Arts news

• Judge In Meta AI Case: “I Just Don’t Understand How That Can Be Fair Use”

  04-05-2025 14:31 via arstechnica.com
  Authors may need to sharpen their case, which Chhabria warned could be “taken away by fair use” if none of the authors suing, including Sarah Silverman, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Richard Kadrey, can show “that the market for their actual copyrighted work is going to be dramatically affected.” – Ars Technica
  
  Read more

• Ceal Floyer obituary

  19-12-2025 17:32
  Conceptual artist whose work derived humour from shifting points of view, puns and double takesAround the time that Ceal Floyer, who has died aged 57 of a brain tumour, was arriving on the stage of the international art world in the 1990s, she was already developing the idea of a performance in a major concert hall that spoke to her nervousness and unease about her newfound status. However, when she approached the Sydney Opera House with her proposal as part of the city’s 1998 biennal
  
  Read more

• Party with Picasso, wonder at the ancients and go wild with photography – the week in art

  19-12-2025 13:00
  The Spanish master’s angle on performance, treasures from Egypt and the year’s best wildlife images on Earth – all in your weekly dispatchMade in Ancient EgyptWonders to amaze and move all ages, in this magical exhibition that brings ancient Egyptians to life.• Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 12 April Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• ‘I had to plunge the knife into the canvas’: Edita Schubert wielded her scalpel like other artists wield a brush

  19-12-2025 07:00
  In her day job, the ‘first lady of Croatian avant garde’ sliced up cadavers at Zagreb’s anatomical institute. In her studio, she used the same medical instruments to make art that surprises to this dayEdita Schubert lived a double life. For more than three decades, the late Croatian artist worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, meticulously drawing dissected human bodies for surgical textbooks. In her studio, she made art that re
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Beyond Bollywood: There’s A New Wave Of “Pan-Indian” Cinema With Hollywood-Style Ambitions (And Problems)

  18-12-2025 21:02 via msn.com
  Bollywood produces films in Hindi, and there have always been “regional” cinema industries making movies in other Indian languages. Recently, following the huge international success of RRR (shot in Telugu), there has developed a Pan-Indian genre: big budgets, high-quality dubbing in multiple languages, no region-specific stories, nationwide and worldwide ambitions. – TheWrap (MSN)
  
  Read more

• How Did US Museum Design Get So Boring?

  18-12-2025 20:35 via theartnewspaper.com
  As trends go, one can only hope the style spreading through US museum design today will eventually fall out of fashion. All forms of creativity could use moments of self-reflection; perhaps it is time some museum architecture has its own. – The Art Newspaper
  
  Read more

• San Antonio Launches New City Arts Funding Program After Canceling Previous One

  18-12-2025 20:05 via msn.com
  “Most nonprofits that lost promised funding after the city of San Antonio ended a grant program to protect federal dollars are getting money back this month through a new, similar initiative. Still, most awards are several thousand dollars less than before, and one organization — the Network for Young Artists — received nothing.” – San Antonio Express-News (MSN)
  
  Read more

• 2025 — The Year AI Slop Crossed The Rubicon

  18-12-2025 19:44 via newyorker.com
  At first, slop was a widely derided format, the kind of clicky nonsense churned out by content farms or trolls. But, in September, with the launch of OpenAI’s Sora app, a social network and feed for A.I.-generated videos, the company set about convincing users that slop was something we should all be making for fun. – The New Yorker
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Designs For The Las Vegas Museum Of Art

  18-12-2025 19:31 via dezeen.com
  The newly updated renderings follow news announced last year that the studio led by Pritzker-prize-winning architect Diébédo Francis Kéré is designing the building, which will be located in a former parking lot in the Symphony Park area of Downtown Las Vegas. SOM is the architect of record. – Dezeen
  
  Read more

• Who Went To Movies In 2025? You’d Be Surprised

  18-12-2025 19:15 via indiewire.com
  Gen Z moviegoer attendance grew by 25 percent over the last 12 months — the highest increase of any age group. – IndieWire
  
  Read more

• PEN America Lists The Most Banned Books Of The 2020s (So Far)

  18-12-2025 19:01 via publishersweekly.com
  Many of the titles censored in school districts around the US relate to race, sexual violence or LGBTQ+ issues, but that’s not the case with the top two: John Green’s Looking for Alaska and Jodi Picoult’s Nineteen Minutes. As usual, the list includes classics by Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Maya Angelou. – Publishers Weekly
  
  Read more

• Musicians Are Wary Of AI. So Why Are Big Music Companies Making AI Deals?

