This Week’s AJ Highlights

Good morning: An eventful week. ‘Nuff said. Here are this week’s AJ highlights:

1. Cal Shakes Veterans Mourn, And Remember Former artists of the California Shakespeare Theater reflect on its unique, progressive audience and the cultural shifts that have impacted the company, questioning how the theater community can retain relevance in changing times. – San Francisco Chronicle​
2. Building The Great Native American Songbook Composer Tim Long’s initiative to compile an Indigenous songbook emphasizes the importance of preserving and expanding Indigenous music, with contributions from composers across North America, aiming to fill a cultural gap in the classical canon. – The New York Times​
3. The Peter Principle in Arts Leadership An incisive critique examines how entrenched leadership and resistance to change can derail nonprofit arts organizations, suggesting that the industry’s focus on legacy over community needs contributes to recurring financial crises and closures. – ArtsJournal Scene Change​
4. Threat To Our Future? An Empathy Gap Exploring the empathy gap between current and future generations, this piece discusses how our inability to empathize with abstract groups could hinder long-term arts funding and policies focused on sustainability and community impact. – Psyche​
5. Fair Trade: The Idea Behind Nepal’s Museum Of Stolen Art
   Nepali conservationist Rabindra Puri’s innovative plan to replace stolen sacred art with replicas offers a new model of cultural restitution, addressing colonial-era looting while preserving Nepal’s heritage in a unique, forward-thinking way. – BBC​

As usual, skip down to see all the stories we collected this week, organized by artform. See you next week.

Doug