A key reason why it’s now more complicated to promote an album than, say, a theatrically released film, is the ephemeral, immaterial nature of contemporary music consumption.  By comparison, most films that see a theatrical release maintain a predictable, streamlined promotional schedule. - The New Yorker

Most of us are by now familiar with the broad mechanisms of the “attention economy” – the hijacking and monetising of consumer attention through addictive channels. The ravages of this system are ever more apparent. - The Observer

The implications for the battered-and-bruised entertainment industry are obvious. The impacts on our culture are just starting to fully materialize, but will be more significant. Instead of pulling us together, pop culture is another force dragging us apart. - The Wall Street Journal

This picture of time is not natural. Its roots stretch only to the 18th century, yet this notion has now entrenched itself so deeply in Western thought that it’s difficult to imagine time as anything else. And this new representation of time has affected all kinds of things, from our understanding of history to time travel. - Aeon

What if the next wave of artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t designed to feed that addiction — but to fundamentally change it? What if the future of AI demands young people’s attention, curiosity, and creativity in ways we haven’t experienced before? - Big Think

If you wanted to create a tool that would enable the destruction of institutions that prop up democratic life, you could not do better than artificial intelligence. Authoritarian leaders and technology oligarchs are deploying AI systems to hollow out public institutions with an astonishing alacrity. - Gary Marcus

Around 800 artists, writers, actors, and musicians signed on to a new campaign against what they call “theft at a grand scale” by AI companies. The signatories call the campaign “Stealing Isn’t Innovation.” - The Verge

“Although the IMLS restored discretionary grant funding in December and just last week reopened to grant proposals for FY 2026 — in compliance with a November court order — defendants in State of Rhode Island v. Trump have filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.” - Publishers Weekly

Around half of the package, £760 million, will go to museums, mostly for infrastructure needs. £425 million will go to support some 300 performance venues, £230 million to maintain churches and heritage buildings, £27.5 million to upgrading libraries, and £80 million over four years to National Portfolio Organisations. - Press Association (UK) (Yahoo!)

Fundamentally, the state of the humanities and liberal arts reveals a widening conflict over the “value” of higher education – with increasingly corporatized universities favoring market-driven metrics for evaluation, and proponents of humanistic education stressing that its worth to both individuals and society at large cannot be measured that way. - The Guardian

“Trolling and tackiness, often crossbred with left-coded pop songs and hot memes, have served to wish a new zeitgeist into existence. Consume only the output of MAGA’s multi-front media efforts, and you may come to feel that the country is coalescing into pep-rally unity on Trump’s behalf.” - The Atlantic (MSN)

The National Endowment for the Humanities on Thursday announced $71 million in new grants, including nearly $40 million to classical humanities institutes and civic leadership programs that have been promoted by conservatives as a counterweight to liberal-dominated higher education. - The New York Times

In execution, this theory works very simply: Don’t change the music; change the way you deliver it. Do the opposite of what institutions are doing when they offer radically shortened operas or watered-down symphonies. - The New York Times

La Scala closed 2025 with record ticket sales of over €40 million (+7.3% compared to 2024). Added to this is the record revenue of the La Scala Theatre Museum, which reached €3.4 million. - Gramilano

Extracting the endowment after 15 years of operating under the auspices of the Kennedy Center will take more work—and a lot of lawyers. “It is rightly ours,” Francesca Zambello says of the endowment, declining to comment further on the negotiations. “We have a very large legal team.” - Washingtonian

Carrie Cracknell’s staging has Escamillo (here a rodeo star rather than a bullfighter) enter to the “Toreador Song” in a Jaguar convertible followed by three trucks. As part of the Met’s money-saving measures, the Jaguar and two trucks have been removed, saving $300,000 but infuriating Cracknell and the designers. - AP

Christos Makridis of Arizona State University: “I found the public’s demand for meaningful, live cultural experiences — including opera — remains strong. … (But) few opera companies have embraced strategies the rest of the entertainment industry regularly uses: audience data analysis, experimentation with digital content and streaming, engagement through online platforms rather than brochures.”...

Mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina on the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen. - The New York Times

What would happen to the murals is an open question, as removing them may prove difficult. Advocates for the building fear that without protections put in place ahead of a sale, the buyer would have no incentive to maintain the historical features inside. - Washington Post

Americans argue about the Smithsonian far more than we would if only its possessions mattered. When our museums of record tell us a story, that story matters enormously. - The Atlantic

For just over five weeks, from February 7 to March 14, visitors will be allowed to climb the towering 20-foot scaffold inside the Sforza Castle’s Sala delle Asse to view conservators at work on a vast, unfinished wall and ceiling painting by Leonardo hidden for centuries. - Artnet

The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa has listed its 217-acre estate for $10.9 million, less than a year after announcing a plan to boost revenue through event rentals. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

New York’s Metropolitan Opera is facing a serious financial crunch, and may sell two beloved Marc Chagall murals to help fill the gap—but if it does, it will leave them in place. Sotheby’s valued the artworks at a total of $55 million. - ARTnews

“One hand stencil was dated to at least 67,800 years ago, making it the oldest securely dated cave art found anywhere. This is at least 15,000 years older than the rock art we had previously dated in this region, and more than 30,000 years older than the oldest cave art found in France.” - The Conversation

For more than a century, scientific journals have been the pipes through which knowledge of the natural world flows into our culture. Now they’re being clogged with AI slop. - The Atlantic

The book is the only surviving complete original manuscript of Richard Rolle’s Emendatio vitae, written circa 1340. - BBC (MSN)

Women are rewriting the rules of sword-and-sorcery, trading testosterone-fueled quests for romance-driven adventures. Publishers are discovering that dragons plus dating equals dollars—who knew female readers wanted both magic and meaningful relationships? — The Conversation

ChatGPT has writers channeling their inner folk hero, hammer in hand. But as Stephen Marche notes, we've been dancing with technological muses long before algorithms—typewriters, anyone? — LitHub

“Is listening to a book while doing the dishes, walking the dog or drifting off to sleep really as valuable as sitting down to read it? For authors, the publishing trade and those encouraging reading and literacy, the answer is increasingly yes.” - The Guardian

The Republican-run Alabama Public Library Service Board voted to withhold roughly $22,000 in state funding from the Fairhope Public Library, citing the library’s failure to comply with the board’s rules requiring books deemed “sexually explicit” be relocated to the adult section. - The Daily Beast

The overlooking of the Good Witch was truly Wicked. Then again, crowd pleaser Wicked: For Good got basically nothing overall, so maybe it’s time to reconsider that shunned Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Popular Film category …just sayin’. - Deadline

For anyone fantasizing about Hollywood as some liberal bulwark, though, the 2024 election brought that idea to an abrupt halt. The industry’s era of progressive sincerity, and much of its wariness toward conservative-coded content, has evaporated. - The New York Times

Under the agreement, the BBC will grow its number of YouTube channels to 50, which includes those operated by commercial arm, BBC Studios. New specialist channels will include BBC3’s Deepwatch (working title), featuring new and existing documentaries. Seven children’s channels will be launched (as well).” - Deadline

Director Ryan Coogler’s Mississippi Delta vampire epic has surpassed the 14-nomination record jointly held by All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land. Paul Thomas’s black comedy action thriller One Battle After Another scored 13 nods. (includes complete list of nominations) - Variety

“The country’s premier showcase for independent film is also in a time of profound transition after decades of relative stability. The festival is … forging forward without its founder, Robert Redford, who died in September. Next year, it must find its footing in another mountain town, Boulder, Colorado.” - AP

Nielsen says streamers logged 55.1 billion minutes on streaming services on Christmas, breaking the previous high — set on Christmas in 2024 — by 3.9 billion minutes. That amounts to 54 percent of all TV use during the day, also an all-time high for streaming services. - The Hollywood Reporter

Seth Orza, when he was a principal with Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, developed plantar fasciitis and couldn’t find a shoe that would give his feet enough support and shock absorption to keep the pain at bay. So he designed one, using features copied from running sneakers. - The New York Times

Trot out the national anthem, the flag or a John Philip Sousa march, they believe, and it’s like a free exclamation mark to whatever point they’re trying to make: “Ha! See? The stars and stripes are on my side!” - San Francisco Chronicle

