Those changes include better pay equity and HR, safety training, hour caps, and, crucially, ending the ambitious seven-production summer season. The Festival's statement says its programming henceforth "will match its capacity to support the staff and trainees who make the Festival possible." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
The 150-year-old art school, which has had longstanding financial problems and nearly shut down in 2020, will integrate with, and ultimately be acquired by, the University of San Francisco, a Jesuit institution located near the Golden Gate Bridge. - The New York Times
Shelly C. Lowe, a Navajo who grew up in rural northern Arizona, was nominated by President Biden as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities in October and was confirmed by the Senate on February 2. - MSN (The Washington Post)
Arts organizations in the rest of England have been complaining for years that, with respect to national funding, they are shortchanged in favor of the capital. Now Arts Council England means to address that imbalance — including by seeking London-based groups who want to move elsewhere. - The Stage
Research by the Public Campaign for the Arts "found that local authority expenditure on all cultural services – including public libraries, entertainment venues, museums, galleries and recreation facilities – has halved across England since 2010." - WhatsOnStage (UK)
As artists become more politically active today, it is worth remembering that John Reed Clubs and New York’s Artists Union organized strikes to negotiate federal arts programs during the Great Depression. The art made in each phase of proletarian advancement thus serves to protect this history. - Hyperallergic
The Betrayal of Anne Frank, by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan, released on Jan. 18, caused a sensation when it said investigators had named Arnold van den Bergh as the main suspect. Other researchers later criticized the findings, saying they were "full of errors." - CBC
This Los Angeles cultural institution is at a crossroads as it goes through its first leadership change in 17 years, and confronts questions about its mission, programming and appeal in a changing city, all amid a debilitating pandemic. - The New York Times
Concerns about inappropriate donor influence at Yale rose after The New York Times reported in September that Beverly Gage, a professor of history, had quietly resigned after the administration in her view had failed to defend against interference in the curriculum by two of the university’s most prominent and deep-pocketed donors. - The New York Times
More than 1,600 works of art by some 400 artists were quietly shuffled through shell companies in tax havens according to records from the Pandora Papers. - Artnet
Every January, Dresden's Frauenkirche closes for seven days, "and dozens of carpenters, painters, and other craftspeople and cleaners get to work. The crew repairs wobbly benches and worn wood, touches up paint, and scrubs, sands, and vacuums every nook and cranny of the highly ornamented space." - Atlas Obscura
Concetta Antico is a tetrachromat, which means she has a fourth colour receptor in her retina compared with the standard three which most people have. While those of us with three of these receptors can distinguish around one million different colours, tetrachromats see an estimated 100 million. - The Guardian
"If the protest succeeds in getting him booted, he can go back to making his podcast available on other platforms or launch his own. A 'win' would merely allow politically progressive artists to end their tacit association with a personality whose brand is the puncturing of liberal pieties." - The Atlantic
The response of artists and writers was to remake their work: a way of seeking either to control the strange and uncontrollable, or simply to portray it more truthfully. - BBC
