Arts news

• Some Italians Are Highly Offended By Estonia’s Eurovision Song Contest Entry

  09-05-2025 20:50 via bbc.com
  The Baltic nation’s submission this year is “Espresso Macchiato,” in which Estonian singer-rapper Tommy Cash (who bills himself as the “Kanye East” of Europe) piles the stereotypes high. Many Italians are angry at the mockery, but Estonia’s ambassador to Italy says he hears the song played there often enough. – BBC
  
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• The Met Gala And What It Reveals About The Unfairness Of Tax Breaks

  09-05-2025 20:31 via nytimes.com
  The charitable tax deduction is distorting American philanthropy. It doesn’t just shape where dollars go; it also warps the way that nonprofits behave. Let’s find out what the Met Gala looks like without the federal government as a silent sponsor. – The New York Times
  
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• Marina Harss Adds Another Dance Critic Gig To Her Portfolio

  09-05-2025 20:05 via marinaharss.substack.com
  The well-regarded author, critic and biographer has been appointed dance critic for The Hudson Review, a quarterly journal focusing on literature and the arts. – Marina Harss/Dancing Around
  
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• Extraterrestrial Languages Could Be So Much Stranger Than We’ve Ever Imagined

  09-05-2025 19:20 via aeon.co
  The space of possible languages is vast, and full of exotic languages that are much weirder and stranger than any we have yet imagined. We should explore what those might be – and for more than intellectual curiosity alone. – Aeon
  
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• Donald Trump, Broadway, And Fame: A Brief History

  09-05-2025 19:06 via msn.com
  With the real-estate heir-turned-tabloid fixture-turned-reality TV star-turned-politician having taken over the Kennedy Center and now talking about what big-name musicals to present there, Jada Yuan looks at his 56-year relationship with New York’s theater, including a brief outing as an investor. – The Washington Post (MSN)
  
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• Why AI Can’t Be Your Friend

  09-05-2025 18:44 via msn.com
  Sycophancy is a common feature of chatbots: A 2023 paper by researchers from Anthropic found that it was a “general behavior of state-of-the-art AI assistants,” and that large language models sometimes sacrifice “truthfulness” to align with a user’s views.  – The Atlantic (MSN)
  
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• The Sheer Dopiness Of Thinking You Could Tariff International Movies

  09-05-2025 18:44 via theguardian.com
  Today, international markets account for more than 70% of Hollywood’s box office revenue. Ironically, Hollywood is one of the few places where the US does not see one of Trump’s dreaded trade deficits. The industry enjoys a $15.3bn trade surplus, and with that surplus. – The Guardian
  
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• The Berlin Man Who’s Made Gallery Crashing A Performance Art

  09-05-2025 18:31 via theguardian.com
  Every day Jambon spends a few hours compiling a list of gallery openings from websites such as Index Berlin and social media accounts. Then he begins hitting the galleries on his list, going from one to the next decked out in his vibrant outfit and bug-eye glasses. He calls it his “gallery project”. – The Guardian
  
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• How Europe Could Retaliate Against Cultural Products In The Trump Trade War

  09-05-2025 18:15 via hollywoodreporter.com
  The ACI is a mechanism, introduced to prevent foreign countries from using trade policy to interfere with European democracy, that gives the EU broad powers to retaliate against international companies, and could be used to restrict or block U.S. media companies access to European markets, including exploiting their IP rights here. – The Hollywood Reporter
  
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• Researchers Identify Author Of Ancient Scroll Carbonized By Vesuvius

  09-05-2025 18:04 via theguardian.com
  “Traces of ink lettering visible in the X-ray images” — virtually unrolled and scanned for words by a specially-designed AI program — “revealed the text to be part of a multi-volume work, On Vices, written by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus in the first century BC.” – The Guardian
  
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• How Our Brains Take On The Rhythm Of Music

  09-05-2025 17:44 via earth.com
  Rather than passively perceiving music, the brain physically embodies it, synchronizing with musical patterns to produce sensations of timing, musical pleasure, and even the impulse to move. – Earth.com
  
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• This Year’s List Of Most Endangered American Cultural Sites

  09-05-2025 17:31 via npr.org
  This year, the list includes not only buildings, but entire communities, such as a smattering of islands off Florida’s northwest coast. Cedar Key was renowned for its Old Florida charm. A historic fishing village that bears its name was devastated by Hurricane Helene in 2024. – NPR
  
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• Portland Center Stage Says It Will Close Without Emergency Funding

  09-05-2025 17:15 via oregonlive.com
  On Thursday, the theater company launched a $9 million emergency fundraising campaign, saying that unless it can raise the first part of the funds, $2.5 million, by Aug. 31, “the theater will cease operations.” – The Oregonian
  
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• Chicago Public Schools Unveil Revamped Arts Education Plan

  09-05-2025 17:05 via wbez.org
  “Chicago Public Schools officials on Wednesday announced a plan aimed at increasing the quality of arts instruction by establishing a comprehensive arts curriculum and a data-driven system to measure effectiveness of teaching.” – WBEZ (Chicago)
  
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• ‘It’s all very sad’: Trump’s attack on arts funding has a devastating effect

  09-05-2025 16:43
  The president’s steady dismantling of the National Endowment for the Arts has affected organizations across the US with more chaos set to continueOn the afternoon of 3 May, arts organizations around the US began receiving cryptic emails from a previously unknown government email account. The missives declared that these organizations’ missions were no longer in line with new governmental arts priorities, which included helping to “foster AI competency”, “empower hou
  
