Stories

Founding Donor Of Human Rights Museum Suspends Funding Over Palestinian Exhibition

She complained of a “lack of context” in the exhibition about the forced displacement of Palestinians during the creation of Israel, such as the omission of information about the Palestinian rejection of a state that was offered in the United Nations’ 1947 partition plan and about Jews displaced in Arab lands. - The Art Newspaper

Our Complicated Relationship With Boredom

Boredom isn’t merely the result of a boring external environment, as a schoolchild might think, or inadequate mental resources, as my mother suggested. It is either a mysterious nexus of dysfunction or a healthy adaptive function (it’s complicated) that afflicts both individuals and societies at large. - Portico Quarterly

Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s Best Librettist, Ended Up In The US. His Descendants Are Still Here.

After a life and career around Europe that might euphemistically be described as picaresque, da Ponte fled to Philadelphia and New York, ran a grocery store in rural Pennsylvania, and ended up as Columbia University’s first professor of Italian. For eight generations, his family has held onto his memory. - The New York Times

Sacramento Philharmonic And Opera Names Ari Pelto Music Director

The Connecticut-born maestro, who is also music director at Opera Colorado, has been Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor at the California company since 2023. As of the coming season, he is Music Director and Chief Conductor, a newly-created title. - Moto Perpetuo

Looks Like An Educational-AI Company Scraped The Poetry Foundation’s Website For Content

“According to its website, Giggle Academy is a nonprofit and was started by cryptocurrency mogul and Binance founder Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao in 2024. It also claims to have one million users in 182 countries.” Hundreds of poems, evidently copied from the Poetry Foundation’s website, are on Giggle Academy’s website without permission. - Publishers Weekly

Why New York Historical Is Deliberately Displaying Copies In Its Latest Show

“This is because it was only as the exhibition — ‘Democracy Matters’ — was about to open on June 18 that the museum fully reckoned with the fact that windows in the new gallery would shower sunshine on some very light-sensitive artworks.” - The New York Times

Trump White House’s Proposed Budget Includes Funding Cuts And Staff Layoffs At Smithsonian

“For fiscal year 2027, the White House has proposed giving the Smithsonian $961.3 million in federal funding, roughly an 11% cut from the $1.08 billion Congress provided to it fiscal year 2026 and the institution’s lowest proposed funding level since at least 2020.” - ARTnews

London’s Royal Ballet And Opera Says It Needs £60 Million Just To Keep Its Building Open

“The historic Covent Garden venue … has reported a ‘critical’ need to invest in its stage infrastructure and the ‘fabric of our building’. Without doing so, the theatre is at risk of equipment failures and performance cancellations, according to a review of the organisation’s financial health.” - The Times (UK)

Hirshhorn Museum’s New Sculpture Garden Has Its Opening Date

“After a long period of being fenced off and closed to the public, a reflecting pool will soon be reopening after a major renovation. No, not that one. This reflecting pool is in the center of the Hirshhorn Museum’s sculpture garden, which will reopen Oct. 31.” - The Washington Post (MSN)

A Boston Symphony Lesson: Limits Of A Music Critic?

The answer cannot simply be that the critic is more objective. Objectivity is valuable, but proximity matters as well. Critics attend performances. Audiences hear concerts. Administrators oversee institutions. But only the musicians experience the entire artistic relationship. - Orlando Alonso

Sonny Rollins — A Generation Of Change

He was the last major figure to work in almost every era of jazz history: swing, bebop, hard bop, free, fusion. He was the terminal representative of the American music we call jazz, the final titan to fall. It’s unclear whether the music can still sustain the spontaneity and power that he and his peers represented. - n+1

Guardrails For AI Didn’t Work. So Bring In The Philosophers

“Efforts were initially focused around putting in simple black-and-white guardrails, such as forbidding a model from talking about bombs entirely. But these proved clumsy and easy to circumvent. Now, companies are pursuing methods that lean heavily on a philosophical understanding of right and wrong.” - The AI Humanist

Bayreuth Audiences Boo Use Of AI In Wagner Performance

The collage that the technology projected onstage puzzled the audience, DPA reported, with images including late former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the towers of the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and a special postage stamp marking German reunification in 1990. - Los Angeles Times

The Odyssey’s Success on Movie Screens Produces A Big Surge In Video Game Use

Once The Odyssey zapped onto IMAX screens on July 17, "the cultural spillover into games was immediate." 10 days later, Ubisoft's 2018 ancient Greek adventure Assassin's Creed: Odyssey had nearly doubled its active player count, swelling from an approximate total of 122,000 players to 233,000 across platforms. - GamesRadar

America Is Losing Its Public Gathering Spaces

According to its Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages—which counts business establishments by industry down to the county level going back to 1990—the U.S. has lost a fifth of its movie theaters and nearly a third of its bowling alleys since 2001. - Fortune

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