“It can now be hard to remember that colorblind casting was once an inflammatory proposition. … But the triumphal march of colorblind casting — hiring actors of any race to play roles originally designated for just one — has taken a detour this year.” - The New York Times
“Facing a public backlash, the commission that oversees Alabama Public Television voted Tuesday to continue paying its contract with PBS, rejecting an effort — at least for now — to be the first state to cut ties with the broadcast giant because of politics.” - AP
The six-foot-tall painting, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16), shows a young heiress and daughter of Klimt’s patrons draped in a Chinese robe. Its sale price of $236.4 million is exceeded only by the notorious Salvator Mundi attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, which sold for $450 million in 2017. - The Guardian
As one former museum director put it about Leonard Lauder and Agnes Gund, “They could open doors, they could bring people together, they would give money, they would give art. It takes three different board members to contribute what they could.” Yet today there are few such people around. - The New York Times
This is the second time that the Laotian-Canadian author has won Canada’s top literary award; she is only the fourth author to do so, after Esi Edugyan, M.G. Vassanji and Alice Munro. - Canadian Press (Yahoo!)
Across the developed world, since the 1930s, there’s been what’s called the Flynn effect: IQ scores overall have been rising by about three points a decade — through the turn of the millennium, that is. Social scientist Elizabeth Dworak has documented the effect reversing since 2006. This surprises few people. - New York Magazine (MSN)
“Having this language that is spoken by so very few, I feel that we carry a huge responsibility to actually preserve that. I do not personally think we are doing enough to do that,” she said, not least because young people in Iceland “are absolutely surrounded by material in English, on social media and other media”. - The Guardian
The Frattini Bivouac is not staffed, ticketed or mediated. Anyone can enter it, but only after a six-to-eight-hour ascent on foot across scree, moss and snowfields. - The Guardian
Julie Cruse is a pioneer of “computational choreography”: in 2007 she created a piece titled Choreobot in which she used software she coded to generate choreography. Here she looks at the earliest efforts to automatically create movement, explains how her program works, and looks at how AI could develop and change it. - Dance Magazine
Jenny Mollica will step down from her current role in summer 2026 to become CEO of London music and arts venue Roundhouse. Mollica will succeed Marcus Davey CBE who steps down after 27 years at the helm of the Camden venue, while the process to appoint ENO’s next CEO is now underway. - Classical Music UK
This culture of self-quantification in the pursuit of self-improvement long predates social media, algorithms and targeted advertising. In fact, we can trace its roots back into the daily lives and preoccupations of the Victorian middle classes. - Aeon
“If authentically delivered, the potential is colossal. India’s population of 1.4 billion includes a fast-growing urban middle class … (with) a rising appetite for theatre that blends storytelling, music and spectacle. The real question is whether India can find its own mainstream musical theatre voice, and cinema may offer some clues.” - The Stage (UK)
Even as a significant proportion of their students are submitting AI-generated work, they proudly reassure each other that their courses are too demanding or too humanistic for any machine to understand them. - Persuasion
Most notably, composer Gabriela Ortiz, who won three Grammys last time, could do it again, as she’s a triple nominee this year. Overall, in fact, the list of nominees is (as has been the case for a number of years now) largely dominated by contemporary music, most of it American. - The Washington Post (MSN)
