Jason Moore, who has restaged and updated the show for London: “Once I revisited, I was like, ‘Oh, right, we made this in our 20s,’ and it's for people in their 20s. There's now a whole generation of people who ... know the show from a soundtrack, but never saw it.’” - People
Born on July 4, 1826, Foster’s legacy is as influential, and as mixed, as that of his nation. Some of his songs were written for minstrel shows, but many of his lyrics were progressive for their time and place, and one key to their success was their ambiguity. - The Conversation
“Planned restoration work (at the Palais Garnier) that was supposed to take two years is now projected for five, with evaluation for the best method to extract the lead to be undertaken this summer.” - ARTnews
“The city government will give $323.8 million to (the Department of Cultural Affairs), which administers public funding to arts institutions throughout the city. The appropriation marks a nearly 7% increase from last year’s then-record $299.6 million investment.” - Hyperallergic
“(He) often acted as a kind of Indiana Jones of song, as when he helped excavate a treasure trove of manuscripts by George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and others that was found in a warehouse in Secaucus, N.J., in 1982. The hoard dated back to the advent of sound pictures.” - The New York Times
The four-time Emmy nominee, who received an honorary Oscar in 2022, says he was diagnosed with the disease three years ago. His 80th birthday is later this month. - AP
A photo journal of more than 30 teenage girls performing the Rejang dance for the Kuningan holiday, the close of a ten-day Balinese Hindu festival celebrating the triumph of good over evil. - AP
“Worldwide” is the key word here: demand for news video on third-party platforms, while certainly growing, is lowest in Europe and North America, with such usage much higher in Asia and Latin America. - Nieman Lab
In every prize I’ve ever judged or heard firsthand reports of, everything else is up to the judges and their idiosyncrasies. There’s no input from anyone else. The heads of these organizations often learn the winner at the same moment the rest of the world does. - Rebecca Makkai
Special concerts, especially the live-with-film concerts, are now programmed further in advance and are more predictable in terms of their revenue. This has led the orchestra to include these figures in its overall budget, which raises the figure to $42 million and is more accurate. - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This poorly argued case that it may be time to restrain the principles of academic freedom and faculty autonomy is not helping the situation. - Boston Review
“Paris draws together communities from west, central and north Africa, as well as the Caribbean, and its density creates the conditions for encounters that aren’t as easy to manufacture elsewhere. What distinguishes Paris from other diaspora hubs … is the granularity of African identity it sustains.” - The Guardian
Labeled Canada’s largest art fraud ever by investigators, the scheme has been the subject of a prolonged court battle that culminated last year in the conviction of Jeffrey Cowan, one of eight people arrested in 2023. He has been accused of taking part in an effort to sell 1,400 faked Morrisseau works. - ARTnews
Theo of Golden is one of the bestselling books currently making all the lists right now, but its beginnings are a little unorthodox. It was written by a 70-year-old former judge who first went the self-publishing route before having his book distributed by a top-five publisher. - Book Riot
It seems possible to push wealthy colleges like Princeton to enroll more working- and middle-class students. They surely need that push, because our most prestigious universities enroll a larger share of rich students now than they did in the 1980s. - The New York Times
