Stories

All you need are fast cars and Brad Pitt: “The well-reviewed sports movie led the weekend box office derby in North America, giving Apple a much-needed win in theaters after several misfires, including Argylle and Fly Me to the Moon.” - The New York Times

“After nearly half a decade, Vinnie Bagwell, a self-taught sculptor-artist, is still waiting for the million dollars that the New York City department of cultural affairs promised for her to work on monument Victory Beyond Sims.” - The Guardian (UK)

"It’s organized chaos at rehearsal for The Color Purple on a recent afternoon at the Goodman Theatre downtown,” but “director Lili-Anne Brown looks on with expert calm.” - Chicago Sun-Times

“The women who run the Atelier Devauchelle in Paris sew and create new bindings. They restore old bindings and torn pages. They create slipcovers and special boxes to protect fragile books.” - The New York Times

“Needless to say, this was not a situation Webster expected to encounter as an up and coming artist.” - The New York Times

A personalized tour of the Library of Congress “included original manuscripts from composers Béla Bartók, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky and Johannes Brahms. … But it was American composer George Gershwin's manuscript for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess that moved Sondheim to tears." - CBC

The letter “asks them to refrain from publishing books written using AI tools built on copyrighted content without authors' consent or compensation, to refrain from replacing publishing house employees wholly or partially with AI tools, and to only hire human audiobook narrators.” - NPR

With each recording, “we’re atrophying our memory a little and trusting that it will work autonomously. But it’s like an engine: if we give it a boost, it keeps working, but if we don’t, it gets worse and worse.” - El País

For instance, take New York: “Amid growing competition from nearby states like New Jersey, New York has spent more than $5.5 billion since 2017 to woo Hollywood productions.” - The New York Times

Thanks to Elon Musk and DOGE, of course - and no one knows when that might improve. - Wired

One person who watched the heartbroken response video: “This is why animation is so important too. AI slop won’t make you feel emotions like this.” - Fast Company

What’s up with movie directors? Well: “Making a film is a battle. ... The process is such a slog that, when a film-maker dies, the likelihood is that several unrealised movies die with them. Wouldn’t you keep going to the bitter end?” - The Guardian (UK)

A Dudamel test, and also, well, New York has awesome music in the parks in the summer, basically. - The New York Times

“Arts and cultural organizations in Portland face a double whammy: in addition to cuts in the city’s budget, the proposed elimination of the NEA, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has left organizations scrambling.” - Oregon ArtsWatch

Oh was "a glitter-dusted experimental artist-activist whose theater works intertwined political provocation with profound compassion in rituals of communion with audiences,” beloved by theatre folk in New York and across the country. - The New York Times