Patterned after the famous "Monuments Men" who tracked down treasures looted by the Nazis, a group of archivists, archaeologists, art historians, and other specialists are training as military reservists, ready to assist during armed conflicts. One specialist described it as "cultural first aid" training. - MSN (The Washington Post)
"Rather than demanding that school boards or librarians remove books, the current case takes the books to court, using an obscure Virginia law that would allow the judge, if she found the books obscene, to ban bookstores, libraries, and even private citizens from selling or sharing them, everywhere in Virginia." - Slate
Back home in Russia (where he spent years under house arrest on trumped-up charges), among culturati in Ukraine, in Europe (where he now lives and works), and especially at Cannes this year, the dissident director opposes the invasion of Ukraine but gets criticism for it nevertheless. - The New York Times Magazine
Tarsila do Amaral's painting Sol Poente (Setting Sun) is one of 16 artworks (not including stolen jewelry and cash) that were conned out of, or simply taken from, the widow of a Rio de Janeiro art dealer by her daughter, working with a bogus clairvoyant and a supposed candomblé priestess. - ARTnews
Extreme heat, flash floods, and, especially, smoke from wildfires — which can affect venues hundreds of miles away — have been the cause of multiple rescheduled and cancelled performances. Leading institutions such as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Santa Fe Opera are working on ways to adapt. - The New York Times
It’s safe to say that effective altruism is no longer the small, eclectic club of philosophers, charity researchers, and do-gooders it was just a decade ago. It’s an idea, and group of people, with roughly $26.6 billion in resources behind them, real and growing political power, and an increasing ability to noticeably change the world. - Vox
Painters, sculptors and other visual artists stand to get a payout when their work is resold at auction and by galleries, in a government move designed to help sustain thousands of artists currently working below the poverty line. - Yahoo
Values are promoted through cultural strategies where buzzwords chime loudly. Terms like networking, collaboration, common good, connection and cooperation promote an ever-closer union with culture, while the arts are deployed for soft power and propagandist tactics. - The Critic
More than 100 years after all the -isms in modern art, art lovers, art buyers, and masses of museumgoers throughout the world wholly accept the presence of most abstract modernism cheek by jowl with contemporary figural and representational works. So what happened to 20th Century music? - American Scholar
This idea is surprisingly popular among philosophers and even some scientists. Assume that in the far future, civilisations hugely more technically advanced than ours will be interested in running “ancestor simulations” of the sentient beings in their distant galactic past. - The Guardian
Roughly a third of respondents indicated they were thinking about leaving the sector, and 4 in 10 respondents said they were considering a change in job or location within the next year. Younger respondents were more likely to be considering leaving the sector. - Crosscut
"(His) lovingly crafted narratives on subjects ranging from the Brooklyn Bridge to Presidents John Adams and Harry Truman made him among the most popular and influential historians of his time." - AP
"There is no doubt that this is a violation of copyright. Not only did RGV Productions and The Door Christian Fellowship Ministries of McAllen not obtain rights to perform the show in its entirety, but also didn’t receive permission to change the text." - OnStage Blog
"What matters now is whether this community can rebuild itself with fewer takedowns and more inclusion, less intramural finger-pointing and more outward-facing togetherness. Above all, end the canard that you can only reform an organization by ripping it apart, at least until it offers you a paycheck." - MSN (Chicago Tribune)
In this future, people are citizens, rather than subjects or consumers. With this identity, it becomes easier to see that all of us are smarter than any of us. And that the strategy for navigating difficult times is to tap into the diverse ideas, energy and resources of everyone. - BBC
A study last November found that four out of five viewers aged between 18 and 25 said they use subtitles “all or part of the time” compared with only a quarter of those aged between 56 and 75. - The Guardian
"In return for the privilege of scraping by in a field they love, they are commonly expected to endanger themselves physically and emotionally." Long hours, exhaustion, even severe injury. Post-pandemic, some are insisting that it doesn't have to be this way. (Others insist it does.) - The New York Times
Fuller had devoted his career to predicting the impact of technology, but he saw nothing special in Apple: “I remember him saying that he thought the computer was a toy.” - Fast Company
The accusations are by ex-students of former principal ballerina Dusty Buttons and, especially, her husband. Gretchen Voss spent months investigating the case: "I made breakthroughs with my reporting that I didn't fully expect, with consequences I didn't expect, either. The more I learned, the more elusive the truth became." - Boston Magazine
The death sentence was delivered by the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, in a statement terminating BBC Four, which televises most of the Proms, and urging the BBC’s six orchestras in London, Manchester, Scotland and Wales to look for “alternative sources of income where possible.” - The Critic
