The number of banned theater directors, filmmakers, playwrights and musicians had been growing by the day. “I look around and I cannot find anything left of my favorite free theater,” Kogut told The Daily Beast. “There is not a single acute play left in the repertoires of Moscow theaters." - The Daily Beast
Early in the pandemic, "the Internet Archive made a decision that pissed off a lot of writers—and embroiled it in a lawsuit that many netizens fear could weaken the archive, its finances, and its services long into the future." - Slate
The history of the rating is, one might say, fraught. But Netflix isn't a movie theatre; why does it have an NC-17 rating on its film? The answer: The streaming service is reaching for an Oscar. - Salon
Poitier was "a man who both aspired and inspired just as much as he frustrated and disappointed. We rarely ever really talk about that last part. Sidney implores us anyway." - HuffPost
Editors have been doxxed, threatened, and arrested. "Doronina of the Wikimedia Foundation’s board of trustees said that Russia’s state agencies could target one of those editors any day. 'You cannot predict who is going to attack. It’s not a bear, it’s a pack of bears,' she said." - Nieman Lab
He says the ideal audience for his new film is an elementary school teacher afraid of coming out, and "parents of kids who are gay and will have to deal with the day when their kids have the courage to come out to them." - Variety
Talking with a man who won a photography contest with an AI-produced image, "you definitely get this feeling of almost resentment toward human artists, too, where he’s saying, like, you know, you all think you’re so special. And I just proved that you’re not." - Slate
Free speech requires a robust exchange of views without the coercion of threats and violence, and self-censorship in response to social pressure is a genuine risk. Yet by definition, there is no free speech if one person is allowed to make an argument and another is not allowed to object to it. - The Atlantic
The great fortunes of today's robber-barons have a vast, distorting influence on our society, bending our most urgent projects away from evidence-based policy and towards the pet theories of billionaire dilettantes. - Pluralistic
As Goethe later recalled in his autobiography, it was to the house that he owed his literary awakening. It was there, gazing at his family’s prints, that he had learned to love Italy, antiquity and nature; there that his passion for drama was first fired; and there that he wrote some of his most famous works. - History Today
It's hard to say just yet — partly because she's so new and partly because she has a reputation for changing positions on almost anything. But there are hints to be gleaned. One: she's talking about cutting taxes on rich people, so there will probably no increase in arts funding. - Artnet
‘When you get it right, it affects our health policy, our education policy, our environment policy, foreign affairs, trade, veterans’ affairs, tourism… A nation with a strong cultural policy is a nation where we know ourselves, know each other and invite the world to better know us.’ - ArtsHub
Jair Bolsonaro abolished the culture ministry, slashed arts funding, and demonized the entire sector — which largely returns his hatred and fears he'll stage a coup. Lula, who supports the arts, leads in the polls. One good sign: Brazil's Congress just overrode Bolsonaro's veto of a new arts funding scheme. - The Art Newspaper
Arts presenters "know that some audience members will be deterred by mask requirements at a time when they have vanished from so many other settings, while others will be reluctant to attend indoor performances if masks are not required. Whatever they decide to do, they risk alienating some ticket buyers." - The New York Times
"Michelle Donelan, a former WWE marketing manager who was Boris Johnson's Education Secretary for just 48 hours, is to replace Nadine Dorries as Culture Secretary in UK Prime Minister Liz Truss's first cabinet." - Deadline
