Arts news

• The Deadly Dancing Plague Of 1518

  23-10-2026 20:50 via ArtsJournal
  
  “Five centuries later, the dancing plague of 1518 remains one of history’s strangest medical mysteries. Historical records confirm that a bizarre episode turned a medieval city” — Strasbourg — “into a very unwilling dance floor that summer, but exactly why it happened remains a matter of debate.” – Popular Science
  
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• Chatbots May Be Bad Writers. But So Are Most Humans

  23-10-2026 20:31 via ArtsJournal
  
  After all, we’ve been producing particle board for a long time. As Orwell observed (in pre-chatbot 1946!), “prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.” – The Walrus
  
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• Jonathan Groff’s Next Broadway Project Will Be A Solo Show About A School Shooting

  23-10-2026 20:03 via ArtsJournal
  “The play, The Amish Project, will be Groff’s first nonmusical production on Broadway, and it’s strikingly personal for him: It’s a work of fiction inspired by a 2006 shooting at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania, just a few minutes from Groff’s childhood home.” – The New York Times
  
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• The Art Of Attention

  23-10-2026 19:44 via ArtsJournal
  “You can’t talk about aesthetics,” he wrote, “without talking about the principle of hope and the existence of evil.” Attention, for him, was a matter of life and death, or at least of their cultural equivalents, remembering and forgetting. – The New York Times
  
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• Dealers Scramble To Get Work Out Of Art Basel Paris After Surprise Early Closing

  23-10-2026 19:31 via ArtsJournal
  
  Multiple dealers told ARTnews they’d received an email announcing the decision at around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday. By then, many had already suspected Saturday’s opening might be canceled. The loss of Sunday came as more of a surprise. – ARTnews
  
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• How One Donor Came To Give $10.5 Million To The Philadelphia Orchestra

  23-10-2026 19:15 via ArtsJournal
  David Cohen said that after his return, he “very quickly circled around arts and culture as the space where I thought I could make a real difference, a place where obviously Philadelphia has prominence and wonderful organizations, but where I still felt were a little under-appreciated.” – Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
  
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• How “Star Trek” Was Saved By, Of All People, Lucille Ball

  23-10-2026 19:04 via ArtsJournal
  
  Most people who know Ball only through her crazy-redhead I Love Lucy character don’t realize that she was a savvy TV mogul, and it was her company, Desilu Productions, that saved Star Trek from oblivion after NBC cancelled it at the end of its third season in 1969. – The Hollywood Reporter
  
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• Canadian News Orgs Sue Anthropic Over Copyright

  23-10-2026 18:44 via ArtsJournal
  The statement of claim says Anthropic breached the news media websites’ terms of service and circumvented technological protection measures they put in place to restrict copying of their content. – Canadian Press News
  
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• Why Friction Is Necessary For Making Progress

  23-10-2026 18:31 via ArtsJournal
  The reality is that friction, despite seeming so antagonistic, is necessary and even productive. The force that resists motion has, since humans first struck a spark from a stone, been the very thing that propels us forward. – Aeon
  
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• Legendary LA Recording Studio For Sale

  23-10-2026 18:13 via ArtsJournal
  
  The list of household names who have recorded at Conway Recording Studios spans generations and genres. Burt Bacharach, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder, U2, Guns N’ Roses, Daft Punk, Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar are just a few of the artists who have recorded there. – Los Angeles Times
  
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• “Why Satire Is No Laughing Matter”: An Essay By Sacha Baron Cohen

  23-10-2026 18:02 via ArtsJournal
  
  “Satire doesn’t just needle politicians or regimes — it occasionally helps bring them down. … Historian Ben Lewis credits Soviet joke-­telling with helping to topple communism, by making it impossible for even the system’s own enforcers to take it seriously. … ‘Every joke,’ George Orwell observed, ‘is a tiny revolution.’” – Time
  
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• Bard College Investigating Explosive Epstein Email

