As the world becomes more digital, more "optimized", and more isolated, the value of embodied, shared, human experience increases, not decreases. And we’re already seeing the backlash begin. - Blair Russell
Small museums, looking to raise their profiles and educate the masses, are turning their paintings, sculptures and tapestries into the unlikely stars of TikTok microdramas. - The Wall Street Journal
“The National Museum of Libya – housing Africa’s greatest collection of classical antiquities in Tripoli’s historic Red Castle complex – had been closed for nearly 14 years due to the civil war that followed the former dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s downfall.” - The Guardian
While the heyday of technology gurus, developer ninjas, SEO rockstars and at least one digital prophet have long since passed, calling salaried communications professionals “storytellers” and the practice of storytelling appears to only have picked up in popularity. -The Wall Street Journal
It found that 87% of artists have incorporated AI into at least one part of their process. AI is powering a new era of self-sufficient artists. Artists are beginning to write, produce and promote their work at a level previously only achievable with a team around them. - Hypebot
There is another way of looking at the shake-ups and shutdowns that have defined the art trade in 2025. Instead of a collapse, the process might better be thought of as the right-sizing of an industry where collectors were not alone in making big speculative bets on enormous growth that simply did not materialise. - The Art Newspaper
“The judgement means that Pussy Riot’s activities are now banned in Russia. Any individual or organization found to be supporting the group’s actions or social media posts could also face prosecution following the decision.” - ARTnews
Gabriela Lena Frank was named Composer of the Year; Jakub Hrůša, music director of London’s Royal Opera and music director-designate of the Czech Philharmonic, is Conductor of the Year; bass-baritone Gerald Finley is Vocalist of the Year; and San Diego Symphony CEO Martha Gilmer is Impresario of the Year. - Musical America
In the 1960s, he was producer and then host of flagship arts magazine Monitor before supervising all music and arts programming. He co-founded London Weekend Television, then hosted ITV’s first major arts program, Aquarius. In the mid-1970s, he returned to the BBC, presiding over a golden age of arts on television. - The Telegraph (UK)
The organization announced on December 1 that it intends to phase out all public programming, beginning with the discontinuation of its Forms & Features workshops and Library Book Club in the new year. A more recent statement stressed that the Foundation is transitioning into a grantmaking organization. - Publishers Weekly
While the company broadened both its repertoire and its audience during Sharon’s six years as artistic director (he departs at the end of this season), he and the board have agreed that, at this time, the company simply doesn’t have the money to realize his creative ambitions. - Detroit Free Press (MSN)
“For Warner, what was missing was a clear declaration from Paramount that the Ellison family” — Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison and his father, tech mogul Larry Ellison — “had agreed to commit funding for the deal.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
The Hodge Report, as it’s called, recommends that the agency, Arts Council England, not be abolished but that its procedures and strategy need thorough reform. Among the major recommendations are streamlining the excessive paperwork required from applicants, eliminating the controversial “Let’s Create” strategy, and devolving much grantmaking to the regional level. - The Guardian
Combining, after a fashion, its two main businesses, greeting cards and television, the company has begun offering branded cruises and seasonal theme parks — and customers are responding very positively so far. - The Hollywood Reporter
Whereas the modernists and postmodernists tended to use low culture as a vast reserve of references, tropes, and stock characters to be deployed as needed within the novel-as-polyvocal-assemblage, our recent crop of “genre-benders” instead work from within the given structures of genre plots, out of which they develop more traditional “literary” elements. - LA Review of Books
