I don’t believe in this inevitability. As a reader of many distinctive publications, I want to be led by them. What makes them special is where they choose to take me, and how much I trust them to do that. - The Atlantic

Mexistentialism “teaches us that our crises, even if they are framed by the catastrophic, are that only in appearance. … Our crises will not destroy us because these crises are inscribed in history, and it is history that frames who we are.” - Aeon

In Ireland, despite how often the government uses Irish arts to market the country to tourists, "more than 56 per cent of artists and arts workers experience enforced deprivation (that’s three times the rate in the general population).” - Irish Times (Archive Today)

It’s a design flaw, and it can be fixed. “We have been here before. Not just once, but repeatedly, in a pattern so consistent it reveals something essential about how cultural elites respond to changes in how knowledge moves through society.” - Aeon

Like many other words that have been “problematised” using post-structural approaches in the humanities, “care” is no longer simply a benign building block of a sentence, but is now part of a broader academic nexus that underpins its public expression. - The Critic

There are good reasons why people, at least at first, feel positive about their relationship with an AI companion. But new research is showing that these feelings change over time. Artificial empathy, it turns out, comes at a cost. - Psyche

An unidentified person poured a substance, likely some combination of motor oil and antifreeze, on a temporary ice rink built outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, damaging the surface and forcing a Friday performance by the Montreal-based Le Patin Libre to be canceled. - Washington Post

Hyperspecialization has dominated the academy over the past decades. More and more, professors and outside observers note that academics silo research into increasingly minute areas. The consequences of this practice are deleterious. - Harvard Crimson

“You get out your Fascism for Dummies book for the 15 things you do, and we tried to include as many of them as we could in the most artful way possible.” Then things in real life started to reflect, eerily, many things that happened on Andor. - Hollywood Reporter

“A spokesperson for the BBC attributed the language outbursts to an attendee with Tourette syndrome,” but the BBC apologized to viewers. Social media outrage is strong. - NBC

Susan Rice, former United Nations Ambassador, said on a podcast this week that “corporations, media companies, law firms and universities that ‘take a knee’ to Trump should not expect Democrats to ‘forgive and forget.’” The current president did not appreciate that. - The Hill

Hackers discovered the Peter Thiel-backed verification software, Persona, "bundled in an interface that pairs facial recognition with financial reporting – and a parallel implementation that appears designed to serve federal agencies.” Discord swiftly decided to kick Persona to the curb. - The Rage

“The State of Live,” newly released by the Chicago Independent Venue League, finds that nearly three out of four independent live entertainment venues in the city are currently not profitable, as they reel from rising artist fees, higher taxes and soaring labor and production costs. - Chicago Sun-Times

“I headed to the back of the shop and to a cluster of three freezers. This was it. The sound they were making was an unbelievable symphonic hum. I stood entranced; it was like listening to an orchestra playing underwater.” - The Guardian (UK)

For Spencer Richardson, who finds, repairs, and sells tape players, “his customers include older baby boomers and Gen X‑ers nostalgic for the players of their childhood, but most have been millennials like himself, drawn to something tactile and analog.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)

The case, known as the Fish Market dispute, asks whether a looping beat widely associated with reggaeton can be protected by copyright. More than 150 artists and producers have been named as defendants, and around 3,600 songs are implicated. - The Conversation

Up-and-coming composers, looking for a break-out moment with their immense musical feel and depth, probably have their arms and tapping their feet wondering to themselves: where are our champions of new classical music? - The Critic

“Benaroya Hall, the longtime home of the Seattle Symphony …, will close for six weeks beginning in July for the final phase of a $20 million renovation to the building’s entrances, lobby and public-facing spaces, the Symphony announced Thursday. (No performance spaces are part of the renovation plans.)” - The Seattle Times

As funding pressures deepen across the sector, and running costs increase, a policy once treated as untouchable is now under renewed scrutiny. - The Guardian

A new South African video game lets players take back African artefacts held in western museums in a series of heists, amid a growing campaign to repatriate treasures looted by colonial armies. - The Guardian

Looks like nothing except defend the jury’s independence — and say that “the announcement of the next laureate, which typically occurs in the first week of March, would be delayed slightly.” - The New York Times

Or so says The Guardian: “Culture is not a luxury. It is vital to the country’s wellbeing, tourism and international standing.” - The Guardian (UK)

The museum “covers the entire history of city parks within a 6-by-10-foot room. … Because the museum capacity is five people and the pent-up demand goes back 130 years, the opening was intentionally kept soft.” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

“The move comes after the country’s right-wing culture minister Gayton McKenzie scrapped a pavilion proposal by artist Gabrielle Goliath and curator Ingrid Masondo.” They said, “The space will remain empty: a space of erasure, cancellation, censure.” - Hyperallergic

As reading is increasingly tracked and performed online, there is a growing sense that a solitary pleasure is being reshaped by the logic of metrics and visibility. - The Guardian

The advent of the chatbot raised an unsettling question: What if writing didn’t have to be hard? What if that noble ordeal was no more necessary than going to a well to fetch your water when you could just turn on a tap? - The Atlantic

“The strictly disenchanted world, where nothing exists but physical processes describable without metaphor, and even consciousness is just a material problem waiting to be solved, can be a desiccated place. It keeps heart and mind on inadequate rations.” - The Guardian (UK)

