After missteps, Warner Bros’ new “strategy was a roaring success that evoked the studio’s prior glories and served as a reminder that if you let smart directors make great movies, even in a streaming world, audiences will go out to the theater to see them.” - Washington Post (Archive Today)

I’ve come to call it “hype aversion”: an avoidance of the pop-culture products that seemingly everyone insists I would like. It’s not that I’m somehow above it all or too cool (I don’t consider myself cool at all). Some people are early adopters; others are late adopters. I’m simply a weirdly resistant one. - The Atlantic

Rather than sticking our heads in the sand—and hoping that belief, alone, will be the source of motivation we need to succeed—what if we focused on doing what it takes to play the game for as long as possible? - 3 Quarks Daily

Even if a new mug – or a clone – is identical to the original in every visible way, the fact that it is not the same alters the directionality of love: the fact that it is not the same has an impact on what we are affectively able to do. - Psyche

Identity, even when mobilized as a force for visibility and justice, can shield art from critique—transforming dissent into offense and rendering criticism suspect. Questioning the work risks being seen as questioning the identity. - LA Review of Books

"What I find moving in these discussions is the intense yearning for a world that is more alive than secular scientists might think it is, a kind of seeking for a god that one suspects these scientists do not, at the same time, believe to exist." - The American Scholar

Uh … how’s that First Amendment doing? Carr "accused the news media of wanting the United States to lose the war.” - The New York Times

“Security at the ceremony has always been formidable. But this year, in the weeks leading up to Sunday’s event, federal authorities issued a memo warning of a possible retaliatory threat against the West Coast — particularly California — tied to escalating U.S.-Israel-Iran tensions.” - The Hollywood Reporter

One soprano: “Some things are made primarily for consumption, while others help form us as human beings” Ouch. - HuffPost

Which — for the moment? — looks a lot like the old one. - Washington Post (MSN)

He leaves behind an institution that is drastically changed, and in many ways diminished, from a year ago, when Mr. Trump installed himself as chairman and filled the board with loyalists as he moved to put his imprint on the center, including what appeared on its stages. - The New York Times

“As we make our way to two million, there’s the 35,000-foot level where the role for artists to play is quite significant and very much needed. That’s more on the philosophical side: Why arts are a must-have, not a nice-to-have, in my opinion." - Calgary Herald

“The maestro’s fall is the bare-knuckled endgame of a years-long power struggle over the soul of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble renowned for its musical excellence, but which has struggled to keep pace with the times.” - Boston Globe

“Without serious remedial action, the institution known as the Metropolitan Opera could well go dark.” - David McKee

The venue, named after popular a public radio music show, has been in turmoil for a year, since a new management team led by CEO Joe Callahan took over from founder Hal Real. What’s now called World Stage still faces a pile of unpaid rent, tax and utility bills. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

The magazine was sold to Mark Allen by Rhinegold Publishing in December 2018, together with other titles such as Music Teacher, Choir & Organ and International Piano. It had been flourishing since the late 1970s but was facing declining interest and online competition. - Slipped Disc

The time when every musical event, every world premiere, every opera opening, was the spark for a lively public discussion is gone. In its place we have, or soon will have, silence. - On a Pacific Aisle

Early last year, the Basque maestro — former chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic and the Cincinnati May Festival and a very busy guest conductor — revealed his diagnosis. He has now announced that the disease has progressed and that, following final concerts this month, he is ending his career. - IMG Artists

For Kate Hawley, designer for Frankenstein, "her first directive from the filmmaker was color, color, color. ‘It was all part of rebelling against the sea of black’ in a typical Victorian-era story, she said.” - Seattle Times

Following the news that Smiljan Radić has won this year's delayed Pritzker Architecture Prize, we round up eight projects from the Chilean architect's experimental career. - Dezeen

The architect’s passion for combining design and nature meant that many of his residences were built in rural areas. Because of their pedigree, they now tend to be among—if not the most—expensive property available in the communities in which they’re located. - Architectural Digest

“The 1850 daguerreotypes, a precursor to modern-day photographs, are of an enslaved man named Renty, his daughter Delia and five others known as Jack, Drana, Alfred, Fassena and Jem. … Harvard University turned the photos over to the International African-American Museum in Charleston after a seven-year legal fight.” - AP

Combining machine learning, deep neural networks and computer vision algorithms, Art Recognition’s approach can, in theory, be adapted to any painter with a big enough back catalog. To date, the company has produced models for more than 200 artists. - CNN

The recovery, however, came with an asterisk. While auctions bounced back strongly, galleries barely budged, and much of the market’s growth came from a small number of very expensive works. - ARTnews

“Like all big chains, when you shop there, more of your money leaves the community than when you shop at something locally owned. … anything that takes market share from Amazon is positive.” - The Atlantic

It’s not just because of the intensity of the competitors, though that counts for a lot. Stefan Fatsis recounts a contested play at last year’s North American championship and the confusion arising from — let’s call it a breakdown of lexical authority. - Unabridged

By some measures, there are as many as 1 million books published annually in the US, and it’s a number that doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. The result is that there is intense competition for the small slice of the review landscape that remains. - Book Work

“A lost page from the Archimedes Palimpsest, among the oldest sources for the Greek mathematician in existence, has been discovered … at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Blois. The page in question contains geometric diagrams and a passage from Archimedes’s treatise on the sphere and the cylinder, hidden beneath a layer of later religious writings.” - Artnet

