“For theatre to remain ambitious, kinetic, and meaningful, we can’t let institutional constraints like funding models or planning cycles become barriers to fresh perspectives, and I can’t allow my personal preferences to overrule or narrow the choices of the many artistic directors who produce in our venue.” - American Theatre

Like the negative space against which words become visible (voids emphasised in Cage’s original typography), nothing generates speech and the speaker, poetry and the ‘I’ who needs it. - Aeon

For most, participation in the online attention economy feels like a tax, or maybe a trickle of revenue, rather than free fun or a ticket to fame. The few remaining professionals in the arts and letters have felt pressured to supplement their full-time jobs with social media self-promotion, subscription newsletters, podcasts, and short-form video.  - BookForum

Some say canceling is an act of redress, a powerful display of solidarity. Others blame it on a mob. Still others have considered it an overblown moral panic or even a hoax. - Washington Post

We are indeed going to have to live with each other, barring apocalyptic violence—but we already have been for quite some time, and doing so has not required revisionist history of the sort we are now witnessing about one Charles James Kirk in particular.  - Boston Review

Today, I look at my invention and I am forced to ask: is the web still free today? No, not all of it. Trading personal data for use certainly does not fit with my vision for a free web. - The Guardian

“County council leader Mick Barton banned the Nottingham Post and its online arm, Nottinghamshire Live, from speaking to him and other councillors ‘with immediate effect’ on 28 August.” - BBC

As the art world grows ever more corporate and culture continues its slide into an anti-intellectual dumpster fire, we will start to see a cultural rebellion — the return of a 1970s and ’80s “New York Drop Dead” barbarism, and with it a movement of making art for its own sake. - The New York Times

Todd Arrington, a career historian who previously worked at the National Archives, said he was ordered to resign from the Eisenhower Presidential Library. He had declined to turn over one of Eisenhower’s own swords so Trump could present it to Charles III while on a state visit to the UK. - CBS News

Only four of the 26 members of the advisory body remain; the rest were terminated via a notably terse email from the White House personnel office. Meetings require a quorum of 14 members, and new members must be confirmed by the Senate, so for now the Council is paralyzed. - The Washington Post (Yahoo!)

The Smithsonian museums and National Gallery will remain open for as long as leftover cash-on-hand lasts, which will be at least through Monday. Kennedy Center events are privately financed and should proceed as scheduled. As for the monuments, it depends … - The Washington Post (MSN)

The decision was made by the institution’s senate in its first meeting of the 2025-26 academic year without faculty input. Among the majors affected are fine arts, music history, classics, digital humanities, African-American and Latino/Latin American Studies, and French, German, Italian, and Russian language and literature. - ARTnews

One artist who removed his music: “Spotify is going to have to make Herculean efforts to roll back tons of damaging choices they’ve introduced to their platform over the years. I don’t see that happening.” - The Verge (Archive Today)

“Two lighting technicians and a video operator bring the opera to its full pyrotechnic life. Hunched over banks of consoles, screens and keyboards, they execute a tight script as they manipulate videos, lights, scrims, screens, stage panels and dry ice.” - The New York Times

The city has had notable trouble keeping such a group. The long-established Newberry Consort performs earlier repertoire; Baroque Band folded in 2016; Haymarket sticks to opera; the long-dominant Music of the Baroque clings resolutely to modern instruments. Now a new group, Bach in the City, is giving things a go. - Early Music America

In the position, which runs for the next two seasons, the beloved composer for Studio Ghibli animated features will get a major commercial recording, curate a contemporary music concert series, provide mentorship for composition students, and conduct the world premiere of his Piano Concerto in spring 2027. - Moto Perpetuo

Musicians have become influential activists and symbols of political resistance, just as they were in the final years of the Soviet Union. The Kremlin has repeatedly tried to suppress the music scene and punish its leaders, a sign that Putin seems to understand the danger they pose. - The Atlantic (Yahoo!)

