Back home in Russia (where he spent years under house arrest on trumped-up charges), among culturati in Ukraine, in Europe (where he now lives and works), and especially at Cannes this year, the dissident director opposes the invasion of Ukraine but gets criticism for it nevertheless. - The New York Times Magazine
A very popular exhibition of minimalist and conceptual art this summer at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art features major pieces by Marcel Duchamp, Sol LeWitt, Frank Stella, and others. The art was collected by the government of the last Shah and put away by the Khomeini regime. - AP
"The Broadway production of The Kite Runner announced a policy Tuesday requiring masks for audience members at Friday evening performances only. The new hybrid policy marks the first of its kind on Broadway." - The Hollywood Reporter
Extreme heat, flash floods, and, especially, smoke from wildfires — which can affect venues hundreds of miles away — have been the cause of multiple rescheduled and cancelled performances.  Leading institutions such as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Santa Fe Opera are working on ways to adapt. - The New York Times
"The group of 16 employees — which includes front-of-house staff, stagehands and arts administrators — filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board last week" to join three locals of IATSE. They also called for the Board of Directors' resignation and decried "the broken 501(c)3 non-profit model." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
Postmodern ideas have gained the status of absolute truths. Relativism, selectively appropriated into the language of both left and right politics, has metamorphosed into dogma. As oversimplification distorts communication, public trust in scientific fact has eroded. Could renewed ideas of objectivity be a way out? - Eurozine
It’s safe to say that effective altruism is no longer the small, eclectic club of philosophers, charity researchers, and do-gooders it was just a decade ago. It’s an idea, and group of people, with roughly $26.6 billion in resources behind them, real and growing political power, and an increasing ability to noticeably change the world. - Vox
"This playwright read a Wikipedia page that mentioned a fascinating historical incident wherein Benedict Arnold and Frank Sinatra spent a night at the same tavern. What conversations they must have had! By the time the article was corrected, the writer was already halfway through." - The New Yorker
The deal offers a rare flicker of hope for the digital publishing sector, which has been fraught with difficulty for investors and operators over the last decade. Some of Axios’s peers have struggled to go public, sell or raise funding at favorable valuations as investors have cooled on digital advertising. - The New York Times
The Canadian code probably won’t have a material financial impact on these platforms, but countries learning from each other, improving on the model, and it spreading globally very could. - NiemanLab
Painters, sculptors and other visual artists stand to get a payout when their work is resold at auction and by galleries, in a government move designed to help sustain thousands of artists currently working below the poverty line. - Yahoo
Margaret Sullivan: "Local residents should show up at school board meetings to express dissent publicly, get in touch directly with school administrators to insist that established procedures be followed before summarily removing books from shelves, and let state and local legislators know of their opposition." - MSN (The Washington Post)
"I identify much more as a composer. A couple of times, I backed away from conducting for a while. I felt it’s not a professional advantage to be a double threat. It takes a lot of time to be as well prepared as a conductor." - San Francisco Classical Voice
"Analysts ... first mined Google Street View footage in cities around the world for images of hundreds of residential streets and some 2400 iconic buildings. Then, they calculated the proportions of all those edifices to find out how closely each adhered to the Golden Ratio." - Mental Floss
