Because people keep knocking it off — most recently, this past weekend, when police found the four-inch marble fragment from the left tusk on the pavement nearby. - AP
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)
Outsiders’ power over the story of the Maya is written into the people’s very name. After their arrival in the early 1500s, the Spanish named local populations “Maya” after the ruined city of Mayapán in present day Mexico. Yet the Maya never saw themselves as one people and were never governed under one empire. - The Guardian
Bindery Books, a startup founded by publishing veterans, uses social media book influencers as acquiring editors to champion underrepresented authors and build engaged reader communities. - Los Angeles Times
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
“So many children are now falling behind,” Dent said. “The vocabulary gap is getting bigger and there is a real perception that vocabulary development is suffering and that impacts on learning.” - The Guardian
“The V&A has acquired a reconstructed early webpage and the first video ever uploaded to the platform by co-founder Jawed Karim,” a V&A spokesperson said. - CNN
The rise of chatbot marketing is happening as A.I. tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini hit mass adoption. OpenAI has said that 800 million people use ChatGPT weekly, while Google says its Gemini chatbot has more than 750 million monthly users. - The New York Times
Graduates of the country’s El Sistema program can be found on concert stages and in top-flight orchestras all over the world; conductor Giancarlo Guerrero suggests that perhaps musicians are Venezuela’s top export. But with political uncertainty there and Trump’s visa restrictions in the US, will the talent keep pouring out? - WBEZ (Chicago)
The first and only museum dedicated to the US constitution has been plunged into turmoil over the sudden departure of its president, a legal scholar widely respected for his commitment to non-partisanship. - 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
Afghanistan’s National Television, a broadcaster controlled by the Taliban, reported on Tuesday that morality police in Parwan had gathered the instruments over the past year from the provincial centre and surrounding districts. The report said a Taliban committee later set the items on fire. - Afghanistan International
“To begin with, a Book of the Dead is a misnomer, applied by 19th-century Western scholars. A more accurate translation of the title would be ‘Spells of Coming Forth by Day.’ Unlike obituaries, they aren’t biographies. They aren’t even books. And, they’re not of the dead. They’re for the dead.” - The New York Times
“Department M, a production company founded two years ago by Mike Larocca and Michael Schaefer, is in talks to acquire a significant stake in Neon, the Oscar-winning studio behind Parasite and Anora.” - Variety
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 Times
“Bay Fang, RFA’s president and chief executive, wrote in a post on LinkedIn on Wednesday: ‘We are proud to have resumed broadcasting to audiences in China in Mandarin, Tibetan, and Uyghur, providing some of the world’s only independent reporting on these regions in the local languages.’” - The Guardian
“The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts is rebranding its granting operation as a new entity called Pennsylvania Creative Industries. The new granting guidelines are in line with a new strategic plan that leans more heavily into creative entrepreneurship and economic development.” Arts organizations in the state are concerned. - WHYY (Philadelphia)
“Classical California has launched a unified statewide brand, consolidating KUSC, KDFC and nine additional stations under a single identity. The move follows the unification of on-air programming between the University of Southern California’s KUSC Los Angeles (91.5) and KDFC San Francisco (90.3) in October.” - Inside Radio
“For more than four decades, he was a central figure in European opera, admired not for flamboyance but for integrity, stylistic intelligence, and a distinctive vocal timbre that combined gravity with warmth.” - Moto Perpetuo
The Irish Times (like most outlets) always depended on advertising to fund its operations. This year, thanks to the strategy followed by its leaders (and the fact that it’s owned by a trust rather than an asset management firm), the paper’s 150,000 print and digital subscribers cover the newsroom’s expenses. - Press Gazette (UK)
Literacy literally restructured our consciousness, and the demise of literate culture—the decline of reading and the rise of social media—is again transforming what it feels like to be a thinking, living person. - Derek Thompson
Despite years of Eat-the-Rich–type discourse, we seem to struggle with how money and power operate without falling into either conspiratorial exaggeration (the fantasy of Satan-worshipping elites ritualistically drinking baby blood is centuries old) or fawning admiration for the taste and sophistication of the rich and famous. - The American Scholar
When we speak of dignity, worth, or the respect owed to persons, we are not engaging in idle abstraction. These concepts do real work. They justify constraints on what the powerful may do to the vulnerable. - 3 Quarks Daily
In the past thirty or so years, the academy has replaced the church as the center of the liberal moral imagination, providing the sense of a community bound by ethics, a firmament of texts and knowledge that should inform action, and a meeting space for like-minded people. - The New Yorker
Rod Dreher emerged from the conservative blogosphere in the 2000s and won fans with his daily stream of testy opinions and unguarded anecdotal writing. He seems almost allergic to ideological consistency, has long had readers on the left as well as the right, and sometimes changes his mind over the course of a single paragraph. - The Atlantic
Outsiders’ power over the story of the Maya is written into the people’s very name. After their arrival in the early 1500s, the Spanish named local populations “Maya” after the ruined city of Mayapán in present day Mexico. Yet the Maya never saw themselves as one people and were never governed under one empire. -...
