Lebrecht: 2025 Was A Year Of Meddling With Music
I cannot remember a time when there was so much political meddling in music and so little resistance. - The Critic
New York Times’s New Chief Theater Critic: Helen Shaw Of The New Yorker
“The (Times) has been publishing reviews by a number of writers since predecessor Jesse Green was reassigned earlier this year. That list notably did not include...
Sarasota Opera Artistic Director Victor DeRenzi To Retire After 44 Years
The conductor joined the company back in 1982 and helped build it into an impressive operation for a city of Sarasota’s size and a...
Bringing The Musical-Theater Version Of “La Cage Aux Folles” Home To Paris
The property was born in the French capital, first as a play, then as a hit film (followed later by the big US remake)....
Whistleblower Alleges That CEO Of Chicago’s Black History Museum Misused Funds, Abused Staff
The now-former vice president of education and programs at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center is suing the institution and its CEO, Perri...
A Great Big New Film Studio In A Grim New Jersey Brownfield?
Hedge fund manager Arki Busson is hoping to ride a wave in production studio construction generated by state-government subsidies. His goal: 1888 Studios, the...
World’s Third-Busiest Public Library Faces Job Cuts, Accusations Of “Digital Vanity Projects”
The State Library of Victoria in Melbourne is Australia’s busiest, yet a restructuring is eliminating 39 jobs — including reducing the number of public-facing...
Two More Of Abu Dhabi’s Extravagant New Museums Have Opened
The Zayed National Museum, designed by Norman Foster’s architecture firm, is one of the five museums planned for Saadiyat Island, the emirate’s purpose-built cultural...
The Takács Quartet To Lose Its Last Founding Member
Cellist András Fejér has been with the famed string quartet since its founding exactly 50 years ago. As of next September, Fejér will retire;...
Strength in Numbers: Large Study Suggests Role for Music in Preventing Dementia
In 2020, the AARP’s Global Brain Health Alliance published a consensus report, Music on our Minds: The Rich Potential of Music to Promote Brain Health and Mental Well-Being. The report, produced in consultation with the National Endowment for the Arts, cited promising research on the value of music training for older adults.
Minnesota Dance “Titan” Dies At 63
Toni Pierce-Sands, a featured soloist in some of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s most iconic suites and a co-founder of celebrated Twin Cities...
How Did The Ancient Assyrian Library Of King Ashurbanipal Survive For 2,600 Years?
Oddly enough, the collection —well, the cuneiform clay tablets, not the papyrus — has come down to us today precisely because the Babylonians and...
Dallas City Council Considers Leaving Its IM Pei-Designed City Hall
The Dallas city government has voted to explore relocating and selling the brutalist city hall designed by architect IM Pei, placing the building under increased threat of demolition. -...
The Art Developments That Defined 2025
All in all, an exhausting year. But—if you’ll permit me—a bit of hope? For every gallery that shut down or closed a location, another...
AI May Help To Preserve And Grow Endangered Arapaho Language
I first visited the Northern Arapaho people on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in 1999. At that time, there were hundreds of speakers of the...
Luigi Pirandello Was Once Considered One Of Europe’s Great Writers. Why Was He Forgotten?
His plays were produced and his books were read all over the Western world, and he won the Nobel for literature in 1943. How...
Race To Buy Warner Bros. May Come Down To Relationship
Netflix showing strong interest in WBD's assets, including making a mostly cash offer to acquire them, coincided with reports that the White House had antitrust concerns, while...
By The Numbers: How Arts Organizations Have Fared In The Past Six Years
Performing arts organizations experienced sharper drops in revenue and staffing in 2024 than museums or community organizations. - SMU Cultural Data
When Our Machines Become Sentient, Will We Notice?
If an AI system were sentient, then the alignment paradigm, whereby AI activities are circumscribed entirely by human goals, becomes untenable. It would be...
Choreographer Tere O’Connor Explains His Famously Baffling Dances
“As with other artistic attempts to track the mind more accurately — like the stream-of-consciousness of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce — O’Connor’s coexistence-of-everything...
How Civilizations Collapse
Today the conditions for apocalypticism—gaping inequality, pandemics, rapid technological development—are amply present. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that, over the past several years, a...
Broadway Veteran Makes Leading Lady Debut At 96
June Squibb made her Broadway debut in the Ethel Merman-led production of “Gypsy” as a replacement for one of the strippers. What would she...
Supreme Court Appeared To Be Leaning Toward Internet Companies In Music Piracy Case
During nearly two hours of argument, the court appeared to be leaning toward the internet companies – perhaps on narrow grounds. - CNN
Why Trump Won’t Go After “South Park”, No Matter How Ferociously It Lampoons Him
None of the late-night hosts Trump repeatedly attacks have said anything nearly as outrageous as what the animated series does, depicting the President having...
This Major New Arts Center Is Almost Finished, On Time And On Budget. Even...
Kanal, on the edge of central Brussels, will feature a large museum, multiple performance venues, and an architecture center. It’s 95% complete and scheduled...
