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Is What Most Historians Have Believed About Sacagawea For A Century Actually Wrong?

Her tribe, birthplace, date of death — all those and much else from the journals and later testimony of Lewis and Clark had been considered definitive. But Native American oral history about Sacagawea is quite different, and there are good reasons to believe that Lewis and Clark were misinformed. - The New York Times Magazine

Congress Approves Trump’s Clawback Of All Public Radio And TV Funding

The bill reclaims the entire $1.1 billion previously appropriated for the next two years for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB distributes two-thirds of its funding to over 1,500 local public radio and TV stations, with most of the rest going to NPR and PBS to support national programming. - AP

Can The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center Survive?

The venerated, invaluable theatre incubator is facing, like so many performance-related sites, money trouble. - The New York Times

The Salt Path’s Author Had A New Book Coming Out, Then Came Last Week’s Revelations

“Penguin, publisher of The Salt Path, is delaying author Raynor Winn’s next book after reporting cast doubt over the truth of the 2018 memoir. The decision was taken to 'support the author.’” - The Guardian (UK)

As The Kennedy Center Loses Subscribers, What Will This Mean For The National Symphony Orchestra?

It’s not great: Subscriptions are down 36 percent. But “complicating things for a number of NSO supporters … is the energy surrounding the orchestra itself, which remains infectiously high, ascendant and alive with promise, especially following last season’s extension of music director Gianandrea Noseda’s contract.” - Washington Post (MSN)

The Multitude Of Ways Trump Is Preventing Musicians From Other Countries Getting To The US

It’s not pretty. Yet organizers persist. Why? "When you’re in the same room as the artist, when you feel the music move through your body, when you see the emotion on their face and hear their story — that creates a bond. … It counters propaganda. It softens xenophobia.” - Seattle Times

In A Tough Hollywood Job Market, YouTube And Other Social Media Provide Aa Rare Bright Spot

Yes, it’s true: "That part of the industry, once dominated by amateurs making funny viral videos with smartphones has blossomed into a formidable entertainment force, where video creators are setting up real businesses with large studios in Southern California funded through advertising by major brands. - Los Angeles Times

Remember The Collective That Sold Pieces Of A Damien Hirst Painting Dot By Dot? Look At What They’re Up To Now.

“Billed as a ‘financial trust fall,’ the project” — a sculpture of an infant, built to be taken apart and divided, which the collective MSCHF has titled King Solomon’s Baby — “invites collectors to take the plunge (and buy a piece), hoping others will follow suit in a reverse pyramid scheme that’s artfully self-aware.” - ARTnews

Kyoto’s Overtourism Problem May Be Even Worse Than Amsterdam’s Or Barcelona’s

“Last year, more tourists visited Kyoto than Barcelona, Amsterdam, or even Paris. … (It's a) conundrum with no obvious solutions. Tokyo and Osaka are big enough to soak up tourists the same way New York and London can, but Kyoto is hemmed in by mountains, which keeps the city from expanding.” - New York Magazine

Famous Art Detective Arthur Brand Recovers Stolen Documents So Historic That They’re UNESCO-Listed

The cache of papers, dating from the 15th through the 19th centuries, was stolen from the National Archives of the Netherlands in 2015. Among the recovered papers are archives from the early days of the world’s first multinational corporation, the Dutch East India Company. - France 24

Brad Pitt Is Fooling You

“The cumulative effect of F1 and its press tour have been a carefully tuned charm offensive meant to obscure, if not outright bury, the alleged violent particulars of his behavior toward ex-wife Angelina Jolie.” - Vulture (Internet Archive)

A Strad That Disappeared At The End Of WWII May Have Resurfaced

“The case of the Mendelssohn Stradivarius highlights the opaque trade for rare instruments, in which details about provenance, or the history of previous ownership, are often not well documented or, in some cases, intentionally obscured.” - The New York Times

Did The Salt Path Seem Like A Good Story?

That’s because the “memoir” (and its sequels, not to mention the new movie starring Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs) was at least partly fiction, covering up theft, a criminal case, and land in France. - The Observer (UK)

Museums Are Collecting People’s Goals And Hopes For The 250th Birthday Of The United States

And it’s weirdly hopeful, deeply compelling stuff. “People were especially motivated to share their input when they were told that their contributions would be archived for posterity” (assuming the country & institutions, ah, survive). - Hyperallergic

Documentary Makers Fear Being Turned Into Criminals By A Harsh New British Law

"We are being advised that the curtailing of Palestine Action could have a major knock-on effect for us as it could become not only illegal for others to voice support for them but also for us, as film-makers, to distribute this film.” - The Guardian (UK)

The Backlash Against Generated AI Is Gaining Steam

Why? "Unlike the dawn of the internet where democratized access to information empowered everyday people in unique, surprising ways, the generative AI era has been defined by half-baked software releases and threats of AI replacing human workers.” - Wired

The Artist Who Got Catfished By A Fake Lady Gaga

“Needless to say, this was not a situation Webster expected to encounter as an up and coming artist.” - The New York Times

How A Music Librarian Convinced Sondheim To Leave His Smoke-Singed Papers To The Nation

A personalized tour of the Library of Congress “included original manuscripts from composers Béla Bartók, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky and Johannes Brahms. … But it was American composer George Gershwin's manuscript for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess that moved Sondheim to tears." - CBC

There’s No One In Charge At The US Copyright Office

Thanks to Elon Musk and DOGE, of course - and no one knows when that might improve. - Wired

One Of The World’s First Gay Anthems Was Born 100 Years Ago In Chicago

The police bust of an all-women party she hosted in 1925 was the subject of Ma Rainey’s 1928 record “Prove It on Me Blues.” Rainey and her contralto voice were part of a wider lesbian blues counterculture that included Gladys Bentley, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters and Alberta Hunter. - BBC
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