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Buffalo AKG Art Museum Gave Its Director A Low-Interest $335K Loan For A House. It Hasn’t Been Repaid.

“Janne Sirén, director … since 2013, used a museum loan to help finance a $710,000 home — more than half of which remains unpaid, including accrued interest, according to a state review.” - ARTnews

Newspaper Bloodbath Continues As Atlanta Journal-Constitution Lays Of 15% Of Its Staff

“About 50 AJC employees (will) be losing their jobs, with about half of the cuts coming from the newsroom.” - SaportaReport (Atlanta)

Washington Post Lays Off Art Critic Sebastian Smee And Entire Photography Staff

All eight of the paper’s in-house photographers have lost their jobs, as has the Pulitzer Prize winner Smee, who has been with the Post for eight years. His colleague Philip Kennicott (another Pulitzer laureate) will remain on staff. - Hyperallergic

Boosterism? Why, It Made America What It Is Today!

“Boosters don’t describe real things so much as what they hope will become real things, often presenting growth as inevitable and betting on optimism as a viable economic strategy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, boosterism has played a major role in American history. … The harsh truth is, boosterism sometimes works.” - Quartz

Crypto Investors Pay $300K To Create Gold Trump Statue

At 15 feet tall, the statue of President Trump, mounted on its 7,000-pound pedestal, is about the height of a two-story building — a giant effigy cast in bronze and finished with a thick layer of gold leaf. - The New York Times

The Difference Between Human Hierarchies And Other Primate Hierarchies

Evolutionary anthropologist Thomas Morgan: “People can be coercive, but unlike other species, we also create hierarchies of prestige – voluntary arrangements that allocate labor and decision-making power according to expertise.” - The Conversation

Critics Hate Proposed Plans For British Museum Spruce-Up

New security buildings in the grounds of the British Museum would look "too flashy" and resemble "a shop and wine bar", opponents to the plans have said. - BBC

Netflix CEO Goes To Testify Before Congress; A Culture War Ensues

He ended up spending much of his time before the Judiciary subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights pushing back against accusations from Republican senators that the streamer is politically biased. - NBC

Michelangelo And Titian: A Contemporary Odd Couple

The two men couldn’t have been more different. Titian was a painter while Michelangelo, though renowned both as a painter and a sculptor, saw himself exclusively as the latter. They lived hundreds of miles apart—the former in Venice, the latter in Florence and Rome—and inhabited vastly different aesthetic universes. - The Wall Street Journal

A.O. Scott Annotates The Court Order Freeing The Five-Year-Old Held By ICE

“Judge Biery’s decision … is much more than dry judicial reasoning. It’s a passionate, erudite, at times mischievous piece of prose. … In fewer than 500 words, Judge Biery marshals literature, history, folk wisdom and Scripture to challenge the theory of executive power that has defined Trump’s second presidency.” - The New York Times

Bruce Springsteen’s Protest Song In The Age Of Digital Spread

What distinguishes Streets of Minneapolis is not just its fidelity to the tradition of the protest song, but its mode of circulation as a rapid response in the digital age. - The Conversation

Amazon Pulls “Melania” From Movie Theatre After Cheeky Marquee Promotion

It all started with a joke on a movie marquee: “To defeat your enemy, you must know them. ‘Melania’ starts Friday.” - Seattle Times

Testing Trumps Claims About Closing The Kennedy Center

One is that the center needs major upgrades. That is true. The other is that those upgrades require full closure of the entire campus for multiple years. That is suspect. - The Conversation

The Blazing Avant-Garde Theater Actress Who Up And Disappeared

Libby Howes came to New York in 1975 and fell in with The Wooster Group. Her work there thrilled viewers, and Helen Shaw was blown away just by old film of Howes performing. But in 1981, after a psychotic break, she disappeared. Shaw investigated what became of her. - The New York Times

Why Boys Are Worse At Reading At Every Grade

Test score data presents averages. Many girls struggle to read, and many boys excel at it. But overall, boys are about three-quarters of a year behind girls in reading in fourth grade, and roughly a year behind in 12th grade. - The New York Times

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