The oldest dance company in the US had been scheduled to perform at the DC venue as part of its centennial tour. The brief statement announcing the cancellation mentioned no reason. - The Daily Beast

OK, sure: Heated Rivalry Night “began as a single event that quickly sold out, leading to extra dates … and more than 100 multi-city pop-ups are planned over the next few months in places like Brooklyn, Washington, D.C., Chicago and London.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)

That fiasco, during 2024-25, featured the firing of the dancers, loss of municipal funding, and a government-ordered overhaul of governance and employment practices. Now, with a new board, restored funding, and the search for a new executive director, DBDT is trying to rebuild its artistic work and public trust. - D Magazine (Dallas)

Last month, Kinesis Dance, rebranded earlier that year as Frequency Dance, abruptly shut down. Preceding that closure was a long series of financial irregularities, unpaid bills, and other troubles, including a 2023 break-in which involved serious destruction but no theft. - Boulder Reporting Lab

The Jungle Theater has been wrestling with financial problems ever since COVID hit, but the decision to close comes after an ICE raid near the theater’s doors last weekend. Artistic director Christina Baldwin said, “We’re under siege at the moment and we need a breather.” - The Minnesota Star Tribune (MSN)

“The move not to produce this year is meant to allow the organization to continue to rethink its future after a period of radical change. Leadership is still deciding whether Williamstown will skip only this summer or move into producing the flagship festival on a biennial basis.” - The Washington Post (MSN)

“On TripAdvisor, one user warns: ‘Don’t waste your money!’ Another pleads: ‘Kill me now!’ And yet, since 1987, Perfect Crime has been running eight times a week. Every performance stars the same actress, Catherine Russell; in nearly four decades she has missed only four performances.” - The Times (UK)

“When an obscure play called The Kholops opened in St. Petersburg in 2024, many Russians raced to see it, fearful that the authorities would quickly shut (it) down. … Nearly two years later, the doors remain open and the seats packed for The Kholops, written in 1907 by Pyotr Gnedich.” - The New York...

“Helping stage managers and actors just shy of eligibility qualify for coverage through the Equity-League Health Fund—one of the strongest health plans in the country—is, I hope, a small but meaningful way to care for our collaborators and the larger theatre community.” - American Theatre

The touring troupe Quarantine was to perform its midday-to-midnight piece 12 Last Songs this weekend as part of the Under the Radar festival of experimental theater. Thursday afternoon the company announced that US visas had been “paused” for 10 of its 13 members, and Citizenship and Immigration Services won’t say why. - The Stage

He was once the most famous Black American in the world, and one of the most accomplished: college football and NFL star, a degree from Columbia Law School, a major career as a classical concert singer and film and stage actor. Then Jackie Robinson, the pioneering baseball player, testified against him. - The Guardian

Leider’s career arc was an unusual one. He helped turn Artforum into a go-to source for serious, no-nonsense art criticism, serving as its editor starting in 1962. Then, in 1971, Leider left the publication — and the eye of the mainstream art world in the US, becoming a professor first at UCal-Irvine and then in Israel....

“In 1978, Ms. Packer founded Shakespeare & Company with Kristin Linklater, a voice teacher; Dennis Krausnick, an actor, director and writer who later became Ms. Packer’s husband; and a group of other theater artists. An actress by training, Ms. Packer was the company’s artistic director until 2009.” - The New York Times

Toward the end of his life, the versatile Bennett Cerf — believing that growth was essential — acquired rival publishing house Knopf. A few years later, he arranged for Random House to become a subsidiary of the RCA Corporation, then an electronics and communications leviathan. This move, Cerf soon recognized, was a mistake. -...

Perhaps her “most significant contributions to the repertoire were the premieres ... Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis, an anti-Hitler allegory composed in the Theresienstadt concentration camp before Mr. Ullmann was murdered at Auschwitz, and Anthony Davis’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.” - The New York Times

“ gave me an outlet that I would not have had if I'd gone on a path to be what I was meant to be, which is really just to be an intellectual. … It was a sink or swim. I had to develop an emotional side.” - NPR