"The city drained the fountain to clean it ahead of the Vatican’s Jubilee Year. ... Visitor access to the site is currently via a temporary walkway. But the real problem is the plywood-sided pool on the stairs in front of the fountain into which visitors are now instructed to toss coins." - Artnet
Funds would be raised by selling tickets to the performances of the winning entries, with the theatre’s president Suranne Jones giving an on-stage critique afterwards. "It will combine a search for community talent with being a money-maker," she said. - BBC
The author of the beloved young adult novel is writing her own libretto, with music by composer Derek Bermel. The work just had its first performance, unstaged, at the University of Michigan; the fully staged world premiere is next July at Glimmerglass Opera in upstate New York. - Chicago Tribune
The background condition of this discussion is our current state of permacrisis: the collision of multiple critical problems whose conjunction renders effective response to any one of them impossible. Crisis demands a response, but too much of it strains our abilities. - The Walrus
His easygoing exterior belied a deft improvisatory mind that could take the temperature of the room, the guest, and the viewer all at once, course-correcting with breathtaking speed. - The New Yorker
"His books and his teaching changed the understanding of his discipline and helped to move the design and planning of cities and buildings away from the functionalist mindset that dominated postwar building." The concept of "placemaking" might not exist if not for his work. - The Guardian
The painting’s essential elements—man, woman, pitchfork—have been referenced, reimagined, and parodied in everything from a 1942 photograph by Gordon Parks to a 2012 episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. - Artnet
The gallery’s owner Mark Peet Visser has described the heist as “amateurish,” noting that explosives used to gain entry were “so violent that my entire building was destroyed,” and even damaged some neighboring shops. This was confirmed by local police in an official update. - Artnet
"Great Gold Bird is set across three locations, (starting with) audience members' homes. Where to go next is revealed via the narrative — an address unlocked after perusing a website dedicated to a lost love, or a map uncovered in a locked chest after we discover its combination." - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
Spreading the fear of AI stealing all our jobs seems to garner much more enthusiasm for basic income than continually pointing at the evidence. But hitching the case for basic income to fears of rapid AI progress makes it far more vulnerable than it needs to be. - Vox
Stopgap, a contemporary dance company which integrates variously disabled and neurodiverse performers, has a piece titled Lived Fiction in which audio description is integral to the work. Partially-sighted writer Caroline Butterwick came to find out if description can work with an art form as purely visual as dance is. - The Guardian
The pairing of Jones, a noted composer, arranger and producer for jazz and R&B acts, and Jackson, the child star looking for a breakout sound, over three albums remains a career-defining arc that transformed pop music in the 1980s. - The New York Times
Rachael Gunn of Australia already has an established career as an academic (studying breakdancing and popular culture), and the public roasting she received after her zero-points performance at the Olympic finals in Paris, along with subsequent worldwide scrutiny on social media, have become too much to put up with. - AP
