"Called the 'dean of American post-modernists' and 'the most meta of American meta-fictional writers,' Auster blended history, politics, genre experiments, existential quests and self-conscious references to writers and writing. ... Starting in the 1970s, Auster completed more than 30 books, translated into dozens of languages." - AP
The £40,000 Rose International Dance Prize, administered by Sadler's Wells in London, will be awarded biennially starting in February 2025. As with the Turner, all of the finalists (four have been named for this cycle) will be on view (for two weeks at Sadler's Wells) before the winner is announced. - BBC
"The musical Hell’s Kitchen, fueled by Alicia Keys songs, and the play Stereophonic, about a ‘70s rock band at the edge of stardom, each earned a leading 13 Tony Award nominations Tuesday, a list that also saw a record number of women nominated for best director." - AP
The extreme college workout facility is passé - now it’s cool, newly renovated and/or expanded museums that attract undergrads and their tuition-paying parents. - The New York Times
The man who invented the deep state "wasn’t just a writer and soldier. He was an anti-communist intelligence operative who helped define U.S. psychological operations, or psyops, during World War II and the Cold War. His essential insight was that the most effective psychological warfare is storytelling.” - The Atlantic
A new ballet so popular it got an extra seven performances at the end of the season. Big — and younger — crowds. Conga lines in the lobby at after-parties. In her first four months of programming, Rojo has transformed the vibe at War Memorial Opera House. - The San Francisco Standard
She returned to her home state, Texas, and settled in a rural town not far from Austin. Yes, there have been struggles with mental illness and mobility (from a longstanding foot injury), but, at 74, she's happy to be acting again, and her director praises her work. - The New York Times
"Internal documents … and interviews with more than two dozen current and former public radio executives show how profoundly the nonprofit is struggling to succeed in the fast-changing media industry. It is grappling with a declining audience and falling revenue — and internal conflict about how to fix it." - The New York Times
"Unlike Black Swan, the darkly funny Abigail — which follows a band of kidnappers as they discover that their prisoner, supposedly an adolescent ballet student, is actually a centuries-old vampire — doesn’t aim for profundity. But entertainment-world depictions of ballet, even in campy romps like Abigail, carry weight." - The New York Times
Cool and deeply creepy at the same time: “The artist's AI voice was trained on voice samples taken from archival interviews Dalí did in English over his career. (He spoke four languages — Catalan, Spanish, French and English — sometimes interchangeably.)” We’re ready for the four-language answers. - NPR
“The exhibition’s top prizes both went to Indigenous artists, with the Golden Lion for the main curated exhibition going to the Mataaho Collective, which consists of four Māori women artists. ... The Golden Lion for the National Pavilion was given to Archie Moore (Kamilaroi/Bigambul), who was Australia’s representative." - ARTnews
Orlando Whitfield (as recounted in his new book): “I mean, this is great, but it’s on a fucking wall. A door was one thing, but this is different.” Philbrick: “I know. But it has to be doable, right? Has to be. Think of all those frescoes they move in Italy.” - The Guardian
The series E-Moves is 25 years old now, and one of its "intended effects has been to take choreographers who work mainly ‘downtown,’ in white-dominated dance institutions, and bring them ‘uptown’ to Harlem." - The New York Times
Birmingham is a bellwether for the UK. Nothing “could be more emblematic of the way that Britain currently devalues life: when we only focus on our most basic needs, dismissing leisure, art, literature and culture as something decadent and middle-class, we do ourselves an injustice.” - The Observer (UK)
“For more than a half-century, Ms. Ringgold explored themes of race, gender, class, family and community through a vast array of media, among them painting, sculpture, mask- and doll-making, textiles and performance art.” - The New York Times
Even now, "some employees, particularly female employees, continue to feel unsafe. A current member of the orchestra told me about an incident this past February in which her male colleagues spoke negatively about Asian women performing with the orchestra." - Vulture (MSN)
"Critics need to be more flexible than artists. You have to be open to being changed and pushed into new directions. ... My main goal has always been to point out art that people would enjoy seeing, and to show them how I saw it and enjoyed it." - The New York Times
Although distributors and streaming services frequently use language that places the blame on the artist for fraudulent activity detected on their accounts, it has become clear that artists are often caught in the middle of a crossfire between streaming services, distributors and fraudsters attempting to game the system for their own financial gain. - Variety
In the foreword to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a possible second Donald Trump administration, it says “people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.” - AP