  23-10-2026 17:44 via ArtsJournal
  Someone writing from the Bard president’s email address asks Mr. Epstein whether a young woman was “for me, or are you keeping her for yourself.” The contention over the email is the latest, and perhaps most intense, dispute over the former Bard president’s ties to Mr. Epstein. – The New York Times
  
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• Inside Shanghai’s Striking New Opera House

  23-10-2026 17:31 via ArtsJournal
  
  “Our initial thought wasn’t about what the building should look like, but rather: How can an important cultural institution be integrated into everyday public life in one of the world’s most vibrant cities?” – Architectural Digest
  
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• Might Live Nation Be Broken Up After Losing Court Battle?

  23-10-2026 17:15 via ArtsJournal
  
  Across the country, some 480 independent venues and 240 music festivals have shut since 2020, with 160 shuttering so far this year, according to the National Independent Venue Assn., a trade group for the industry.  – Los Angeles Times
  
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• Another Guy Who Didn’t Read His Release Form Threatens To Sue Sacha Baron Cohen

  23-10-2026 17:01 via ArtsJournal
  The chair of the El Paso (Texas) County Republican Party, Michael Aboud, says he intends to sue Baron Cohen over footage shown in the latter’s latest guerrilla mockumentary, Ali G: Who Iz I? Unwitting subjects in Baron Cohen’s films have sued several times in the past; none has ever won. – The Guardian
  
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• How Politics Has Hollowed Out Scientific American, The Oldest Magazine In The US

  23-10-2026 16:33 via ArtsJournal
  
  “Interviews conducted this summer and fall with a over a dozen current and former Scientific American employees depict a magazine that, especially over the past two years, has struggled to protect its editorial independence in the face of sometimes overwhelming pressure from its corporate ownership.” – The Nation
  
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• Financial Fraud Discovered At Luxembourg’s Main Concert Hall

  23-10-2026 16:05 via ArtsJournal
  “Luxembourg’s Philharmonie has uncovered fraudulent transactions within the organisation totalling €160,000 following internal inspections, the concert hall said on Monday. … The concert hall said it is cooperating ‘fully with the authorities to establish the facts and determine any potential liability’.” – Luxembourg Times
  
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• Noah Adams, Longtime Host Of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Dead At 84

  23-10-2026 15:36 via ArtsJournal
  
  “He guided listeners through major events like Ronald Reagan’s landslide electoral victories, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the September 11 terrorist attacks. But to the people who worked alongside him in the newsroom, Adams’s journalism shone through in the softer features he reported.” – NPR
  
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• Man Arrested For Beheading Iwo Jima Memorial Statue At Quantico Marine Base

  23-10-2026 15:04 via ArtsJournal
  
  “Officers responding to a report of destruction of property at the Marine Corps Base Quantico around 10:31 p.m. saw a man ‘actively damaging the statue with a sledgehammer’ and detained him without incident, Prince William County police said.” – CNN
  
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• Art Basel Paris Is Closing Early Because Of France’s Violent Demonstrations

  23-10-2026 14:32 via ArtsJournal
  The art fair had been schedule to run through the weekend, but organizers have decided to shut it down on Friday evening “in light of potential demonstrations across Paris this weekend, and in the interest of safeguarding our visitors.” – Artnet
  
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• Actor Tom Skerritt Has Died At 93

  23-10-2026 14:00 via ArtsJournal
  “(He) embodied a solid, wry authority figure, whether as a flight instructor in Top Gun, a tough-but-fair sheriff on TV’s Picket Fences” — for which he won an Emmy in 1993 — “or the doomed captain of Alien.” – AP
  
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• Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco seeks Director of Digital Experience

  23-10-2026 01:11 via ArtsJournal
  OrganizationFine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF), comprised of the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, is the largest public art museum in San Francisco. FAMSF welcomes more than 1.5 million visitors annually and is among the most visited museums in the United States with the third largest membership base in the country. Highlighting over 5,000 years of global art history, the de Young Museum and Legion of Honor showcase world-class exhibitions acro
  
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