Prolific costume designer Bob Mackie, whose dynamic sparkling and fringed creations dressed pop culture superstars such as Cher, Diana Ross, Dolly Parton, Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus, has died. - Los Angeles Times
High-profile authors are obviously under pressure to offer novel frameworks, but rarely do these second acts feel like an about-face. Duckworth insists that “Situated” is not a reversal but an expansion of her earlier research; as an account of individual success, grit is “necessary but not sufficient,” and must be complemented by the larger picture. - The New Yorker
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which opens this month in Exposition Park, just south of downtown Los Angeles, is a swooping, brain-beggaring, super-sexy, twin-bodied leviathan of a megastructure, white as the gown of Princess Leia, half spaceship, half cetacean, all curves, Shangri-la for skateboarders if they could ever get inside. - The Atlantic
Is it possible to make qualitative judgements in an unbiased way? Maybe not. Some people feel that the whole idea of making judgements is just another form of cultural oppression. On one level, aesthetic preferences are all cultural. Take for one example the preference for consonant music over dissonant—it’s cultural, not intrinsic. - Artnet
Koons the pop culture figure is often at odds with Koons the artist, causing some deep ambivalence among the art establishment. He’s at once an esoteric conceptualist and a marketing genius rivaled only by Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí. - The New York Times
Beyond specific formats, Nolan and “The Odyssey” are part of a broader revival of physical film after the digital revolution seemed to have left it for dead. - The New York Times
The newly vibrant “Stories of St. Francis” were shown to the public last week in the Basilica of Santa Croce, just in time for the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death on Oct. 4. - AP News
U.S. title output reached roughly four million in 2025, up about 32 percent in a single year, and around 3.5 million of those were self-published titles with ISBNs, up nearly 39 percent on the year before. Self-published books outnumbered traditionally published ones by more than five to one. - Rachel Alterberry
That desire to disconnect comes as technology has fundamentally changed what it means to go out. In the 1990s rave scene, there was no smartphone in your pocket and no expectation that a night out would be documented and shared online. - CBC
“Broadcast TV wants you to watch a show and then, after you’re done, watch a different show on the same channel. Streamers have a different agenda: … They want you never to leave.” - The New York Times
Director Lonnie G. Bunch III “realized that — one way or another — he was probably not going to last through this administration, that the White House was intent on taking over the Smithsonian.” So he resigned, in part to save the institutions. - The New York Times
