"After a granddaughter and great-grandson of the artist trumpeted the upcoming sale, lawyers for the family said Thursday that his heirs have not authorized the launch of any such 'Picasso NFT.'" Later, the business manager for the great-grandson, Florian, said, "Maybe we should have been a bit more clear." - AP
Opera demands engagement. It’s best if it accomplishes this by being creatively provocative or ravishing or infuriating, but as long as there's enough to mull over to defeat tedium then all’s square. The worst operas are the ones that inspire nothing but boredom in a captive audience that can’t change channels. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jamar Roberts, who only stopped dancing for the Ailey company last month and who remains its resident choreographer, says that the new work is very different than he thought it would be in the spring of 2020, when it was supposed to have premiered. - The New York Times
The artist has now admitted that the very widely reported sale of the piece (titled For the Love of God) in 2007 never actually happened and that the bedazzled bundle of bone has been sitting in a London warehouse all this time. - Artnet
Massachusetts Cultural Council executive director Michael Bobbitt is "convinced the crisis presents an opportunity to restructure arts funding, transforming the sector into one that is more affluent, inclusive, easier to navigate, and higher profile than it ever was before." - MSN (The Boston Globe)
Skyhorse Publishing acquired the books by Woody Allen, Blake Bailey, Norman Mailer and others that were dropped when controversy hit. Says Skyhorse chief Lyons, "All you hear is the takedown of the author and no analysis of the book itself.' Critics accuse him of "a libertarianism of convenience." - The Guardian
The board governing the McMinn County school district in southeastern Tennessee deemed the Pulitzer-winning book inappropriate for eighth-graders because of a drawing of a nude dead woman and some "rough, objectionable language." - CNN
Damn you, COVID-19! yet the good news is that 2020-21 season's shortfall, $6.3 million, is down by almost half from the previous season. And donations were up by 23%. Not too bad for an orchestra that played only 13 live-with-audience concerts. - The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
She started working at the foundation in 1972 and continued until this year, and the prestigious competition and awards she administered helped launch many impressive careers. - The New York Times
Arthur Brooks: Engaging with art after worrying over the minutiae of your routine is like looking at the horizon after you’ve spent too long staring intently at a particular object: Your perception of the outside world expands. - The Atlantic
McLuhan's doctrine was attractive to the Boomers because it explained that everything the older generation knew, or thought they knew, was an illusion. Everything the Boomer tribe intuitively felt, on the other hand, was real. - Quillette
Recently, some scientists taught an artificial intelligence software, called Delphi (after the ancient Greek religious sanctuary), to make moral pronouncements. Type any action into it, even a state of being, like “being adopted,” and Delphi will judge it (“It’s okay”). Delphi is a “commonsense moral model.” - Nautilus
Between April and the end of the 2021, the VAB says, Nielsen did not count “one and a half billion impressions” in 20 top events. The group believes the true total of advertising dollars lost during the period could be more than $350 million. - Variety
“If you don’t have role models, it’s much harder to see yourself as a conductor – and there were male musicians who wouldn’t see themselves as conductors either.” - Irish Times
The Academy Museum, like the Newseum before it, does an imperfect job of balancing two basic identities and purposes, one essentially self-promotional, the other more civic-minded. It is both a shrine and pantheon, and a space for exhibitions and education. - Washington Post
