His astounding social media fame has inspired a musical, Saturday Night Live skits, stand-up routines, academic inquiries into the regulation of health care algorithms and the psychosocial effects of chronic pain, and a counter-movement of outraged commentators scolding anyone who would make light of a murder. - The New York Times
“Unfortunately, the audience for book reviews is relatively low and we can no longer sustain the time it takes to plan, coordinate, write and edit reviews.” - Media Nation
Matthew Christopher Pietras “found himself eagerly courted by institutions that are desperate to find new generations of young patrons. He was invited to join the board of the Met Opera and began sponsoring galas.” Then things went horribly, tragically awry. - The New York Times
Opera lovers trying to find hotel rooms or Airbnbs - or anything at all - near their favorite summer opera festival are now competing for space with 100,000 parents and grandparents who want to see their kids play at baseball camp. - The New York Times
The western Massachusetts dance festival had originally called off performances only for this past weekend following the death of production manager Kat Sirico in a workplace accident. But an announcement on Wednesday said that "the Jacob’s Pillow Board of Trustees and institutional leadership has decided that Festival 2025 will not continue." - CBS News
At Northern Sky, “There’s kind of an ownership because you saw shows about people that you know, Midwesterners.” Some of them, like Lumberjacks in Love and Guys on Ice, even translate outside of the state. - The New York Times
Eventually. And by the way, they removed the info, they say, because it "was meant to be a temporary addition to a twenty-five year-old exhibition did not meet the museum’s standards in appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation.” - Washington Post (Yahoo)
Remember Alberto Vilar? What Matthew Christopher Pietras did might have been worse. Or it might not, since the victims of the theft may not have noticed that they were being robbed. - New York Magazine
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
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
“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)
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)
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
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
“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
“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
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
“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)
“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
