“The kid with the PC in the bedroom can’t play his instrument. He can make some sounds, and then you can get a vast amount of repetition, but if they didn’t take the time to learn their instrument and their scales and to actually speak the language of music then they can’t play.” - Music Radar
“Everyone was afraid of the telephone, everyone was afraid of television,” Harrison said. “It’s just going to march on. And we’ll acclimate.” - The New York Times
"I do believe they should be separate. And the success of the Kennedy Center, you know, working in a bipartisan way, has been an example of that in a great way." - NPR
The voguing scene, led by Māori (indigenous New Zealanders) and immigrants from the Pacific islands, only got started in the country about a decade ago. By last October, there was a major ball held at the national museum. - The Guardian
Each year, theater producers and publicists work to make opening night more and more meaningless. Given that this is the night that reviews come out, the result is the continuing, deliberate devaluing of professional theater criticism. - New York Theatre
The White House is expected to invite past Trump appointees to rejoin the Commission of Fine Arts, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss those plans. - Washington Post
Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Democrats on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee say they’ve obtained documents suggesting that the Center is being operated as a “slush fund and private club for Trump’s friends and political allies”, resulting in millions of lost income and a departure from its statutory mission. - The Guardian
“The new (2,000-seat) theatre will allow Canberra to host major national and international theatre productions that currently don’t visit Canberra because our 1965-built Canberra Theatre stage is too small and with only 1,200 seats, it just isn’t commercially viable for most touring shows,” wrote Australian Capital Territory Chief Minister Andrew Barr. - Limelight (Australia)
“This would be a more effective way to attract young people, and it also happens to be true. When literature was considered transgressive, moralists couldn’t get people to stop buying and reading dangerous books. Now that books are considered virtuous and edifying, moralists can’t persuade anyone to pick one up.” - The Atlantic (MSN)
“The UDR party, an ally of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, set up the inquiry amid far-right claims that public TV and radio has a bias against them. Le Pen … has said ‘there is a clear problem with neutrality in public service broadcasting’ and that she would like to privatise it.” - The Guardian
“Moscow-installed authorities marked the rebuilding of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater (in Mariupol) with a gala concert on the building’s new main stage Sunday night. … The original theater was destroyed when it was targeted by a Russian airstrike on March 16, 2022,” killing around 600 people sheltering inside. - AP
“As rendered by Fish, bottles of window-cleaning fluid, jars of honey, plastic-wrapped trays of fruit, and glass vases bursting with flowers appeared to glow from within, conjuring a sense of exuberance and possibility.” - Artforum
The Vondelkerk, a 154-year-old Gothic Revival church which had been deconsecrated and run as a concert and events venue in recent years, ignited shortly after midnight. The flames were fanned by strong winds, and the tower and roof of the building collapsed. - The Telegraph (UK)
By no means is all of this bad art actually from 2025, though a fair bit of it is. In fact, one choice (this writer’s personal favorite) has been on display in Philadelphia for more than a century, and it just keeps on looking god-awful. - Artnet
These were the economic and political forces shaping culture in 2025. From the decline of the middle-class musician and the digitization of art to critical reassessments of literary heavyweights and political cinema... - The Walrus