The literary breaches, while trivial, highlight a reality that has become all too clear: There’s an inverse correlation between power and proper punctuation. - The Wall Street Journal

The choice of Greg Greeley marks the first time in memory that Simon & Schuster had hired a CEO from outside the company. The 62-year-old Greeley succeeds Jonathan Karp, who announced last year that he was stepping down to found his own imprint. - AP

Follow at the L.A. Times, Variety, New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and more (links updated as live blogs become available). - Los Angeles Times

“An anti-monopoly mobile billboard, meant to caution against the impending merger between Paramount and Warner Bros., will circle Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony. The billboard’s message is plain: ‘Call Your Agent. Speak Out. The Deal Is Not Done.’” - The Wrap

A recent report "forecasts more adoption of AI throughout the industry. But it also points to ways that the technology could lead to different kinds of work and open up new possibilities.” - The Conversation

“I’ve seen Night three hundred times. It’s a film that, no matter how many times I watch it, yields new information, especially once I began scrutinizing it frame-by-frame.” - LitHub

Or, to give it its proper name, Oklahoma!: “It’s one beautiful song after another. They really are beautiful melodies. I think the show is corny and embarrassing, actually. … I like the songs when I go see Oklahoma! — I trance out at the story.” - Vulture

“Cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw's journey to become part of Coogler's Sinners crew began with a recommendation from her friend, Rachel Morrison, the cinematographer on Coogler’s Black Panther.” - CBC

The company’s end wasn’t planned, but it became necessary when its artistic director and co-founder, Tina Finkelman Berkett, decided to step back from her role, citing fundraising fatigue and a desire for change. - Los Angeles Times

For two decades, NCI has offered four young choreographers the chance to spend three weeks creating works on professional dancers. In a Q&A, artistic director Molly Lynch talks about the initiative and why it is ending. - L.A. Dance Chronicle

“Though Christianity’s relationship with dance remains tangled, the full-bodied nature of Shaker devotion, revolutionary in the 18th century, is now an ideal for some Christians — and some dance artists.” - The New York Times

“Among the largest 150companies, … in all leadership categories except music directors/principal conductors, women comprised between 59% and 85% of artistic and administrative roles.” - Dance Data Project

“When the tanks entered Ukraine, Ratmansky gathered his artistic team and left for New York, severing ties with the Bolshoi and with Russia.” - New York Review of Books

“This is the frustration of working in the fine arts. The people who care about ballet, for example, care deeply. And most of those who don’t care think of ballet through stereotypes or quick hits of dancers on TikTok.” - The New York Times

A new venture in Los Angeles brings the Shakespeare Center and local veterans together for a year-long learning and writing experience. They perform today, and the program is billed as “written by the Ensemble of Veterans In Art & US Vets in collaboration with William Shakespeare.” - LAist

“If you’ve got strong creative instincts, the ability to authentically portray emotion, and are capable of staying true to a character’s voice throughout a scene, there’s a job listing calling for your experience.The catch: ... You’d be using your talents to train an AI model.” - The Verge

“Putting bands and musicians at the center of theatrical storytelling can give it a special immediacy and urgency, not least by reconnecting a form that can have a tendency to be stultified and overly formalized to its original music-making impulses.” - American Theatre

Lyricist Richard Maltby Jr. and composer David Shire met as Yale freshmen and have collaborated ever since, creating the musicals Baby and Big and the revues Starting Here, Starting Now and Closer Than Ever. Their new show, About Time, grew out of a performance they gave at their 65th Yale reunion. - TheaterMania

Higher Ground, their production company, is one of the main backers of this spring’s 16-week run of David Auburn’s Tony- and Pulitzer-winning play Proof, starring Don Cheadle and Ayo Edibiri (in their Broadway debuts) and directed by Thomas Kail, who staged Hamilton. - Variety

The annual Theatre in the UK report from the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre says that, despite soaring attendance, many theatres in Britain are expecting to post operating deficits — because, as costs have risen, ticket prices have not been raised so as not to drive away audiences. - The Stage

She won an Olivier in 1979 and a Tony in 1981 for the title role in Piaf; alongside film and television roles — including a starmaking performance as Marie Curie in a BBC miniseries — she had a long career as an admired classical stage actor, in particular with the Royal Shakespeare Co. -...

“The British street artist’s identity has been debated, and closely guarded, for decades. A quest to solve the riddle took Reuters from a bombed-out Ukrainian village to London and downtown Manhattan — and uncovered much more than a name.” - Reuters

The now-disgraced entertainer is facing a number of lawsuits (one of which began trial this week) in California by women who allege that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them. - The New York Times

“(He) achieved international renown with the 1970 publication of A World for Julius, ... portraying the life of Lima's elite through the eyes of a sensitive and lucid child. The book continues to be studied in universities around the world and marked a before and after in Peruvian literature.” - Euronews

“His working approach was that a literary agent should be a creative and business partner for writers — a relatively novel idea at the time that he launched the agency, in 1973. Writers House now has over 20 agents and 50 employees and represents hundreds of authors,” many of them very prominent indeed. -...

He started making videos of himself performing robust opera arias while standing outside on a car lot, wearing his name tag. He composed lyrics to describe the cars he was selling and put the videos on TikTok and Instagram. - Seattle Times