We’re now focused on “doping tests” to determine if artists have cheated. Rather than pee in a bottle, however, we’re depending on AI detector tools and documentary proof of human creation. Did the Foundation double down to ask what’s the best writing? No. They cared more about how it was made. Perhaps that’s important. Of course it is. But, in a way, it’s now an impossible question. Moreover, it may ultimately be the wrong question.
Archives for June 2026
AJ Chronicles: There’s no Shortage of Art. We Ran Out of Ways to Find It.
The major disconnect of contemporary culture: Findability has detached from the ability of traditional cultural narratives to agree on what’s important. Instead of art evolving in coherent strands that are traceable and linear, there are now multiple cultural universes, each with their own languages and conventions. Each has its own creative masters, famous within that universe. But from the outside, these adjacent universes are all but invisible and their languages opaque.
AJ Chronicles: A New Policy to Eliminate Arguments for the Arts
This notion that the ultimate measure of American educational value is economic is an impoverishing one. We measure for success. If that measure is earnings then we optimize for earnings. Social value measured on an earnings scale doesn’t just get deprioritized, it doesn’t exist.
Is Trump’s Wreckage of the Kennedy Center an Opportunity for Something Better?
The Kennedy Center is a treasure. Not just for what it has been, but because of what it represents. But the practicalities of providing a roof for a bunch of artistic enterprises that essentially have nothing much to do with one another — or worse, having to squabble dysfunctionally among themselves for resources — are an argument for the need for something better.