"I wouldn't be surprised to see (the) protest included in upcoming lists of top-ten artworks of 2022. Theirs is a form of performance art, but its message is muddled and unconvincing. ... They want to have it both ways, to act out their emotions and give up nothing." - New York Magazine
As Live Nation leverages its power across the concert ecosystem to increase its profits, concertgoers see higher prices, and artists experience challenging touring dynamics. Artists’ touring costs have become especially onerous, creating difficult economics for small and midlevel artists. - The New York Times
“The Internet itself is just patterns—so much of what we do online is just knee-jerk, meme reactions to everything, which means that most of the responses to things on the Internet are fairly predictable. So this is just showing that.” - The New Yorker
Hollywood sees this an affront to its identity. Film power players have long clung to the fantasy that the cultural world revolves around them. That delusion is hard to sustain when the masses can’t be bothered to come. Hollywood equates this with cultural irrelevancy. - The New York Times
KPOP marketed its characters over social media, leveraging some of the same tools and tactics that brought K-pop’s biggest names to widespread fame. Unfortunately, KPOP’s fictional groups haven’t yet reached the same success. Creating internet fandom, it turns out, is hard to do. - The Verge
It occurs to us, strolling past a pair of broken BuzzFeed Shopping–approved AirPods, that the new ugliness has beset us from both above and below. - n+1
The series highlights the cozy nature between curators, scholars, museums and dealers — and how incentives align to allow the dirty world of the international art market to proliferate. - Denver Post
For four decades, the consensus has been that — despite some excellent songs, and despite repeated adjustments during revivals — there's just no way to make Merrily We Roll Along into a good piece of musical theater. Then the director Maria Friedman, who's uniquely qualified, had a go. - The New York Times
The application of game design principles like leaderboards, progress bars, points, badges, levels, challenges, and activity streaks to nongame ends has seeped into just about every domain of modern life, from sleeping and exercising to studying and social credit systems. - The New Republic
NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and Walt Disney together own dozens of underperforming cable networks that are quickly losing relevance in the age of streaming. - Variety
"Oleksandr Tkachenko argues that such a 'cultural boycott' would not amount to 'cancelling Tchaikovsky', but would be 'pausing the performance of his works until Russia ceases its bloody invasion'." - The Guardian
"I’m a scientist myself, but I find it a bit unsettling that a brain scientist or computer might accurately predict whom I’ll fall in love with. At the same time, I admire the spectacular progress of science in understanding human beings and where we fit in the grand scheme of things. - The Atlantic
"The brutal material horrors of the struggle, might make any cultural reading of the conflict seem fantastical or glib. But at its core, and from its origin, this Ukrainian conflict has been a war over language and identity. And Ukraine's libraries are the key." - The Observer (UK)
D. H. Lawrence's novel had been banned in Britain since it was first printed privately in 1928, but in 1960, Penguin UK published the first uncensored edition — and was promptly prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959. Perhaps no other trial in modern British history had such impact. - Esquire
Comparing their campaign to that of the suffragettes — one of whom attacked a Velázquez at London's National Gallery with a meat cleaver in 1914 — Just Stop Oil spokesperson Alex De Koning said, "If that's unfortunately what it needs to come to, then that's unfortunately what it needs to come to." - Artnet
Art’s primary task, Perl asserts, is not to “promote a particular idea of ideology, or perform some clearly defined civic or community service.” Art is meaningful, valuable, and exciting precisely because of its irrelevance to our most immediate, surface-level concerns. - Commonweal
Sir James MacMillan "had not even heard a rehearsal of the piece, which he had written in secret, and until the night before the funeral was not completely sure it would be performed." - BBC
According to Greek news sources, "British Museum chair George Osborne, the former chancellor, has been holding secret talks with the Greek prime minister." - BBC
There's also a fair amount of Taylor Swift fandom, but "these posts from fans essentially serve as a denouncement of West’s praise of Hitler in the Infowars interview and his denial of the Holocaust, further highlighting the artist’s loss of support." - Variety
Scholars are increasingly voicing concern that the shift to working from home, spurred by the Covid pandemic, will bring the three-decade renaissance of major cities to a halt, setting off an era of urban decay. - The New York Times
