Arts news

• Famous Feminist Harvard Square Mural At Risk

  16-09-2024 15:30 via hyperallergic.com
  
  Joyce Kozloff’s homage to New England arts “features hundreds of interlocking hand-painted tiles containing scenes from New England’s landscape and motifs referencing the region’s history, like gravestones, weathervanes, sail boats, houses with steeply pitched roofs, and silhouettes of Indigenous individuals and European settlers.” – Hyperallergic
  
  Read more

• Art in the Room where it happens

  14-09-2026 23:34 via artsjournal.com
  Good Morning,Culture needs a room, but who controls the room? San Francisco Opera’s musicians struck opening night at 7:25 p.m., with patrons already in their seats for an 8 o’clock curtain (The New York Times). Now that’s a power statement. Across the country, Lonnie Bunch concluded the White House intended to take the Smithsonian in a direction he couldn’t go and resigned, calculating that giving up the office was the price of keeping the institution (The New York Times
  
  Read more

• Ready to Lead What’s Next in the Creative Industries?

  14-09-2026 21:42 via artsjournal.com
  See attached word doc.
  
  Read more

• San Francisco Opera Musicians Strike Opening Night Just As Curtain Was Supposed To Go Up

  14-09-2026 21:01 via nytimes.com
  At 7:25 p.m., leaders of the opera walked onstage and told the patrons settling into their seats for an 8 p.m. performance that the opera had been canceled. An outdoor performance set for Sunday at Golden Gate Park, part of the opening festivities, was also called off. – The New York Times
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• This Year’s Emmy Nominees Are In

  14-09-2026 20:31 via televisionacademy.com
  The full list here. – Television Academy
  
  Read more

• Colburn seeks Assistant Vice President of Performance & Rentals Marketing

  14-09-2026 20:15 via artsjournal.com
  Organization Located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles along the city’s renowned Grand Avenue cultural corridor, Colburn is an internationally recognized performing arts institution dedicated to providing the highest quality music and dance education while enriching the broader community through exceptional performances, artistic experiences, and community engagement. Serving more than 2,000 students annually, from young beginners to emerging professionals, Colburn encompasses the Conse
  
  Read more

• Fashion Designer Bob Mackie, 87

  14-09-2026 20:00 via latimes.com
  
  Prolific costume designer Bob Mackie, whose dynamic sparkling and fringed creations dressed pop culture superstars such as Cher, Diana Ross, Dolly Parton, Beyoncé and Miley Cyrus, has died. – Los Angeles Times
  
  Read more

• Angela Duckworth Takes On Will Power

  14-09-2026 19:17 via newyorker.com
  
  High-profile authors are obviously under pressure to offer novel frameworks, but rarely do these second acts feel like an about-face. Duckworth insists that “Situated” is not a reversal but an expansion of her earlier research; as an account of individual success, grit is “necessary but not sufficient,” and must be complemented by the larger picture. – The New Yorker
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• George Lucas’ New Temple To Storytelling

  14-09-2026 18:44 via theatlantic.com
  
  The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which opens this month in Exposition Park, just south of downtown Los Angeles, is a swooping, brain-beggaring, super-sexy, twin-bodied leviathan of a megastructure, white as the gown of Princess Leia, half spaceship, half cetacean, all curves, Shangri-la for skateboarders if they could ever get inside. – The Atlantic
  
  Read more

• David Salle On Museum Politics

  14-09-2026 18:31 via news.artnet.com
  Is it possible to make qualitative judgements in an unbiased way? Maybe not. Some people feel that the whole idea of making judgements is just another form of cultural oppression. On one level, aesthetic preferences are all cultural. Take for one example the preference for consonant music over dissonant—it’s cultural, not intrinsic. – Artnet
  
  Read more

• What Is Poetry? ‘A glimpse of sun.’ — Jim Harrison

  14-09-2026 18:30 via artsjournal.com
  <a href="https://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2026/09/what-is-poetry-a-glimpse-of-sun-jim-harrison.html" title="What Is Poetry? ‘A glimpse of sun.’ —
  
  Read more

• The Art Of Being Jeff Koons

  14-09-2026 18:15 via nytimes.com
  Koons the pop culture figure is often at odds with Koons the artist, causing some deep ambivalence among the art establishment. He’s at once an esoteric conceptualist and a marketing genius rivaled only by Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí. – The New York Times
  
  Read more

• “The Odyssey” Was Shot On Film. Only One Company Makes The Film

  14-09-2026 18:03 via nytimes.com
  Beyond specific formats, Nolan and “The Odyssey” are part of a broader revival of physical film after the digital revolution seemed to have left it for dead.  – The New York Times
  
  Read more

• Restored Giotto Frescoes Unveiled

  14-09-2026 17:44 via apnews.com
  The newly vibrant “Stories of St. Francis” were shown to the public last week in the Basilica of Santa Croce, just in time for the 800th anniversary of the saint’s death on Oct. 4. – AP News
  
  Read more

• Four Million Books Were Published In The US Last Year. 3.5M Of Them Were Self-Published