The first and only museum dedicated to the US constitution has been plunged into turmoil over the sudden departure of its president, a legal scholar widely respected for his commitment to non-partisanship. - The Guardian
“The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts is rebranding its granting operation as a new entity called Pennsylvania Creative Industries. The new granting guidelines are in line with a new strategic plan that leans more heavily into creative entrepreneurship and economic development.” Arts organizations in the state are concerned. - WHYY (Philadelphia)
“The statement from (Fresno Arts Council), which handled public grants set aside by the local parks and arts tax for the past few years, said the arts council began securing records and initiating ‘appropriate next steps’.” Meanwhile, the City Council has removed the granting process from Arts Council control. - The Fresno Bee (MSN)
If the National Gallery – one of Britain’s leading attractions with over 4 million visitors a year – is struggling to balance its books, it indicates wider structural problems in the arts industry. - The Conversation
Graduates of the country’s El Sistema program can be found on concert stages and in top-flight orchestras all over the world; conductor Giancarlo Guerrero suggests that perhaps musicians are Venezuela’s top export. But with political uncertainty there and Trump’s visa restrictions in the US, will the talent keep pouring out? - WBEZ (Chicago)
Afghanistan’s National Television, a broadcaster controlled by the Taliban, reported on Tuesday that morality police in Parwan had gathered the instruments over the past year from the provincial centre and surrounding districts. The report said a Taliban committee later set the items on fire. - Afghanistan International
“Classical California has launched a unified statewide brand, consolidating KUSC, KDFC and nine additional stations under a single identity. The move follows the unification of on-air programming between the University of Southern California’s KUSC Los Angeles (91.5) and KDFC San Francisco (90.3) in October.” - Inside Radio
For some Ukrainian musicians, the new reality they have chosen is “no Russian words from my lips, no Russian music from my hand”, as Nazarii Stets, one of the players of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra (UFO), founded and conducted by Keri-Lynn Wilson, puts it. - The Guardian
Lamplighters Music Theatre, the Bay Area’s Gilbert and Sullivan specialists, has called off its spring 2026 production of Patience. Company leaders blame not only the rising costs and shrinking audiences many organizations have experienced post-pandemic, but also the expenses caused by the personnel law AB5. - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)
People have relished music for so long that we have evidence, from forty thousand years ago, of humans making a flute-like instrument out of a vulture bone. We feel that even wordless music reflects our moods. - The New Yorker
Because people keep knocking it off — most recently, this past weekend, when police found the four-inch marble fragment from the left tusk on the pavement nearby. - AP
“The V&A has acquired a reconstructed early webpage and the first video ever uploaded to the platform by co-founder Jawed Karim,” a V&A spokesperson said. - CNN
The celebrated visual artist Judy Chicago has walked away from a major commission at Google’s headquarters project in the Loop, comparing an aspect of working with the tech giant as “a nightmare.” - Chicago Sun-Times
The job — to create a painting 50,000 square meters large, roughly the size of nine football fields, in the Saudi capital, Riyadh — has gone to New York-based artist Domingo Zapata, who is reportedly getting an “unlimited budget.” - Page Six
“Which museum in the world, with this level of attendance,” said Louvre general administrator Kim Pham, “would not at certain moments have some issues of fraud?” (He would not, however, name another museum with a similar problem.) - AP
The great Brazilian modernist, best-known for the futuristic government buildings in Brasilia, had recently turned 103 when he drew the first sketch for what’s now called the Niemeyer Sphere. When he died almost a year later, he hadn’t finalized the design, but there were enough sketches and specifications to complete it. - The Guardian
Bindery Books, a startup founded by publishing veterans, uses social media book influencers as acquiring editors to champion underrepresented authors and build engaged reader communities. - Los Angeles Times
“So many children are now falling behind,” Dent said. “The vocabulary gap is getting bigger and there is a real perception that vocabulary development is suffering and that impacts on learning.” - The Guardian
