Sasha Skochilenko, released in the multi-country, multi-person prisoner swap, was serving seven years for substituting price tags in a grocery store with messages like, “The Russian Army bombed an art school in Mariupol where about 400 people were seeking shelter.” - The Atlantic (MSN)
Why? It’s a mystery. “A Banksy fan who raced to the artwork’s location as soon as it was revealed on social media said she thinks it’s a commentary on humans destroying the natural world.” - ARTnews
The Annenberg report: Of the top 100 2023 films, the numbers are grim - from the 99 that had no Native or Pacific Islander women to the 39 without Black women. Why the backsliding? - HuffPost
"Arts organizations across Miami-Dade County have been left to their own devices ... to deal with the cuts in funding, and in many cases, that means making cuts of their own. … Arts groups in the county are nevertheless discussing ways to collaborate and make their resources go further together." - The Miami Times
How did The Great Gatsby get excitement for its cast album flowing? TikTok, of course - and also YouTube, Instagram, and X/Twitter, not to mention a party for influencers on all of these channels. Brand strategy: Snag the kids now, and it’ll pay off later. - The New York Times
No, this doesn't mean the breaking competition. This is free performance before 13,500 spectators at the Trocadéro Champions Park, where the Algerian-French hip-hop choreographer's latest work combined hip-hop with circus arts, visual arts and martial arts. - AP
One program delivered lazy, sexist jokes and couldn’t be trained out of its ways. So that’s going great - but researchers keep saying it will improve. - BBC
Sharon’s Tristan und Isolde opens March 9, 2026 with Lise Davidsen as Isolde. The Ring begins with Das Rheingold in spring 2028, continues with Die Walküre and Siegfried in 2028-29, and culminates with Gotterdämmerung in 2029-30. Davidsen will sing Brünnhilde, and there will be complete cycles in the spring of 2030. - AP
“Jenkins captivated her listeners because she presented music not as lessons but as play. A charismatic performer whose accompaniment often consisted of only a baritone ukulele and some percussion, she encouraged her young audiences not to sit still but to get up and move.” - The New York Times
"Researchers analysed thousands of gestures made by wild chimps in east Africa and found striking similarities with the turn-taking seen in human conversations, in particular how swiftly the apes responded to one another." - The Guardian
“To be dancing in the spotlight for that long, and also making sure it’s funny,” says actor Janelle James. But she was also considering "how the song affects people, particularly Black women. ... A lot of thought went into that little dance.” - Los Angeles Times (AOL)
David Henry Hwang wondered that, too. Yet he's part of an impressive team working on a show about the Large Hadron Collider and the discovery of the Higgs boson. "It took a year to get my head around how to tell this story," Hwang said. - The New York Times
The collection of 1,400 objects belongs to broker Sam Njunuri, who's been ordered to sell part of it to pay $990,000 in damages to two former tenants and used bankruptcy proceedings to avoid paying before. What's more, the objects' provenance is unclear, and taxpayers' money has been used to store them. - ARTnews
"Just 32% of speaking characters in the top 100 movies at the box office in 2023 were women or girls, according to (USC's) Annenberg Inclusion Initiative annual report released Monday. That’s very nearly the same percentage as when Stacy L. Smith first began the study in 2007." - AP
This isn't as bad as "Beast Jesus," but the repainting at the Ermita de Nuestra Señora del Mirón in the city of Soria has some people very upset. One might or might not object to the white-with-coral-trim walls, but the real disaster is on the faces of some little cherubs. - The Guardian
