UK Government Announces £1.5 Billion In Arts Funding
Around half of the package, £760 million, will go to museums, mostly for infrastructure needs. £425 million will go to support some 300 performance...
A Labor Economist Looks At Opera And Says It Isn’t Dying (But Its Business...
Christos Makridis of Arizona State University: “I found the public’s demand for meaningful, live cultural experiences — including opera — remains strong. … (But)...
San Francisco Ballet And “Anticipatory Obedience”
Trot out the national anthem, the flag or a John Philip Sousa march, they believe, and it’s like a free exclamation mark to whatever...
There’s More Footage Of The Jewelry Robbery At The Louvre — And It Looks...
“The two perpetrators can be seen wearing balaclavas and using disc cutters to slice open display cases. The theft takes place under the watch...
Women-Centered Fantasy Is Fueling The Publishing Industry
Women are rewriting the rules of sword-and-sorcery, trading testosterone-fueled quests for romance-driven adventures. Publishers are discovering that dragons plus dating equals dollars—who knew female...
Philly Art Museum’s Rebrand Needs a Rebrand (And Might Get It)
Nothing says "we nailed it" quite like forming a task force to fix your fresh new identity while quietly showing your chief marketing officer...
Trump Takes Aim at New Deal Murals
Because nothing says 'making America great again' like erasing the last time we actually invested in artists. Depression-era public art programs apparently too woke...
A Look At Opera’s Sexiest Tune, With Its Reigning Singer
Mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina on the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen. - The New York Times
Writers vs. Machines: The John Henry Complex Returns
ChatGPT has writers channeling their inner folk hero, hammer in hand. But as Stephen Marche notes, we've been dancing with technological muses long before...
Why Movies Launch And Music Drops
A key reason why it’s now more complicated to promote an album than, say, a theatrically released film, is the ephemeral, immaterial nature of...
Afghan Musicians Fled To Pakistan To Escape The Taliban. Now Pakistan Is Chasing Them...
The rhythms that resonate in wedding halls, concert stages and apartment blocks are falling silent, as the Pakistani government pursues a wave of expulsions...
Maybe Listening To An Audiobook Really Is As Good As Reading A Print Book
“Is listening to a book while doing the dishes, walking the dog or drifting off to sleep really as valuable as sitting down to...
The Crisis In Humanities? The Business Model Doesn’t Work
Fundamentally, the state of the humanities and liberal arts reveals a widening conflict over the “value” of higher education – with increasingly corporatized universities...
As The Old Starchitects Die, Maybe We Shouldn’t Replace Them
The "starchitect" was a figment of media attention, drummed up to answer our interest in celebrity, and our exaggerated expectations of what might be...
Alabama Library Board Cuts Funding To Library That Wouldn’t Remove “Handmaid’s Tale”
The Republican-run Alabama Public Library Service Board voted to withhold roughly $22,000 in state funding from the Fairhope Public Library, citing the library’s failure...
So This Is Donald Trump’s “Golden Age of Culture” …
“Trolling and tackiness, often crossbred with left-coded pop songs and hot memes, have served to wish a new zeitgeist into existence. Consume only the...
Sundance Gears Up For Its Last Edition In Park City, Utah
“The country’s premier showcase for independent film is also in a time of profound transition after decades of relative stability. The festival is … forging forward...
Philip Leider, Founding Editor Of Artforum, Has Died At 96
Leider’s career arc was an unusual one. He helped turn Artforum into a go-to source for serious, no-nonsense art criticism, serving as its editor starting in...
Philadelphia Art Museum’s New Director On Moving Past The Recent Turmoil
Daniel H. Weiss talks about leading the museum (“I believe very strongly in shared governance”) and sorting out the pressing priorities: re-examining the rebrand,...
Williamstown Theatre Festival Cancels This Summer’s Edition, Considers Going Biennial
“The move not to produce this year is meant to allow the organization to continue to rethink its future after a period of radical...
Philadelphia Art Museum Considers Redoing Controversial Rebrand
Paul Dien, the chief marketing officer who oversaw that rebrand, has resigned. New director/CEO Daniel Weiss has set up a task force of staffers...
Metropolitan Opera Announces Layoffs, Pay And Programming Cuts
The company is laying off 22 of its 284 administrative staffers, reducing pay for 35 of its top executives (including general director Peter Gelb...
A Brief History Of The Word “Hello”
The greeting’s first known appearance in print happened 200 years ago this week in a Connecticut newspaper, but its roots go back at least...
Our Connection Between Athletics And Writing
The intensity of the workout was necessary to take her out of her head, so that she could write from a different place—“an embodied...
The Virtuosic Female Musicians Who Attracted Rapt Listeners From All Over Europe
The women of 18th-century Venice’s ospedali (homes for the destitute, the sick, and orphans) are remembered largely because Vivaldi composed music for them. History...