  18-12-2025 18:44 via theguardian.com
  Those worries are being deepened by how the major labels, once fearful of the technology, are now embracing it – and heralding a future in which ordinary listeners have a hand in co-creating music with their favourite musicians. – The Guardian
  
  Read more

• NPR’s Top Music Stories Of 2025

  18-12-2025 18:31 via npr.org
   In an ever-changing and fast-paced attention economy, musicians hustled to put out records, connect with listeners and demand accountability from some of the industry’s biggest power players. – NPR
  
  Read more

• YouTube Pulls Its Music Data Off Billboard Charts Because It Disagrees With How The Data Is Used

  18-12-2025 18:15 via techcrunch.com
  “Billboard uses an outdated formula that weights subscription-supported streams higher than ad-supported. This doesn’t reflect how fans engage with music today and ignores the massive engagement from fans who don’t have a subscription.” – TechCrunch
  
  Read more

• Bonn’s Beethovenhalle Reopens After Decade-Long Renovation

  18-12-2025 18:06 via dw.com
  “The variety of spaces posed major challenges during the renovation. Adapting rooms designed during a different era to meet modern standards took years and cost millions. Ultimately, the total cost rose above €220 million ($258 million).” – Deutsche Welle
  
  Read more

• What It’s Like To Be Performing In The Kennedy Center These Days

  18-12-2025 17:44 via washingtonian.com
  Looking out across the hall’s empty seats, he often thinks of the pandemic—of that dismal year when the orchestra couldn’t perform, when he’d drag himself into his music room to practice and think, What am I doing this for? Without people to listen, what’s the purpose?  – Washingtonian
  
  Read more

• Reading, Literacy, And Brain Rot

  18-12-2025 17:31 via thebaffler.com
  If we consider literacy not as the ability to parse simple sentences but as the capacity to comprehend and enjoy complex texts, and ultimately as a sensibility that approaches the world itself as a text that requires interpretation, it’s obvious we live in an unprecedented decline of what neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf calls “deep literacy.” – Baffler
  
  Read more

• While Many Regional American Theatres Struggle, Some Are Thriving

  18-12-2025 17:15 via nytimes.com
  For a struggling industry, these two theaters — and a handful of others — are models of success: They are producing a healthy menu of shows, drawing large audiences, running budget surpluses and raising money for capital projects. But they are definitely in the minority. – The New York Times
  
  Read more

• Utah Balletgoers Are Getting Scammed With Counterfeit “Nutcracker” Tickets

  18-12-2025 17:03 via sltrib.com
  Ballet West in Salt Lake City reported Monday a “dramatic spike” in people “arriving at performances with fake or invalid tickets purchased from third-party sellers.” – The Salt Lake Tribune
  
  Read more

• Hedge Fund That Owns Barnes & Noble And Waterstones Wants To List Them On Stock Market

  18-12-2025 16:34 via theguardian.com
  “Elliott Investment Management, the hedge fund that owns the most popular bookstores in the US and the UK, has spoken to potential advisers about an initial public offering (IPO). … The multibillion-pound group is thought to prefer London over New York for the listing.” – The Guardian
  
  Read more

• For Such A Big Broadway Hit, “Harry Potter” Isn’t Making Its Investors Much Money

  18-12-2025 16:02 via broadwayjournal.com
  Even eight years after opening, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is outselling every other current show on Broadway. The lead producers are making millions in royalties, but investors, after earning back their initial investments, have gotten a return of only 6% (11% with a New York state tax credit). – Broadway Journal
  
  Read more

• John Carey’s “What Good are the Arts?”