“To begin with, a Book of the Dead is a misnomer, applied by 19th-century Western scholars. A more accurate translation of the title would be ‘Spells of Coming Forth by Day.’ Unlike obituaries, they aren’t biographies. They aren’t even books. And, they’re not of the dead. They’re for the dead.” - The New York Times
The Irish Times (like most outlets) always depended on advertising to fund its operations. This year, thanks to the strategy followed by its leaders (and the fact that it’s owned by a trust rather than an asset management firm), the paper’s 150,000 print and digital subscribers cover the newsroom’s expenses. - Press Gazette (UK)
Recent USPS service problems aren’t exclusive to newspapers. But for a business where timeliness is baked into the value proposition, they can be uniquely damaging, leading subscribers to cancel and even, in some cases, threatening advertising revenue. - NiemanLab
Here’s the problem: Those Big Five control over 80% of the trade publishing market. Indie publishers exist, but they need more support—a lot more support—than they’re getting. - The Honest Broker
The rise of chatbot marketing is happening as A.I. tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini hit mass adoption. OpenAI has said that 800 million people use ChatGPT weekly, while Google says its Gemini chatbot has more than 750 million monthly users. - The New York Times
“Department M, a production company founded two years ago by Mike Larocca and Michael Schaefer, is in talks to acquire a significant stake in Neon, the Oscar-winning studio behind Parasite and Anora.” - Variety
“Bay Fang, RFA’s president and chief executive, wrote in a post on LinkedIn on Wednesday: ‘We are proud to have resumed broadcasting to audiences in China in Mandarin, Tibetan, and Uyghur, providing some of the world’s only independent reporting on these regions in the local languages.’” - The Guardian
The union maintained that “Guild management has surveilled workers for union activity, terminated union supporters, and engaged in bad faith surface bargaining, showing no intention to come to an agreement on most of WGSU’s core issues.” - The Hollywood Reporter
CBS lawyers tried to block Stephen Colbert’s interview with Texas legislator James Talarico, but Colbert posted it online instead—where it exploded, drawing far more viewers than TV. By defying CBS and the FCC’s new “equal time” rule, Colbert turned attempted censorship into a viral publicity gift. - The New Republic
“Yes, casting directors are finding the right person to carry the weight of the movie, but they are also responsible for nearly every face you see onscreen, creating the whole human environment of the film. Perhaps the casting award is most akin to the one honoring production design.” - The New York Times
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
“Because information about lion dancing in English is scarce, Chan led a group of Kei Lun Martial Arts members on a research trip to China in 2000. They studied with skilled craftspeople in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.” - The New York Times
In 2023, principal Taylor Stanley asked management if they’d permit a male-identifying dancer to play Carabosse; they said no. This year, they said no again. So Stanley went over their heads to choreographer Peter Martins, who’s fine with it. Now Stanley is making quite a meal of the role. - The New York Times
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
Creative coordinator Sammi Cannold: “I think what would surprise people most is how mathematical it is. From the outside, it looks like pure spectacle and emotion. But behind the scenes, it’s geometry, timecode, safety protocols, wind calculations, the positioning of 35 cameras, traffic flow for hundreds of performers, etc.” - Playbill
In Kramer/Fauci, director Daniel Fish stages a transcript of the 1993 C-SPAN debate between Larry Kramer, the legendarily combative writer and AIDS activist, and the more mild-mannered Dr. Anthony Fauci, then the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. - The New York Times
It hasn’t been easy: some artists are scared to come to the theater, as are many audience members, and some shows have had to be cancelled. (Alex Pretti was shot two blocks from one theater on a two-show Saturday.) Yet performances are happening when and where they can — including, sometimes, in clandestine locations....
Some have lost an arm, others their legs, yet others their eyesight or voice. They’ve spent a year rehearsing a parody of Virgil’s Aeneid. One company member describes the work as both “rehabilitation and socialization.” - Deutsche Welle
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...
