? - Deutsche Welle
"This move to support France’s national museum of Modern and contemporary art, which is scheduled to begin a massive €262 million renovation later this year, marks the latest development in a burgeoning cultural partnership between the two countries." - The Art Newspaper
"The store’s 110 unionized workers went on strike in the middle of the busy holiday season, leaving the shop’s '18 miles of books' to be run by a skeleton staff. … The union wants base pay to increase from $16 an hour, which is minimum wage in New York City, to $18 an hour." - Gothamist
The short-term extension comes amid long and contentious bargaining between SFS management, which insists that huge deficits must stop for the organization to survive, and the American Federation of Musicians, which argues that cuts demanded by management will severely diminish the orchestra. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
Under a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board, "10 fired dancers, and three whose offers of employment were rescinded, will receive over $560,000 from the dance company in back pay, front pay and compensation for damages incurred through the loss of their employment." - KERA (Dallas)
"A poet of rage and revolution as well as love and longing, (she) emerged as a fiery voice of Black liberation in the 1960s before honing a more tender, meditative style in best-selling books for children and adults." - The Washington Post (MSN)
