This Week: An artist collective skewers Trump… How Florence’s Uffizi is dramatically addressing its problems… Our fetishizing of “authenticity” doesn’t ring true… So what if Google is changing the way you think… An inspiring comeback after medical calamity by one of America’s best musicians.

This Week: Is the music industry’s piracy war really about higher royalty payments?… There are signs the Golden Age of TV might be ending… Theatre’s emotional toll on actors… LA as the next great center of contemporary music… Europe’s tourist glut is damaging its great cities.

This Week: The ways in which we experience art are about to change in big ways… Auction houses are becoming shadow banks for the super-wealthy with money to stash… The Met Museum’s super-successful year (at least at the admissions booth)… Predictably, Harry Potter slays sales records… Do we have a problem with the ways we develop artists’ careers?

This Week: In an age of artists what is the definition of being an artist?… Canadian study says arts workers are most at risk… What is R&D in the arts?… Edinburgh Festival’s success shows the broadening impact of festivals… In the information age our opinions seem to be more arrogant.

This week: How did our culture get to the point we don’t trust facts?… Are artists actually detrimental to neighborhoods?… Our notions of “greatness” need an overhaul… Europe’s new cultural paradigm desperately needs artists… Are donors to museum building projects do their museums a disservice?

This week: A penetrating portrait of artist Chuck Close, a reality check on meritocracy as a concept, a look at anger and our access to visceral emotion in a media-saturated world, the enduring meritocracy of the Emmy as measure of success, and a Prime Minister exits stage right, humming.

This week: What ethical responsibilities do funders and funded have to one another?… The gatekeeper problem is still a thing in the internet age… What should the measure of success be in opera?… Historians are going to have a real problem documenting today’s artists… Our all-image culture suggests the place of images in art may be changing.

This week: Alas, hard work probably doesn’t trump innate ability… It’s tempting to believe extravagant claims for technology, but there are limits… Yes, by all means let’s talk about equity, but be sure you know what it means… A real-world experiment in ticket pricing (and some surprising results)… The death of the mid-budget Hollywood movie.

Clearly Brexit is a cultural decision, and it will have a big impact… A new jazz scene emerges and re-energizes the art form… There’s a practical reason there are so few women ballet choreographers… Christo’s simple idea wows the world… Has public radio figured out a compelling future?

Can computers help us better understand art? What the world thinks is creative. Why is it still okay to discriminate against stupid people? How gaming is taking over. And the “Rotten Tomatoes of Books” reveals a problem with how books are reviewed.

Maybe our biggest problem with teaching music in schools is the way we teach it. Hollywood thought making blockbusters would save it. Surprise! How charity auctions take advantage of artists. The internet is changing what we value in the world. And the wonder of Bill T. Jones

“When arts planning becomes the point rather than the process. Why your creativity may be dependent on being bored. Are MFA degrees a waste of time if you want to be an artist? Broadway breaks more records. And three new ways to see traditional art.”

Why aren’t the arts something we can all get behind? Maybe it’s somewhere in the psychology of how we like what we like? Revealed: nobody reads arts reviews anymore (says an editor who hates to run them but wants to “support” the arts). Where the money is in music (hint: not for musicians). And is “This American Life” undermining public radio?

Disrupting the orchestra model, doing away with artistic directors, a cure for what ails the Met Opera, how our ideas about knowledge are changing, and recreating Leonardo (no kidding!)

When an arts center stumbles over its definition of inclusivity. Arts as a bridge between cultures? Lessons from mega-culture projects. The mega-gallery mogul. And a dogged poet who spent decades trying to get her work in The New Yorker.

This week: Do the Met Museum’s financial woes say anything about today’s museum business? Who wants to see art in mobbed museums anyway? Prince’s career as a control freak. A realignment of power in cities. And diversity as fetish object.

This week, a groundbreaking deal for Broadway actors and dancers, James Levine finally decides to retire from the Met Opera, a debacle at the National Ballet of Romania that quickly escalated to involve the country’s Prime Minister, a warning about fetishizing “creativity” as the key to success, and a cautionary question about what machine intelligence might look like.

What business success in theatre looks like, our over-obsession with creativity as a catch-all answer to success, how the art markets really work, how taste gets confused with pretension, and machines’ inroads to art.

A number of stories this week tackled the meaning of greatness in art (even if they didn’t explicitly frame it that way). A changing culture requires changing definitions of greatness, but defining “great” has often been problematic.

This week’s best reads oddly hover around existential questions. What arts organizations should exist? Does truth exist? Can theatre really change anything, and should it even try? Canada’s new government makes a big existential bet on the arts. And do our tools define art?

How do the arts transition to the future without sacrificing the past? Has technology become “culture” rather than soft/hard-ware? Where did we get the idea that art is supposed to comfort? Will we be able watch new movies at home when they open in theatres? And should our museums be more moral?

New York gets its first new major museum in decades. English National Opera continues its slow-motion implosion. The relationship between art and critics frays. Some counter-intuitive findings about creativity from scientists. And some cultural industries that are booming.

Arguably, the dominant cultural issue of our time is the changes in how people are finding and getting culture. In response, business models supporting culture and the kinds of culture being made are also changing. It also underpins debates about diversity, engagement and power. Some broad themes this week.