These weekly essays are meant to connect stories from the week to larger trends and ideas across the arts world. This week we collected 118 stories. Here’s what I learned:
Archives for 2026
Paramount and Live Nation/Ticketmaster Won Big Last Week: Here’s why Orchestras and Theatres (and Consumers) Lost
Two huge culture industry deals in the past week, both in entertainment, and maybe they don’t seem connected. Certainly not connected to non-profit arts. But these are exactly the kind of culture infrastructure deals that should worry anyone in the commercial or non-profit culture business because they impact us all. Here’s why.
AJ Chronicles: “Future Vision” and what the Boston Symphony signaled this week
The Boston Symphony’s board didn’t fire Andris Nelsons as its music director. Not exactly. They declined to renew his contract because he and the BSO weren’t “aligned on future vision” — the board’s own words, offered without apology. Not artistic differences. Not budget. Not performance. Future vision. That phrase is doing a lot of work here, and it’s worth thinking about, because it signals a structural institutional shift, one that appears, in different vocabulary, in many of the stories in arts and culture this week.
Did the Supreme Court just unleash the Era of Radioactive Artist IP?
Authorship used to be a status granted by an act of creation. Now it will be a status you will have to defend through paperwork. We have moved from the era of the romantic “lone genius” to the era of the administrative author who will need to “prove” the machine didn’t make it.
AJ Chronicles: The Battles for Who gets to say what Culture Is
Evidence abounds this week that the battles for culture are intensifying. Taken together, these tests of authority over cultural institutions are probes of where the line is, of how much self-censorship the cultural sector will perform without being explicitly required to.
When “Better Than” meets “Good Enough”
The question isn’t whether AI will change our definition of creative excellence. The question is how we will engage with that change: with curiously and critical insight, with our existing values intact but our existing definitions loosely held? Or defending the current map as if it were the entire territory.
AJ Chronicles: Metropolitan Opera as Poster Child
My weekly pondering on arts and cultural stories for the week of February 22nd.
The Middleware Manifesto: A Proposal for Rebuilding American Culture
That shift from content value to traffic value is what has destroyed the business model for nearly everything we’re talking about. I’m calling it a manifesto because that’s what it needs to be. Not a lament. Not a white paper, but a declaration of what is needed.
AJ Chronicles: This Week’s Stories — Changing of the Guard
This week there’s a question that connects nearly every story. Who gets to decide what’s real? A viral AI-generated video of Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt is racking up views. Neither actor consented or was paid. SAG-AFTRA is furious. Lawsuits await. Meanwhile, Tracey Emin is telling young artists to buy cameras, keep diaries, and send […]
AJ Chronicles: This week’s stories — When Spectacle replaces Authority
My weekly essay reflecting on arts stories of the past week.
Why the Death of American Leadership may run through your Local Orchestra
In the space of a week, we have lost two significant and iconic American institutions. But the shuttering of the Kennedy Center and the decimation of the Washington Post are neither isolated nor unrelated.
This Week’s AJ Chronicles: Context is Survival
Existential crises have a way of forcing clarity. Whether the arts and the larger creative world are in crisis I leave for you to decide. But with weekly news of financial and organizational meltdowns, political pressures and an almost primordial angst about threats of AI, some things may be becoming clearer about what matters and/or what works.
AJ Chronicles: This Week in the Great Culture Shift
This week, ArtsJournal looked at thousands of stories and collected 118 stories across culture. This is one person’s attempt to make sense of them.
Old Laws, New Ghosts: Why Artists are losing the Battle for AI
The fear and concern are real. The issues are real. But we’re trying to conjure up rules for 21st Century technologies with a 20th-Century vocabulary that’s ill-equipped for the job.
An AI “Digital Twin” for the Performing Arts
In the evolving world of AI, marketing is moving from getting messages out to engaging in dialog with the consumer. Messages get lost in the Sea of Messages. Persuasion asks what you’re interested in first and engages you in opportunities.