  14-09-2026 17:31 via linkedin.com
  
  U.S. title output reached roughly four million in 2025, up about 32 percent in a single year, and around 3.5 million of those were self-published titles with ISBNs, up nearly 39 percent on the year before. Self-published books outnumbered traditionally published ones by more than five to one. – Rachel Alterberry
  
  Read more

• More Dance Clubs Prohibit Cameras And Smart Glasses

  14-09-2026 17:15 via cbc.ca
  
  That desire to disconnect comes as technology has fundamentally changed what it means to go out. In the 1990s rave scene, there was no smartphone in your pocket and no expectation that a night out would be documented and shared online. – CBC
  
  Read more

• Desecrating DC To Own The Libs

  14-09-2026 17:00 via theguardian.com
  The Trump Arch is just the latest in a series of architectural and visual crimes committed on the capital city. – The Guardian (UK)
  
  Read more

• Streaming Is Murdering Real Comedy, And For Some Reason, We’re Applauding That Death

  14-09-2026 16:30 via artsjournal.com
  “Broadcast TV wants you to watch a show and then, after you’re done, watch a different show on the same channel. Streamers have a different agenda: … They want you never to leave.” – The New York Times
  
  Read more

• What Hollywood Has Done To Our Ideas Of Sex In Ancient Egypt

  14-09-2026 16:00 via english.elpais.com
  
  A lot of sexual positions are “practically only for the gods,” not for regular people, or even non-deified monarchs. – El País English
  
  Read more

• That Time A BBC Strike Derailed Doctor Who

  14-09-2026 15:45 via bbc.com
  
  Thus, we’ve never gotten to see Tom Baker punting down the River Cam. – BBC
  
  Read more

• The Current US President May Be Winning His War On The Smithsonian’s Independence

  14-09-2026 15:30 via nytimes.com
  Director Lonnie G. Bunch III “realized that — one way or another — he was probably not going to last through this administration, that the White House was intent on taking over the Smithsonian.” So he resigned, in part to save the institutions. – The New York Times
  
  Read more

• Los Angeles Was Supposed To Have A Music Fest On The Beach

  14-09-2026 15:15 via latimes.com
  
  Then an offshore hurricane hit. According to the festival: “Storm surf and runoff [have] caused significant beach erosion and the festival can no longer be safely held as planned.” – Los Angeles Times
  
  Read more

• Opera Is In Trouble

  14-09-2026 15:00 via nytimes.com
  Perhaps it’s time to ask WWTD: What would Toscanini do? – The New York Times
  
  Read more

• It Seems A Little Too On Point, But Justin Trudeau Is Launching A Production Company

  14-09-2026 14:45 via cbc.ca
  
  Like the Obamas’ turn to entertainment post-presidency, the former Canadian PM is interested in “great storytelling,” or so the press release says. “The company will produce scripted and unscripted content, including documentaries and docuseries, as well as television series and feature films.” – CBC
  
  Read more

• Cockroach Milk, Underpants Soil Testing, A Scientific Definition Of Kissing: The 2026 Ig Nobel Prizes

  11-09-2026 20:50 via smithsonianmag.com
  
  “Winning work highlighted during the 36th annual award ceremony” (which was in Zurich this year rather than Boston) “included hilarious research on the aerodynamics of nose blowing, gently stepping on venomous snakes, confirming that teenagers do indeed smell worse than babies and other side-splitting scientific undertakings.” – Smithsonian Magazine
  
  Read more

• Toronto International Film Festival Shifts Emphasis To Film Dealmaking

  11-09-2026 20:27 via cbc.ca
  
  In a tumultuous time for the industry, this transformation could help keep TIFF in the conversation, but as ticket prices rise, what does it all mean for the heart of this festival: the filmgoing public? – CBC
  
  Read more

• The Advantages Of The Proscenium Stage

  11-09-2026 20:03 via theguardian.com
  At this point in history, many of us think of the proscenium as conventional, perhaps limiting or even dull. Yet director Dominic Dromgoole describes it as “liberatingly restrictive,” like the sonnet form or the 12-bar blues. After all, the revolutionary work done by Chekhov and Brecht happened on proscenium stages … – The Guardian
  
  Read more

• How AI Has Been Transforming China’s Movie Industry

  11-09-2026 19:44 via latimes.com
  
  The Chinese film and video industry is being transformed by AI-driven storytelling, fueled by rapid advances in video generation software, and at ground zero are the so-called micro dramas that play out on millions of smartphones. – Los Angeles Times
  
  Read more

• Flock’s Vision Of Surveillance Everywhere

  11-09-2026 19:31 via newyorker.com
  
  Flock was reported to have a valuation of more than eight billion dollars, with its biggest investor being the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Around forty per cent of the United States’ law-enforcement agencies now have contracts with the company, and a reported hundred and thirty thousand cameras monitor roads in every state but Alaska. – The New Yorker
  
  Read more

• Today’s Tech Billionaires Learned The Wrong Lessons From Science Fiction

  11-09-2026 19:15 via theatlantic.com
  
  As young people, the future billionaires were spending hours (under their covers with flashlights, I imagine) consuming stories about killer robots or Mars colonies. What they seemed not to get—maybe couldn’t get—was that these were cautionary tales, stories that projected deep societal worries into space or onto a future many millennia away. – The Atlantic
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUK1 on Twitter!