“For more than four decades, he was a central figure in European opera, admired not for flamboyance but for integrity, stylistic intelligence, and a distinctive vocal timbre that combined gravity with warmth.” - Moto Perpetuo
Between 1967 and 2023, he made forty-seven features (nearly one a year), many of them running considerably more than two hours. His body of work, considered in terms of number of features and of total running time, is one that probably no one in his generation or younger can match. - The New Yorker
He is charged with two counts of simple battery following incidents in the midnight hours of Tuesday morning. This is, of course, by no means his first run-in with law enforcement. - AP
Michael Silverblatt, the longtime host of the KCRW radio show "Bookworm" — known for interviews of authors so in depth that they sometimes left his subjects astounded at his breadth of knowledge of their work — has died. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
“Among the world’s most admired and influential filmmakers, … with subjects ranging from a suburban high school to a horse race track, his work was aired on public television, screened at retrospectives, spotlighted in festivals, praised by critics and fellow directors and preserved by the Library of Congress.” - AP
The Executive Director serves as chief executive of the Louisville Orchestra and, with the Music Director and Board of Directors, is responsible for its success.
The next Chief Advancement Officer will lead the organization’s fundraising, institutional marketing, and external engagement efforts during a significant period of institutional growth and evolution.
Quantum Theatre seeks a visionary Artistic Director to build on an experimental legacy, shape ambitious programming, and lead Quantum into its next era of impact.
Seattle Theatre Group (STG) is seeking an experienced, innovative Chief Marketing and Communications Officer (CMCO). The CMCO is a vital member of STG's senior leadership.
Managing Director opportunity at NYTB, leading growth, operations, partnerships, governance, and teams, delivering expansion, innovation, and compliance across the dance community.
The Columbia Museum of Art (CMA), in Columbia, South Carolina, an AAM-accredited institution, seeks an Executive Director to build upon its 75-year legacy.
“For more than four decades, he was a central figure in European opera, admired not for flamboyance but for integrity, stylistic intelligence, and a distinctive vocal timbre that combined gravity with warmth.” - Moto Perpetuo
“Concerns were recently raised by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLIF), a voluntary group of solicitors, about references to ‘Palestine’ in displays covering the ancient Levant and Egypt, which risked ‘obscuring the history of Israel and the Jewish people.’” - The Guardian (UK)
The murals are all part of Elon Musk’s effort to blame Democrats for crime - and they’re appearing on buildings across the United States. - Chicago Sun-Times
“Keep a diary, get a camera, learn to print your own photos. Don’t put it all in your phone, because everything in your phone belongs to someone else. And if you want to write a secret to someone, send a letter.” - The Guardian (UK)
“Victor Quiñonez, the artist behind the exhibition, said he learned about the university’s decision when students messaged him on social media to say the windows of the gallery in Denton, northwest of Dallas, had been covered and the door locked.” - The New York Times
The AI-supported “findings supported scholars who had suggested that both versions were studio paintings – produced in the artist’s workshop but not necessarily by him,” but surprised some art historians, who now wonder whether an original exists somewhere. - The Guardian (UK)
Tabouret: “It’s not very French to change stuff, so I thought that interesting as well as brave and fresh. They specifically wanted figurative painting, which also isn’t very French.” But church authorities eventually gave her a lot of artistic freedom. - The Guardian (UK)
“Every night, I would sit in my room listening to recordings of Bach, then Horowitz and Ashkenazy, pretending to play along. It was pure escape, pure fantasy. I could hide inside the music. ... The Chaconne specifically was like an ancient key that slid into my heart.” - The Guardian (UK)
“Do you know what’s more tubular than snowboarding? Giant tubes of paint descending from the ceiling! More sweeping than curling? A beautiful recital of a poem by a man in a long coat! More thrilling than a hockey brawl? A dance-off between two competing clusters of contemporary dancers!” - Vulture
“I was left with a feeling of tremendous shame. Even after gathering the courage to speak up, I was ashamed that I was a victim, ashamed that I was unable to stop it. Ashamed that even after finally speaking up, I was disregarded, ignored, discarded.” - Toronto Star
“Judge Biery’s decision … is much more than dry judicial reasoning. It’s a passionate, erudite, at times mischievous piece of prose. … In fewer than 500 words, Judge Biery marshals literature, history, folk wisdom and Scripture to challenge the theory of executive power that has defined Trump’s second presidency.” - The New York Times
