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Banksy Tree Mural Defaced With White Paint Days After It Appeared

Despite being surrounded by a protective metal fence, white paint was thrown onto the artwork and discovered by local residents on the morning of March 20. - ARTnews

Machine Breakthrough In Reading Ancient Texts

Using a non-invasive method that harnesses machine learning, an international trio of scholars retrieved 15 columns of ancient Greek text from within a carbonized papyrus from Herculaneum, a seaside Roman town eight kilometres southeast of Naples, Italy. - The Conversation

Silicon Valley Disruption Comes To A Books Model

Authors Equity brings Silicon Valley–style startup disruption to the business of books. It has a tiny core staff, offloading its labor to a network of freelancers; it has angel investors; and it is upending the way that authors get paid, eschewing advances and offering a higher percentage of profits instead. - The Baffler

The Artworld Hoax That Fooled Virginia Woolf

For most of their adult lives, the two women employed an elaborate hoax in which Hepworth’s paintings were exhibited and sold under Preece’s name. Their trick was particularly successful in the 1920s and ’30s, when they fooled not only Woolf and Bell, but other major art-world figures. - Hyperallergic

What Do We Do With All Those Mountains Of Worn-Out Ballet Pointe Shoes?

Pacific Northwest Ballet goes through 2,000 pairs per year; during Nutcracker season, New York City Ballet uses up 500 pairs a month. And they're not recyclable unless you pull them apart and separate individual materials. How to keep the shoes out of landfills? Well, here are three options. - Dance Magazine

Why Some People Become Lifelong Readers

Leisure reading has been linked to a range of good academic and professional outcomes—as well as difficult to fully explain. But a chief factor seems to be the household one is born into, and the culture of reading that parents create within it. - The Atlantic

The 18th-Century Engineers Who Saved Michelangelo’s Dome At St. Peter’s From Collapsing

"When Pope Benedict XIV sent a team of three mathematicians to inspect the dome in 1742, they found, as Benedict suspected they might, a cataclysm waiting to happen." They worked out calculations to get the dome in balance, and, in the process, invented modern engineering. - The American Scholar

Review Of Arts Council England As Agency Under Fire

The UK scientist Mary Archer will scrutinise how Arts Council England (ACE) distributes public subsidies as part of a wide-ranging review overseen by the UK government. - The Art Newspaper

Polyglots In fMRI Machines Help Researchers Study How The Brain Processes Language(s)

"With one intriguing exception, activity increased in the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in the brain's language-processing network when these polyglots — who spoke between five and 54 languages — heard languages in which they were the most proficient compared to ones of lesser or no proficiency." - Reuters

How Universal Music Group Is Lobbying On AI

UMG played an instrumental role in bringing together a coalition of 150-plus organizations both in and outside the industry last year for the Human Artistry Campaign (HAC), which established a framework for the responsible use of AI for creative endeavors while respecting copyrights and artists’ likenesses. - Fast Company

Artist Sets Up Ladies-Only Lounge In Museum. Man Sues For Gender Discrimination. Artist Is “Absolutely Delighted.”

The installation at Tasmania's Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is by Kirsha Kaechele, wife of museum founder David Walsh, a math prodigy who made his $200 million fortune by gambling. Kaechele said in court that "(men's) experience of rejection IS the artwork." - The Guardian

What It Was Like To Be Martha Graham

Graham began her aesthetic experiments some 40 years before government arts funding was a gleam in anyone’s eye. The dancers sewed their own costumes, and Graham sometimes borrowed money from them. - Village Voice

La Mama Theatre To Cease All Performances Next Year (No, Not The One In New York)

This La Mama is in Melbourne, and (not unlike its American namesake) it has played a crucial role in the development of contemporary theatre in Australia. The company was denied funding from the national arts agency for 2025-28, so it's going on what it calls a "temporary pause." - Limelight (Australia)

One Of The World’s Oldest Working Film Studios Is Destroyed By Fire

"It took hours for firefighters to get the blaze under control and several buildings near (Al-Ahram Studio) in Cairo's Giza district had to be evacuated. … The studio was founded in 1944. Several films and TV series were produced there and broadcast across the world." - BBC

American Bible Society Is Closing Its $60 Million Museum Less Than Three Years After Opening It

"(The Society) had projected that the museum, centrally located on Independence Mall in Philadelphia, would draw 250,000 visitors a year. The revenue from ticket sales for the museum show a much lower number, maybe as low as 5,400 visitors in fiscal year 2022." - Christianity Today

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