Arts news

• Conductor Herbert Blomstedt, 99

  05-11-2026 14:01 via ArtsJournal
  
  Over his seven-decade career, he was music director or principal conductor of the flagship orchestras in Oslo, Danish and Swedish Radio, Dresden, San Francisco, and Leipzig — then spent his 80s and 90s as a surprisingly energetic and much-beloved guest conductor all over Europe, the US, and East Asia. – NPR
  
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• The Former Director Of The Paris Opera Ballet Is Now Choreographing For The Folies Bergère

  05-11-2026 16:34 via ArtsJournal
  Said ex-director is Benjamin Millepied, also known as a former New York City Ballet star, founder-director of L.A. Dance Project, choreographer for the movie Black Swan, and Natalie Portman’s ex-husband. He’s staging three shows, each built on the music of great singer-songwriters, at the Folies this month. – The Times (UK)
  
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• Russell Brand Convicted Of Rape And Sexual Assault

  05-11-2026 16:06 via ArtsJournal
  The British actor-comedian was convicted of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault involving four women. He was acquitted of two rape counts and one count of attempted indecent assault. The incidents happened more than 20 years ago. – AP
  
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• Art Dealer Brent Sikkema’s Ex-Husband Sentenced To Life In Prison For His Murder

  05-11-2026 15:30 via ArtsJournal
  
  “Daniel Sikkema was found guilty in May of charges tied to a murder-for-hire plot … that took place in Rio de Janeiro in January 2024. After a two-week trial in New York, Daniel was convicted of three charges: murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, and conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country.” – ARTnews
  
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• How The Various US TV Networks Covered The “Blue Tsunami”: Analysis

  05-11-2026 15:05 via ArtsJournal
  “The networks were following the same returns, and by the end of the evening, the same political story was taking shape. What differed was how they told it — and how quickly they moved from counting votes to explaining what went wrong for Republicans and what comes next for Democrats.” – TheWrap (Yahoo!)
  
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• China Miéville’s “The Rouse” Wins UK’s Goldsmiths Prize For Innovative Fiction

  05-11-2026 14:33 via ArtsJournal
  The win of the £10,000 award makes The Rouse the longest novel to take the prize since it was launched in 2013 for fiction that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.” – The Guardian
  
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• Virginia and DC Sue to Block Trump’s Arch

  05-11-2026 02:22 via ArtsJournal
  Good Morning,Virginia and the District of Columbia sued to stop construction of Trump’s 250-foot arch, which would stand between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial at twice the memorial’s height. Work could start this week, and the suit calls the approval process “hurried and preordained” (NPR).A Bogotá judge ordered Colombia’s National Museum to restore 63 objects the new right-wing government removed on Oct. 15 as “political indoctrination,” including a pride f
  
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• 2,800-Year-Old Bone Flute Discovered In Ruins Of Troy

  04-11-2026 21:03 via ArtsJournal
  The relic is the first musical instrument found at the site in 156 years of excavations. – Smithsonian Magazine
  
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• After 20 Years, “Spring Awakening” Creators’ Second Musical Is Finally Making Its Mark

  04-11-2026 20:01 via ArtsJournal
  With their Broadway debut a smash hit, Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik expected their next musical, Nero (about the Roman emperor), would go far But, after a 2006 production in San Francisco, the piece got nothing more than workshops and showcases for producers. At long last, Nero is having its London premiere. – The Guardian
  
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• Defining The Artificial State

  04-11-2026 19:44 via ArtsJournal
  
  We have not a single piece of meaningful legislation in the United States Congress about artificial intelligence. We have essentially nothing about social media. This is something that we’re now battling out in the courts.  – The Walrus
  
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• The Telephone’s Role In Changing Intimacy

  04-11-2026 19:30 via ArtsJournal
  
  This may strike you as a little paranoid. The rise of the telephone, in the past century and a half—from the rotary diallers at home and the boxes in the street to the smartphones in every pocket—is associated with a change that, broadly speaking, we consider positive. – The New Yorker
  
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• Physical Witness Becomes More Important In The Age Of AI

  04-11-2026 19:15 via ArtsJournal
  
  For a time, the photograph or moving image acquired its own evidential authority: seeing something recorded was, with reasonable caveats, grounds for accepting that an event had occurred.– The Conversation
  
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• Previously Unseen Writing By Harry Houdini Is Published

  04-11-2026 19:04 via ArtsJournal
  “Houdini, whose real name was Eric Weisz, was a prolific author, with more than two dozen books, short stories and plays to his name. One of them, an article titled ‘An Interesting Scrapbook,’ … appears for the first time in print on Saturday” — the centennial of his death — “in Strand magazine.” – The Guardian
  
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• Virginia, DC, Sue To Stop Construction Of Trump’s Arch

  04-11-2026 18:44 via ArtsJournal
  
  The 45-page lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia called the project “flagrantly unlawful,” attorneys general Jay Jones of Virginia and Brian Schwalb of the District of Columbia wrote. – NPR
  
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• Naming That Sense Of Civic Disconnect Of Values

  04-11-2026 18:30 via ArtsJournal
  How do we give shape to this disquiet? We might call it fatigue, burnout, or ‘just needing a break from the world’, but often it’s grief – mourning for a faith we once had in fellow citizens to recognise a certain decency or sense of fairness. It isn’t partisan; it’s human, and it has a name. – Psyche
  
