ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

Stories

The Love Letters From Lord Byron’s Boyfrien

“While performing the role of the straight heartthrob in public, Byron was concealing his more complex history—no matter the sacrifice to his feelings.” - Paris Review

This Year’s Oscar-Nominated Documentaries Fight The Power

“Each is a story about standing up to something that seems too big to confront: an authoritarian government, an abusive system, dehumanizing societal norms. Together, they show the power of nonfiction filmmaking, both amateur and professional, in those acts of resistance.” - The New York Times

Meta Hits Pause On Teens Chatting With AI Characters

Apparently, it was too hard to put parental controls on the old characters. So: “We’re pausing teen access to the current version while we focus on the new iteration. When that new iteration is available for teens, it will come with parental controls.” - The Verge (Archive Today)

Restoring “America’s Notre-Dame” — Which Is In, Of All Places, Kentucky

The Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption in Covington (across the Ohio River from Cincinnati) is a scaled-down copy of Notre-Dame de Paris on the outside, while the interior is modeled on the French cathedral in St.-Denis. It’s a product of America’s turn-of-the-20th-century Gothic Revival, getting its first restoration in its 125 years. - AP

Darren Walker, Who Headed The Ford Foundation, Is Heading To Hollywood

“On Friday, Walker, 66, was named president and chief executive of Anonymous Content, the production and management company” which produced, among others, the Oscar-winning film Spotlight and “whose lead investor is Emerson Collective, a company steered by the entrepreneur and philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs.” - The New York Times

Comic Con Bans AI Art

“Material created by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) either partially or wholly, is not allowed in the art show. If there are questions, the Art Show coordinator will be the sole judge of acceptability.” - Artnet

Curator Resigns After Nan Goldin Acquisition Voted Down

A senior curator and two collections committee volunteers have resigned their posts at the Art Gallery of Ontario after the institution voted against acquiring a new slideshow work by the artist Nan Goldin. The purchase was defeated after several members expressed concern about Goldin’s remarks denouncing Israel’s attacks on Gaza as genocide. - Artnet

Dallas Opera Raises Record $54M

More than 100 donors contributed to the campaign, with recent significant gifts from the Perot family, the Hamon Foundation, the Vansickle Family Foundation, Cece and Ford Lacy, an anonymous donor and the TDO board, trustees and honorary directors. - Dallas Morning News

Can Generative AI Generate Convincing Dance Movement? Nope, Not Yet.

“CalMatters and The Markup tested four commercially-available AI video-generation models — OpenAI’s Sora, Google’s Veo, MiniMax’s Hailou, and Kuaishou’s Kling — and so far, dancers don’t have much to worry about.” - CalMatters

Minneapolis Arts Organizations Join General Strike Today

“We’re pausing operations to recognise the weight of this moment in our community and to care for our employees and people in the Twin Cities community.” - The Art Newspaper

Ghost Light: When Theater’s Cast Goes Digital Forever

Simon Stephens' mixed-reality experiment at The Shed asks the existential question: if actors perform in cyberspace and no one applauds, is it still theater? Four digitally-captured performers test mortality's latest theatrical frontier. - American Theatre

Author Declares Culture Dead, Publishers Still Printing Books

W. David Marx diagnoses 25 years of creative stagnation in a new cultural history. Presumably the irony of launching a fresh cultural critique about the death of cultural innovation isn't lost on anyone involved. — Artnet

The Heart Of Small-Market Weekly Newspapers? The Obituaries

“It has long been recognized that newspaper obituaries hold value for communities, documenting lives and preserving local history. Their significance is rarely debated. Their value to the business of news and in sustaining local newsrooms is far less understood.” - Reynolds Journalism Institute

Amazon’s AI Authors Lack What Writers Need Most: Attitude

Machine-generated novels and coloring books are flooding the marketplace, but they're missing literature's secret ingredient—artistic ego. Turns out readers might actually miss all that human neurosis and creative self-importance after all. — LitHub

AI Art’s Predictable Problem: The Cliché Machine Cranks On

As algorithms churn out endless variations on tired themes, human artists are discovering their secret weapon isn't perfection—it's the beautiful, messy unpredictability that no code can replicate. — Aeon

Our Free Newsletter

Join our 30,000 subscribers

Latest

Don't Miss

function my_excerpt_length($length){ return 200; } add_filter('excerpt_length', 'my_excerpt_length');