  18-12-2025 15:57 via artsjournal.com
  Literary critic and academic John Carey died last week at the age of ninety-one. I always enjoyed reading his reviews. If you hadn’t already guessed how the Bloomsbury set and their literary contemporaries viewed common folk, his book The Intellectuals and the Masses gives you chapter and verse. I enjoyed Henry Oliver’s appreciation of
  
  Read more

• LACMA Staffers Vote To Unionize

  18-12-2025 15:35 via artnews.com
  “Workers at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art voted to unionize with (government workers’ union) AFSCME District Council 36, the union announced on Wednesday. The new union, LACMA United, will represent around 300 workers across the museum, from curators to art handlers.” – ARTnews
  
  Read more

• Oscars Will Leave Network TV For YouTube In 2029

  18-12-2025 15:01 via apnews.com
  The TV network ABC will continue to broadcast the ceremony through its centennial edition in 2028. From the following year through 2033, YouTube will retain global rights to streaming the Academy Awards, including pre-ceremony red-carpet coverage. – AP
  
  Read more

• Choreographer Hans Van Manen Has Died At 93

  18-12-2025 14:36 via gramilano.com
  “(He) was the Netherlands’ best-known choreographer for over sixty years and regarded as one of the great masters of contemporary ballet. He was also one of the most productive, creating more than 150 works. … All bear his distinct signature – clarity in structure, refined simplicity and an aversion to unnecessary decorative frills.” – Gramilano (Milan)
  
  Read more

• A Portion Of The Louvre Reopens As Strikes Continue

  18-12-2025 14:00 via artnews.com
  Unionized staffers voted unanimously on Wednesday morning to continue their rolling strike over staffing levels, building maintenance, security, etc. Management did open a “masterpiece route” in parts of the museum which allowed tourists to view its most popular attractions, Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. – ARTnews
  
  Read more

• David Heathcote obituary

  17-12-2025 18:16
  My uncle David Heathcote, who has died aged 94, was an artist, art historian and teacher.After studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, he taught for a long period in Africa, including in northern Nigeria at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, where he was head of art history. Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• ‘Don’t be disheartened by mistakes’: 10 lessons my artist father taught me

  17-12-2025 13:00
  David Gentleman’s brilliant career spans eight decades, from watercolour painting to tube station murals to drawing the Tottenham riots. Here his daughter, the Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman, dispenses his invaluable adviceWhen we were children, my father, the painter David Gentleman, never offered much advice to me or my siblings. If we wanted to draw, he would hand out pencils and let us get on with it. He was encouraging, but never gave us instructions. If we were enjoying ourselv
  
  Read more

• ‘To be really successful, you have to be sexy in a straight way’: Ben Whishaw on libidinous New York and playing Peter Hujar

  16-12-2025 16:33
  Peter Hujar captured a queer Manhattan demi-monde that is now lost to Aids. Whishaw reveals what he learned playing the photographer in a minimalist film being hailed by some as a masterpieceOn 19 December 1974, the writer Linda Rosenkrantz went round to her friend Peter Hujar’s apartment in New York, and asked the photographer to describe exactly what he had done the day before. He talked in great detail about taking Allen Ginsberg’s portrait for the New York Times (it didn’t
  
  Read more

• A viral hit and loved by Tracey Emin: the woman who took up art at 88 – and became an Instagram sensation

  16-12-2025 15:47
  Christine Hazell has progressive memory loss yet now has four shows in the works, thanks to these raw, untutored drawings of her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren – and Kizzy the dogIn his four decades as a curator, publisher and gallerist, Matthew Higgs has supported many artists’ careers, including those of his contemporaries Jeremy Deller, Martin Creed and Peter Doig when they emerged in the early 1990s.Higgs also champions artists from alternative backgrounds – t
  
  Read more

Follow @ArtsUK1 on Twitter!