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• How One Dancer Brought Ballet To A Post-Industrial English Town

  04-11-2026 18:15 via ArtsJournal
  
  In the early years, Darius James said he would cover the word “ballet” on the van they took to do community workshops because he feared it would put people off before trying. – BBC
  
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• Federico García Lorca Has Finally Become A Queer Icon In Spain Itself

  04-11-2026 18:02 via ArtsJournal
  While the Anglosphere has long seen the poet-playwright as a gay icon, that side of his life and work was for decades suppressed within his homeland. Any scholar who dared discuss the subject would be denied access to the family archives (and likely harassed by the Franco regime). That has finally changed. – The Guardian
  
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• New NEA Data On Americans’ Arts Participation

  04-11-2026 17:44 via ArtsJournal
  The dataset now spans 2003–2025 and includes newly added data from 2024 and 2025. It is available through the NADAC website for free download and online analysis. – NEA
  
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• How American History Became Divisive

  04-11-2026 17:31 via ArtsJournal
  
  Under this rigid order, there’s no room to interrogate our rocky history, let alone change it for the better. There’s just one nation, under God, indivisible—now, always, and forever. – Mother Jones
  
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• Google Says It Will Shut Off Search For Schools That Reject AI

  04-11-2026 17:15 via ArtsJournal
  A.I. features are now a standard part of Google’s commercially available search engine. “Search and A.I. are deeply integrated.” If a school has banned A.I., he added, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.” – The New York Times
  
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• How An Indian Classical Dancer Embodies An Ancient Nonbinary Character

  04-11-2026 17:01 via ArtsJournal
  Hindu mythology includes several figures described as third-gender, mixed-gender or genderless. Bijayini Satpathy, one of the great living practitioners of Odissi dance, had never played any of those characters before creating her new solo piece, and she wasn’t sure she would even know how. – The New York Times
  
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• Rebuked! Say Good-bye to the Circus King!

  04-11-2026 16:33 via ArtsJournal
  <a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/11/say-good-bye-to-the-circus-king.html" title="Rebuked! Say Good-bye to the Circus King! “
  
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• First Word Of The Year For 2026 Is Here: Dictionary.Com Selects “Maxxing”

  27-10-2026 20:03 via ArtsJournal
  
  “’Maxxing” rose through the cultural lexicons of Gen Z and Gen Alpha quickly, ‘and now works as a noun, verb, adjective and adverb all at once. Leveling up your workout routine? ‘Gymmaxxing.’ Your personal care practices? ‘Healthmaxxing,’ an umbrella term that covers numerous subgenres, including ‘proteinmaxxing’ and ‘fibermaxxing.’” – CBS News
  
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• Scientists Figure Out How That Mysterious Ancient Roman Cup Changes Color

  27-10-2026 19:01 via ArtsJournal
  “Depending on where a light source is positioned, the Lycurgus Cup changes colour, from jade green under normal lighting to ruby red when lit from behind – a feat of optical engineering that has confounded historians and glassmakers for centuries. Now scientists from the University of Sheffield have replicated its optical behaviour.” – The Guardian
  
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• Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Is A Juggernaut. So How Does It Work?

  27-10-2026 18:44 via ArtsJournal
  
  Things are going so well for the Trust that, in recent years, it has made some of the tinier theater spaces it owns and manages available free of charge to individual artists and small arts organizations. And yet, mentioning the Cultural Trust to some Pittsburgh artists can bring a wince. – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  
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• Lincoln In Opera — A Different Portrait

  27-10-2026 18:31 via ArtsJournal
  The composer Missy Mazzoli and the librettist Royce Vavrek, one of the hottest creative teams in opera, conjure a darker, more conflicted president in “Lincoln in the Bardo,” which premiered on Oct. 19 at the Metropolitan Opera. – The New York Times
  
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• AI Will Upend Culture. How Should AI Companies Be Regulated?

  27-10-2026 18:31 via ArtsJournal
  What should the government do? We asked a panel of experts to assess the risks A.I. presents and the tools of governance that could be adopted to address them. – The New York Times
  
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• Study Upends Understanding Of How Language Works

  27-10-2026 18:15 via ArtsJournal
  
  A groundbreaking study challenges 70 years of assumptions about how human language works. By analyzing billions of word uses, scientists discovered that meaning is organized around power, danger, and order rather than emotion alone. – ScienceDaily
  
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• Layoffs At UK Newspaper The Telegraph As Owner Aims To Make It “AI-Powered Business”

  27-10-2026 18:04 via ArtsJournal
  “Staff were told the title would rely increasingly on technology, data and AI to ‘reinvent the reader experience’. Newsroom insiders said they expected as many as 100 people to lose their jobs.” The move comes four months after The Telegraph was acquired by German media conglomerate Axel Springer. – The Guardian
  
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• Soprano Martina Arroyo, 90

  27-10-2026 17:44 via ArtsJournal
  Arroyo, who has died aged 90, was one of the generation of black American opera singers – others were Marian Anderson, Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett and Grace Bumbry – who in their early careers faced institutionalised racial prejudice before achieving international recognition. – The Guardian
  
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