The dinner theater/circus arts hybrid's founder says that attendance never really recovered from COVID, but that, this past fall, there began a fatal decline in sales which he attributed to an uncertain economy and fear of ICE. - WBEZ (Chicago)
“Free First Thursday, which waives the general admission fee for all Bay Area residents from 4-8 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month, has been temporarily halted starting in February. … No return date has been set, but SFMOMA plans to announce a new program series in the summer.” - San Francisco Chronicle (Yahoo!)
Last Saturday, as museum staff were preparing the building for the winter storm, a sprinkler malfunction caused water to pour from a ceiling near the gift shop. The building was evacuated and closed for this week, but full repairs will require one additional week. - ARTnews
“Six months after the funding cuts, few public TV or radio stations have closed their doors. Many have scraped together a patchwork of funding from concerned donors, philanthropies or government grants. Others, facing insurmountable budget issues, have resorted to mergers with bigger stations to stay online.” - The New York Times
“The Outsiders, … which opened in April 2024 and won the Tony Award for best new musical two months later, has recouped its $22 million capitalization costs. … The milestone, though occasionally achieved by plays and musical revivals, is an increasingly rare one for new musicals.” - The New York Times
He posted on Truth Social, referring to cascading cancellations and plummeting ticket sales, “People don’t realize that The Trump Kennedy Center suffered massive deficits for many years and, like everything else, I merely came in to save it and, if possible, make it far better than ever before!” - The Daily Beast
Entertainment is about diversion and pleasure. Fun. It occupies our attention, distracts us from boredom, and amuses. But many things in life can do that: food, games, conversation, idle distractions. If we define art solely as entertainment, we risk conflating it with any activity that gives pleasure, and end up with nothing distinctive about art. - 3Quarks Daily
It’s part of an effort by the Royal Winnipeg, Canada’s oldest professional ballet company, to foster meaningful reconciliation with the country’s Indigenous people — echoing a broader national goal that has been pursued for decades. - The New York Times
Within about a year, according to the filings, the company had spent tens of millions of dollars to acquire and slice the spines off millions of books, before scanning their pages to feed more knowledge into the AI models behind products such as its popular chatbot Claude. - Washington Post
Trump officials have ordered national parks to remove dozens of signs and displays related to climate change, environmental protection and settlers’ mistreatment of Native Americans in a renewed push to implement President Donald Trump’s executive order on “restoring truth and sanity to American history.” - Washington Post
The question is no longer just "How do we play Beethoven better?" but "How do we survive as a cultural institution in a digitized, competitive economy?" in a way to convince 21st-century society that it is still worthy? - LinkedIn
In 2023, the United States accounts for roughly two-thirds of all cultural exports ($18.1 billion, or 67%) and imports ($22.2 billion, or 62%). Canada had a $4.2 billion trade deficit with the USA in 2023. - Statistical Insights on the Arts
I can’t imagine saying to my son that TV kills brain cells, but I do think it — or fear it. Our language might have shifted (today we talk about rotting), but the notion endures that watching too much TV and other visual content is detrimental for kids or at least has a whiff of moral failing. - The New York...