“Fiction has no obligation to dispel ambiguity. It can make use of it—even intensify it—in order to evoke and transform experience. In Beloved, Morrison does take possession of the master’s tools, but she bends them, breaks them, and then uses them to reshape the house.” - LitHub

With the Taliban having outlawed the education of girls and severely restricted women’s other rights, a clandestine group of women gather weekly to read books ranging from Orwell and Hemingway to contemporary Iranian fiction. - The Guardian

Chicago’s Newberry Library has received $4 million from the Mellon Foundation that will help widen access to Indigenous languages, some of which have been on the brink of disappearance. - WBEZ

The company reported adjusted operating profit of $261.8 million for FY 2025, which was up 138% YoY. - Music Business Worldwide

Suggestions of pro-America content the department made include running public service announcements, short segments, or full specials specifically promoting civic education, inspiring local stories, and American history or starting each broadcast day with “The Star Spangled Banner” or Pledge of Allegiance. - The Hill

The gains validate a bold bet by Charter Chief Executive Chris Winfrey: that cable could survive, if no longer thrive, by embracing the apps that had begun to supplant the traditional TV bundle. - The Wall Street Journal

Think color, branding, social media - and publicists. - El País English

Does any other animated film have a chance at an award this year? The film “won in every category in which it was nominated,” equalling ten of the twelve awards (Arco and Bad Guys 2 won the categories in which Demon Hunters wasn’t nominated). - The Wrap

The FCC chair asked broadcasters to sign a pledge, and said they should “inform and entertain audiences by upping programming that ‘celebrates the American journey and inspires its citizens by highlighting the historic accomplishments of this great nation.’” - NPR

“When the mood and choreography strike, Kansas City Ballet Artistic Director Devon Carney invites a few folks to perform on stage as supernumeraries. That’s a fancy term for extras—usually peasants—who mill around and have deeply animated conversations with their supernumerary neighbors.” - KC Studio

“It seems we’re in a particularly fruitful era of artistic innovation in skating. What’s driving the current wave — and how might it shape the future of the sport? - Dance Magazine

How a cross between rock climbing, rappelling, circus aerobatics and contemporary dance turned into a performing art of its own. - The Mercury News (San Jose)

“Grand Rapids Ballet has dismissed executive director Mary Jennings after less than two years in the role, replacing her with an interim CEO as the ballet rethinks its leadership strategy.” - Crain’s Grand Rapids Business

“I’m not, um, young,” she says. “And I do have help. I don’t go in without somebody there who can help to translate and who understands my movement. But my favorite thing is to make things.” - The New York Times

Nothing is “nutty” in the Olympics now. Ski ballet was a demonstration sport in 1988 and 1992, but "unlike the other two freestyle disciplines, aerials and moguls, ski ballet didn’t graduate to full Olympic medal status.” - The New York Times

That is, the kind of “theatre” that one might see on C-SPAN — indeed, that some people did, in 1993 (though the 1993 version didn’t have a yellow chicken suit). - The Atlantic

“These mythological creatures tap into our anxiety over what would happen if we became otherly human. … As the horror author Grady Hendrix put it: ‘Vampires are the only monster that looks like us.’” - The New York Times

Comedian Anthony Novak was nabbed by Parma police, tossed into the county jail and charged “with a felony punishable by up to 18 months in prison,” all for the alleged crime of making fun of said police force. - Deadline

Nike Imoru said that for last year’s staging of The Odyssey, she was told to get cornrows but was not provided with a competent stylist as Equity’s contract requires — and that the backstage worker who did the work instead left her with permanent damage, including the loss of most of her hair. -...

George R.R. Martin, author of the series of novels at the heart of the franchise, says that the RSC was the ‘obvious choice’ to produce the play — Game of Thrones: The Mad King — because Shakespeare had been a constant source of inspiration to him. - The Guardian

In the first third of 2026, we’ll see 11 plays and only six musicals on Broadway. And many of the musicals that will open share a certain downtown sensibility instead of, say, a stately Sondheim import or Disneyfied cheer. - The New York Times

“Sheehan’s prose was cool and restrained, as if to counterbalance the harrowing and chaotic lives of many of her subjects.” - The New York Times

Skoog came on board at a rough time, just as 9/11 obliterated any arts attention. “The softly spoken, self-effacing and courteous Skoog set about refreshing the repertoire and encouraging British choreographers, including Christopher Hampson and Michael Corder.” - The Times (UK)

“I had a stalker. We had an injunction on her and I thought that everything was safe and then I was on stage doing a press night in the West End and someone stood up out of the front row and put flowers at my feet and I realised it was my stalker.” -...

Colón’s “driving musical energy and mischievous bad-boy image — he was long promoted as ‘El Malo’ — helped made him a luminary of New York salsa music, and 1978 collaboration with Rubén Blades, Siembra, became one of the top-selling salsa albums of all time.” - The New York Times

A self-taught mosaicist, Mr. Zagar used broken bottles, handmade tiles, mirrors, and other found objects to cover walls across the city, particularly in South Philly. His Magic Gardens on South Street has become a landmark, attracting 150,000 visitors a year. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

On top of a career designing sets and lights for more than 50 Broadway productions and over 30 George Balanchine ballets, he became, in 1967, the founding artistic director of the National Theater of the Deaf, which combined spoken dialogue and sign language to create, in effect, a new genre. - The New York...