The State Theatre at Arts Centre Melbourne, the city's venue for the Australian Ballet and Opera Australia, is closing in March 2024 for three years of renovations — and the designated replacement theatre has too small a stage and too few open dates for those companies' productions. - The Age (Melbourne)
The decree has generated conversations in the tourist-heavy, gentrifying borough about history, art, and the effects of globalization: How should a city balance the need for a general sense of cleanliness and order with calls to preserve tradition and culture? - Christian Science Monitor
The Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative began in 2010, initially to help mitigate the damages to museums, churches, and archives in Haiti due to that January's earthquake. And there's been need for SCRI's services ever since, especially this year in Ukraine. - Smithsonian Magazine
There are reasons to be troubled by the prospect of tech companies like OpenAI controlling the major means of artistic production in the future. - Wired
The money from the bonds, to be paid back over 30 years from a property tax increase, would go toward capital projects, including artist and staff housing, for 15 institutions, including the Bass Museum, Miami City Ballet, the New World Symphony, and the Fillmore and Colony Theaters. - MSN (Miami Herald)
Ecologists worry that, if not deployed very carefully, the inventive (and expensive) set of barriers called MOSE (as in Moses parting the sea), built to protect the historic city from worsening tidal floods, could ruin the salt marshes on which the Venetian Lagoon's entire ecosystem depends. - National Geographic
When it became too dangerous to meet in person, the artists continued to work individually. Some have since escaped the city but others remain, risking their lives. - The Observer
RMIT University in Melbourne let the employment contract with its faculty/staff union expire last year and refuses to start negotiations until 2023. To get management to the table, the union has threatened a no-off-hours-work action which includes boycotting the biggest student recruitment event; management calls that illegal. - The Age (Melbourne)
The calculations that determined the figure (currently US$79 billion), described as the Colosseum's "value as a social asset," included both the estimated €1.4 billion which the monument and its visitors contribute to Italy's economy each year and the intangible value of such "an iconic, historical and cultural site." - Artnet
Today, they comprise the third largest sector of the U.S. economy: well over 1.5 million nonprofits employ roughly 12.5 million people as of 2017, the latest year for which comprehensive data is available, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies. - The Baffler
This process transformed improbable rumors into seemingly solid facts, backed by evidence from different sources and accepted by political and religious leaders. - Lapham's Quarterly
The Putin regime has dealt Russian culture a crushing blow, just as the Russian state has done to its artists, musicians, and writers so many times before. People in the arts are forced to sing patriotic songs or emigrate. The regime has in effect “canceled” culture in my country. - The Atlantic
"Known as K11 Ecoast, the forthcoming complex" — to be built by Hong Kong real estate mogul and art collector Adrian Cheng — "is located in Prince Bay in Shenzhen's Nanshan district and covers more than 2.4 million square feet, the equivalent of 50 football fields." - Artnet
The six artists in Kherson wanted to tell the truth about life under Russian occupation - and to continue making art. "The results, which they have named Residency in Occupation, offer a harrowing insight into the horrors endured by millions of Ukrainians living under the Russian invasion." - The Guardian (UK)
Sure, the players might ride truncated broomsticks, and some of the images will look familiar, but the game played in 40 countries with 600 teams is now called quadball. The impetus was the Harry Potter author's anti-trans stances, but the move will also help with trademark issues. - NPR
