Valentina Salerno, an actress and novelist with no formal training in art history, says she has reviewed numerous documents indicating that the sculpture, located in a Roman church, is the work of Michelangelo. She published her findings at a non-peer-reviewed website, though she says she’s willing to let scholars examine her research. - AP
“As the U.S. gears up for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, President Donald Trump has dispatched six roving Freedom Truck exhibitions to crisscross the country. The first of 20 planned stops — mainly in the South, with forays to the Midwest, Arizona, and Utah — was last month in Nashville.” - Artnet
“The Belarus Free Theatre, an underground theater group in exile since 2020, announced Wednesday that it will stage the exhibition ‘Official. Unofficial. Belarus.’ as an official collateral event of the 61st Venice Biennale.” - ARTnews
“A study of the tree rings in Stradivarius violins, published in January in the journal Dendrochronologia, has revealed the most likely origin of some of the craftsman’s violins: wood from trees growing at high elevation in northern Italy in the same valley that hosted part of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.” - The New York Times
“Announcing the clementines, artichokes and other goods on offer are cheerful, hand-painted signs in sun-bright lettering. Quotidian but also quintessential, the signs have become emblems of Naples’s vibrancy. … Pasquale De Stefano is, by consensus, the last living numeraio — or number painter — in Naples.” - The New York Times
An education spent in pursuit of material comfort and convenience is a recipe for unhappiness, an existence in thrall to the raw, hungry American mantra of success, “More! More!” - LA Review of Books
Gentleman Jack, premiering this weekend at England’s Northern Ballet in Leeds, is Lopez Ochoa’s adaptation of a 2019 television series about Anne Lister, a 19th-century landowner considered to be one of the first modern lesbians known to us. - The New York Times
Kids giggling at "six-seven" reveals the brutal math of digital culture: references expire faster than milk. What happens when shared cultural touchstones become as fleeting as TikTok trends? Generational gaps now measure in weeks, not decades. — Common Reader
Virtual landscapes are the new studio space as artists trade actual cameras for digital controllers. Who needs nature when you've got pixels? The art world's latest existential crisis: if a screenshot falls in cyberspace, does it make a sound? — The Conversation
Before ChatGPT made everyone panic about robot poets, writers were already grappling with authenticity's slippery slope. Ghostwriters, collaborators, editors—the literary world's dirty secret is that pure authorship was always a romantic fiction. — LitHub
Composer Laura Bowler wrote the piece, which sets excerpts from Nobel laureate Han Kang’s The White Book, following her mother’s death in an accident after recovering from leukemia. Despite the daunting circumstances and Hannigan’s description, the soprano says, “I don’t think I’ve ever been more calm for a world premiere.” - The Guardian
The carpetbaggers have packed their Hermès bags and fled back east. What remains? The unglamorous business of building a real art scene—one gallery lease and artist studio at a time. — Artnet
The high court declined to revisit whether algorithms can hold copyright, leaving AI creations in legal limbo. While tech bros rage and traditional artists breathe easier, the real question remains: who profits when creativity gets automated? — Artnet
Bethany Collins spent four months transcribing the 900-odd-page text. She finds many of Melville’s concerns relevant today: “following the lone madman who will take the whole ship down, … overconsumption, the pursuit of oil and an obsession with whiteness.” (Okay, the last one might be a stretch.) - T — The New York Times Magazine