The huge contemporary art museum, in the old factory town of North Adams in Massachusetts’s northeast corner, is launching Mass MoCA Records, which will feature both music recordings from studio sessions, live concerts, and museum residencies as well as spoken-word performances and sound art appearing at the museum. - Artnet

At the V&A East Storehouse, “visitors have the option to choose up to five via the ‘order an object’ service and have them delivered to a study room for a private viewing.” - The Guardian (UK)

“‘Just like a toppled confederate general forced back onto a public square, the Donald Trump Jeffrey Epstein statue has risen from the rubble to stand gloriously on the National Mall once again,’ The Secret Handshake member wrote in an email to NPR.” - NPR

Things aren’t going well right now, and the Florida-located museum and archives may need to find a new home. Corporate “contacts no longer return calls or texts; they no longer sponsor events. They have backed off joining the board.” - The New York Times

The Frick Arts Foundation “was formed a year ago to ‘offer emotional encouragement to artists at the most difficult beginning stage of their careers,’ according to a press release. There is no application process.” - Glasstire

“OCMA as it existed no longer exists. The employees and everything else pertaining to the museum is transferred to the university.” - Los Angeles Times

Museum organisations across the continent reported various types of interference. Three key areas were outlined by the questionnaire. - The Art Newspaper

Romancelandia is big, and “the rest of the industry wants to emulate this success, but as many editors know, chasing a trend can be a futile endeavor.” Imagine “HistoryLandia” or “BookerNomineeLandia.” - The Atlantic

Of course all, or at least many, books are cool. But the Goldsmiths Prize is for fiction that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.” - The Guardian (UK)

Becoming the (at the time) youngest person to win the Booker Prize wasn’t all fun and games for the novelist, and it took her nearly 20 years to produce another novel. - Irish Times

"If The Best American Poetry captures ‘the zeitgeist of the current attitudes in American poetry,’ we should be asking: Why are those attitudes so fucked up?” - The Defector (Archive Today)

“‘I love Shakespeare,’ Swift said earnestly during the movie, and then made fun of herself for saying something so obvious. ‘It holds up! It’s actually not overhyped.’” - Washington Post (Yahoo)

“It’s been nearly 50 years since punk first set out to smash the vanity and artifice of rock-and-roll. … What a beautiful thrill to see the same demystification tactics being set loose on the self-aggrandizing bloat and pomp of the rock memoir.” - Washington Post (MSN)

The entertainment industry is in a downward spiral that began when the dual strikes by actors and writers ended in 2023. Work is evaporating, businesses are closing, longtime residents are leaving, and the heart of L.A.’s creative middle class is hanging on by a thread. - The Wall Street Journal

Armando Iannucci described his conversations with U.S. buyers this way: “I got a lot of, ‘Yeah, you wouldn’t get the money for that at the moment, I’m afraid.’ So I said, ‘Why not?’ (They replied,) ‘Well, you know, if you want what comes with it …’” - Deadline

While the agency has generally avoided actively threatening broadcast licenses because of shows’ content, the FCC has certainly been willing to fuss at the networks in response to public complaint — going right back to Mae West playing Eve in the Garden of Eden in a 1937 radio skit. - The Hollywood Reporter

 “The real issue at play is how our work is exhibited and what kinds of permissions and compensations we get for its use.” - Variety

“The agency voted to take public comment … on a rule that limits a company from owning more than two stations in a market, and a restriction on mergers between any two of the four major broadcast networks. Such a review ... is mandated by Congress every four years.” - Deadline

“The deadline for countries to submit movies for the 2026 Oscars' international feature category arrives Wednesday. And, as usual, the submissions — each country gets to select one film — have produced no shortage of grievances and outrage.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)

“By now I’ve spent upward of 5,000 hours in ballet classes, and roughly 1,600 hours more in other, non-ballet dance classes. …  I dance as if it were my job.” - Slate

Walsh helped Scarlett create several scenes for the London premiere in 2016, then danced the title role in the 2017 revised version at San Francisco Ballet. Walsh was injured for the 2018 revival, so he helped stage it, and he has restaged it several times since Scarlett’s death in 2021. - L.A. Dance Chronicle

There are so many other things that I could be doing to accomplish my longtime goal of bringing more equity and awareness of ballet’s lack of diversity, and finding ways to meet people where they are in communities like I grew up in. That started to override how I felt about being onstage. -...

