"I'm happy at the social change, the craziness of it. The main difference, though, is when I was young … we used political incorrectness as a weapon against our enemies, but we made fun of ourselves first. The trigger-warning crowd does not make fun." - The New York Times Magazine
New data released last week by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) quantifies the extent of the damage: Between 2019 and 2020, the arts economy shrank at nearly twice the rate of the US economy as a whole. - Hyperallergic
"Modern digital storage is still expensive and data and audio/video can be lost when older websites are no longer technologically supported, when links become corrupted, when budgets run out, when new technology renders older storage systems obsolete, and much more." - San Francisco Classical Voice
The dismissal came in the wake of a performance art mishap at the museum that saw Yaser Khaseb accidentally fall into a large, artist-designed pool of oil while performing an aerial act above it. - Artnet
"Try to imagine a mashup between a communist Kraftwerk and an authoritarian Abba." Classic "hits" include "Let's Defend Socialism", "Peace Is On Our Bayonet", "Longing for the General", "Pyongyang Cold Noodles Are the Best", and "Potato Pride". - Mental Floss
The high-profile departures come on the same day that BuzzFeed released its fourth-quarter earnings report, which showed a 12% drop in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. - New York Post
In Australia, "measurement provider GfK began rolling out its MediaWatch, a wristwatch that uses audio matching technology to identify what stations participants are listening to, when and for how long." - Inside Radio
Revenues surged by 18.5% to $25.9bn (£19.5bn) in 2021, the highest level since records began in the 1990s. The growth was driven by streaming, with 523 million paid subscribers, up from 443 million in 2020. - BBC
In the decade before the pandemic, male choreographers were getting three times the number of commissions female ones got from major companies in the country. That's one issue that was looked at carefully during the pandemic, and we're starting to see results. - The Age (Melbourne)
Lauren Hough's Leaving Isn't The Hardest Thing was a nominee for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Memoir — until this week, when Lambda disqualified her for defending a fellow author being attacked on Twitter for alleged transphobia. Laura Miller looks into the matter and points out the lesson. - Slate
In 1980, an art thief known as "Erik the Belgian" stole a set of half a dozen Flemish tapestries, created by a follower of Rubens, from a small-town church in northern Spain. Within two years, all six were retrieved, except for one 2'x2' fragment, now recovered and reintegrated. - Smithsonian Magazine
The Trojan War and siege of Troy are the subject of The Burnt City, the latest environmental theatre piece from the creators of Sleep No More. Charlotte Higgins pays a visit to the company's new permanent performance space in London. - The Guardian
"Putin's distortion of history and second-guessing sovereign states is a direct threat to our country also," said one Latvian arts executive. "Aside from experiencing palpable fear of being the next target ..., the cultural scene is pretty much paralyzed at the moment. This all hits too close to home." - Artnet
Says one official at the IBEW union local, "We've had a contract with WTTW since 1955 and we've never had a problem of this magnitude." The strike was called last week; the union's contract with the parent of WTTW (and classical radio station WFMT) expired last July. - MSN (Chicago Tribune)