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• Jazz Singer Andy Bey, 85

  09-05-2025 16:31 via wrti.org
  “Bey had a multiphase musical career, with peaks and valleys that had more to do with shifting tastes than any fluctuation in quality. But his style did trace an evolution, from churchified soul jazz to astral jazz-funk to smoky songbook reverie.” – WRTI (Philadelphia)
  
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• Leading Dutch Museum Worries That Lending Art To The US May No Longer Be Safe

  09-05-2025 16:03 via theguardian.com
  “Martine Gosselink, the director of the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, whose collection includes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring …, said the turmoil had left her team wary of lending pieces to the US … amid the uncertainty wreaked by Donald Trump’s funding cuts and ideological impositions.” – The Guardian
  
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• Post your questions for Cosey Fanni Tutti

  09-05-2025 15:52
  As the Throbbing Gristle and Chris & Cosey musician and writer releases new album 2t2, she will be answering your questionsShe is a pillar of industrial music who was called a “wrecker of civilisation” in the UK parliament because of her subversive and boundary-pushing art, and who wrote one of the best music memoirs of recent years. Now, with a new album due for release, Cosey Fanni Tutti will be answering your questions.Born Christine Carol Newby in 1951, she was a founding mem
  
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• A sumptuous rehang, jumbo jellyfish and naive manly paintings – the week in art

  09-05-2025 15:41
  The revamped National Gallery offers a new take on its glorious wonders, a psychoanalytical painter tackles masculinity, and abstract watercolours rise from the deep – all in your weekly dispatchThe Wonder of ArtNew ways of seeing European art from Jan van Eyck to Cézanne and Picasso in a sumptuous rehang of one of the world’s richest and deepest art museums. And all for free. Read the five-star review.
  • National Gallery, London, from 10 May Continue reading...
  
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• St. Louis’s Muny Gets 2025 Tony Award For Regional Theater

  09-05-2025 15:32 via theatermania.com
  The Muny — officially, the Municipal Theatre Association of St. Louis — is the oldest and largest outdoor musical theater in the U.S., founded in 1919.  Its annual attendance at its home in the city’s Forest Park is over 300,000. – TheaterMania
  
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• Trump Abruptly Fires Head Of Library Of Congress

  09-05-2025 15:06 via msn.com
  “President Donald Trump on Thursday fired Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress — the first woman and first African-American to hold the position. She was informed of the decision in a terse, two-sentence email.” – The Washington Post (Yahoo!)
  
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• All Rape Charges Against Oscar-Winner Paul Haggis Dropped By Italian Court

  09-05-2025 14:34 via yahoo.com
  A woman had accused the writer-director of Crash of raping her repeatedly over the course of two days in 2022 while they were both in Brindisi for an entertainment-industry event. A judge has ruled that no nonconsensual sex took place in this instance. – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
  
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• Trump Renominates NEA Head From His First Term

  09-05-2025 14:00 via artnews.com
  “According to governmental documents posted online, Trump has nominated Mary Anne Carter to reassume her post as NEA head, a position she left in 2021 when Joe Biden became President.” – ARTnews
  
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• ‘If it isn’t recorded it will disappear’: the Muslim photographer shining a light on Bradford’s Jewish community

  09-05-2025 14:00
  When Nudrat Afza learned that her friend’s synagogue was closing she began a multi-year project to document the city’s declining Jewish population. ‘In Bradford people from different communities respect each other,’ she saysIn April 2013, Nudrat Afza, a Muslim woman from Bradford, gave her 90-year-old Jewish friend Lorle Michaelis a lift to the local Orthodox synagogue. “As Lorle got out of the car, she told me it would be the last service,” Afza recalls. &ldq
  
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• The Berlin art legend who found his calling in sneaking into other artists’ shows

  09-05-2025 10:00
  Disillusioned with art that didn’t engage the public, Mr Jambon found deeper meaning in striking up conversations at openings. After 6,000 shows in 25 years, could the ‘galleries project’ come to an end?As the crowd outside a gallery in central Berlin filters indoors to get out of the rain, a man in a bright red T-shirt wearing cartoonishly large metal-framed glasses heads in the opposite direction.With a retro futuristic yellow bike helmet under his arm and an orange backpack
  
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• ‘Each shot feels like a private performance’: Rene Matić, the Turner shortlist’s only photographer

  09-05-2025 10:00
  In a deeply personal show called Idols Lovers Mothers Friends, we see the artist’s inner circle – but there are delightful tangents, too, including figurines by the patron saint of mixed-race peopleRene Matić’s nomination for the 2025 Turner prize was announced the week this exhibition opened. Only one photographer has ever been awarded the prize – Wolfgang Tillmans. Matić is not a technically masterly photographer, but a quiet observer of things, like Tillmans.
  
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• What Ails Today’s Metropolitan Opera? — It’s in the Pit

  09-05-2025 05:47 via artsjournal.com
  The current issue of the “New York Review of Books” carries my review of the Metropolitan Opera’s current “Aida” – a new
  
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• Archibald prize 2025: Julie Fragar wins for portrait of artist Justene Williams

  09-05-2025 04:24
  Decision announced at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where all finalists will be exhibited to the public from SaturdayArchibald prize 2025 finalists: Nicole Kidman, Aaron Chen, Jackie O and others – in picturesGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailJulie Fragar has won the 2025 Archibald prize for her portrait of her fellow artist Justene Williams.Announced as the winner of the $100,000 prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on Friday, Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene) was
  
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