We collected 118 stories on ArtsJournal [subscribe] this week. Here's what I learned. The detail that stuck out in the Metropolitan Opera's announcement last fall that it had made a $200 million deal with the Saudi government to take the company to perform in the Kingdom for three weeks every winter was not the eye-popping rental fee. Nor even the fact it was taking up residence in the Middle … [Read more...]
LACMA’s New Building: What’s the purpose of art in a Museum?
The LA County Museum of Art has always been a museum on its own terms. Housed in what felt like a ramshackle architectural hodgepodge of period buildings built around an outdoor plaza, its fascinating collections belied the setting. Instead of the stone palaces with imposing grand entrances housing the treasures of its East Coast and European museum counterparts, LACMA felt messy, disjointed... … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: This Week — Perils of the Algorithmic Culture
This week we collected 134 stories on ArtsJournal.com. [subscribe] Here's what I learned: The whether-AI-can-make-art debate is by now a well-worn trope. It's actually a tedious question. If we still haven't been able to come up with a definitive answer to the age-old college dorm room question "what is art" then how are we supposed to be able to judge whether AI can make it? A small study … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: How to Fight the Slop
This week we collected 128 stories on ArtsJournal. Here's what I learned: We are drowning in slop. That's essentially the diagnosis in Derek Thompson's sharp essay this week on what he calls "zombie flow," the algorithmic compulsion to produce vast quantities of content nobody particularly wants. Streaming platforms commissioning shows designed not to be great but to fill a queue. Studios … [Read more...]
From Messages to Conversations: AI Agents are Changing how we Find Culture
In the last six months, we've seen a surge in traffic at ArtsJournal. That's great, right? But when I looked at server logs, we found that 70 percent of that surge was machines —bots— not people. We aren't alone. According to recent reports, automated traffic hit 51 percent of global web activity in December 2025, the first time in a decade that machines outnumbered people online. AI and large … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: The Excellence Problem and Why it Matters
This week we collected 113 stories on ArtsJournal. Here's what I learned: Next month, the French-Canadian harpsichordist Jean Rondeau will perform the Goldberg Variations three different ways in a single concert: solo keyboard in the traditional manner; arranged for strings, flute, and continuo; and a third approach he hasn't yet revealed. In an interview with Bachtrack this week, he was asked: … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: Why Tech Infrastructure is Becoming the Most Important Arts Story of 2026
Editor’s Note: These weekly essays are meant to connect stories from the week to larger trends and ideas across the arts world. To see all the stories on which these essays are drawn from, subscribe to ArtsJournal’s free daily and weekly newsletters. This week we collected 112 stories. Here's what I learned: What does it actually take for culture to reach an audience? A musician records a … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: What Habermas Feared for our Public Sphere
Editor’s Note: These weekly essays are meant to connect stories from the week to larger trends and ideas across the arts world. To see all the stories on which these essays are drawn from, subscribe to ArtsJournal’s free daily and weekly newsletters. To support our work, sign up at Patreon or subscribe to our Substack newsletter. This week we collected 118 … [Read more...]
What Ireland’s Basic Artist Income Experiment tells us about a new Arts Economy
In music, a ground bass is a repeating line in the lowest register — stable, unhurried, underneath everything — that gives performers freedom to improvise above it. It doesn't dictate what you play, but it anchors it, giving shape to the music and making what's above it possible. Ireland just built one for artists. After a three-year pilot that put €325 a week with no strings attached into … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: The Biggest Fights about Culture
Editor’s Note: These weekly essays are meant to connect stories from the week to larger trends and ideas across the arts world. To see all the stories on which these essays are drawn from, subscribe to ArtsJournal’s free daily and weekly newsletters. To support our work, sign up at Patreon or subscribe to our Substack newsletter. This week we collected 118 stories. Here's what I … [Read more...]
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 kinds of culture infrastructure deals that should worry anyone in the commercial or non-profit culture business because they impact us all. Here's why. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery signed a merger agreement … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: “Future Vision” and what the Boston Symphony signaled this week
This week we collected 123 stories at ArtsJournal. Here's what I learned: 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 … [Read more...]
Did the Supreme Court just unleash the Era of Radioactive Artist IP?
This morning the Supreme Court denied cert in the AI copyright case Thaler v. Perlmutter, with no dissent noted. A computer scientist had listed his AI system as the sole author of an artwork and tried to copyright it. Every court said no and that the Copyright Act requires a human author. The Supremes let this judgment stand. The creative world will treat this as a victory. Human authorship … [Read more...]
AJ Chronicles: The Battles for Who gets to say what Culture Is
Two stories this week add up to something important when placed side-by-side. Congressional Republicans introduced a bill to nationalize book banning, which would give federal authorities sweeping powers to purge school and public library collections of content they don't like. In the second, a volunteer group called Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian has spent thousands of hours photographing … [Read more...]
When “Better Than” meets “Good Enough”
Maybe you've seen the video below this week? It features the latest robotics by a Chinese robotics firm harnessed for a demonstration at this year's Spring Festival Gala. Give it a minute. I'll wait. Having seen the videos of dancing robots by Boston Robotics at MIT, I'm blown away by this. Also unsettled. The robots are incredible. And also: are they? What does incredible even mean here? … [Read more...]