“While Vancouver offers a wealth of contemporary-dance companies and high-caliber ballet schools, ‘no one is bringing classical ballet here beyond a touring Nutcracker, or producing it on a professional level,’ Beamish says. (The well-established Ballet BC performs mainly contemporary repertoire off-pointe.)” - Pointe Magazine

The world’s oldest ballet company is known to most of the world for the precise, pristine classicism. At home, though, it’s been performing cutting-edge contemporary work for years, and it’s bringing to the States a new work by perhaps the most un-Paris Opera Ballet choreographer out there, Hofesh Schechter. - The New York Times

Mia J. Chong, a choreographer and currently a staging director for ODC, will succeed 83-year-old founder Brenda Way. The 54-year-old dance organization encompasses a dance company which tours domestically and abroad, a school, a theater and a 50,00-square-foot campus in the Mission District. - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

Herbert Kretzmer's letters to Cameron Mackintosh would indicate he did not. “I must emphasise that Les Miserables is not a show translated or re-written, but a show reborn,” he wrote. (Truly, anyone who listens to the French and English-language versions might agree.) - BBC

Padrón, who joined the theatre in 2019, led the nonprofit through a period of change that included adopting a new producing model, staging performances in multiple venues, and expanding community partnerships. - Hartford Business

Dutchman, written in 1964 (when Baraka was still LeRoi Jones), is set in a sweltering subway car years before air-conditioning. Recently, for the second time, Rashid Johnson staged the play in a setting hotter than an old C train in July: the sauna at Manhattan’s Russian and Turkish Baths. - The New York Times

Ultimately what causes shows to take longer to recoup their initial capitalization is the high costs associated with operating a show. It’s well documented that the single largest line item in most shows budgets is the cost of being in the theatre. - Broadway World

Actors' Equity negotiations with the Broadway League are continuing for now, even though the last three-year contract ended on September 28. The number-one issue is healthcare and the contribution the Broadway League makes to the union's healthcare fund. - Reuters

“Jonathan Church, known for his work as a director and producer on multiple hit shows in London’s West End, and as the leader of several major regional houses in the U.K., will succeed Antoni Cimolino next fall.” - Toronto Star

“Despite financial pressures, Jenny continued the gallery’s tradition of innovation, exhibiting trade union banners and showcasing new and radical artists such as Joseph Beuys.” - The Guardian (UK)

“I would be a total disaster, because I do love to gossip. I would be going: ‘You know that guy? I think he’s working for the Russians.’” - The Guardian (UK)

“While Mr. Brilliant never truly stopped — he kept writing lines that he emailed to friends — among the official 10,000 are these: … No. 826: ‘I have abandoned my search for truth, and am now looking for a good fantasy.’” - The New York Times

“If one had to seize on a defining quality, it was her ability to see the humanity in a variety of eccentrics and outsiders. That was true whether she was playing the absurdly pretentious Hyacinth Bucket (‘pronounced bouquet’) in TV’s Keeping Up Appearances or Mrs. Malaprop in Sheridan’s The Rivals.  - The Guardian

His hugely consequential three decades as director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art ended in September. For now he has consulting gigs in Saudi Arabia and India, and he’s giving a lecture series at the Louvre under the title “I Want a Museum. I Need a Museum. I Imagine a Museum.” - Artnet

The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation has recently struck a licensing deal with Hollywood production company Galisteo Media to bring Wright’s story to the big screen as a movie. - Fast Company