Arts news

• The Growing Threat Of Cyberattacks On Museums

  21-08-2026 18:15 via theconversation.com
  
  We live in a time when digital systems underpin everything from ticketing to surveillance and building access. Sidelining cybersecurity leaves museums vulnerable to attacks that could threaten both their finances and their collections. – The Conversation
  
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• The Web Fills Up And Empties Out

  21-08-2026 21:21 via artsjournal.com
  Good Morning,Two numbers today, and they belong together. Traffic to the ten biggest US news sites is down by a third in two years (Press Gazette). More than a third of web pages published since ChatGPT launched show signs of machine authorship (TechCrunch). The open web is filling with writing nobody asked for and emptying of the readers who used to justify the rest.Here’s what that does downstream: a hoax claiming the Tang Dynasty never existed is picking up genuine believers on the Chin
  
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• Behold America’s First-Ever Jellyfish Museum

  21-08-2026 20:50 via artsjournal.com
  “The private Jellyfish Museum in Pompano Beach, Florida, just north of Fort Lauderdale, … was created by Alex and Yana Yanovsky, who previously developed successful aquariums in Ukraine, including their first jellyfish museum in Kyiv. The couple left those facilities behind when they fled Ukraine following the 2022 Russian invasion.” – AP
  
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• Study: Web Traffic To The 10 Biggest News Websites Has Dropped By A Third In Two Years

  21-08-2026 20:31 via pressgazette.co.uk
  Combined traffic to the ten biggest news websites in the US is down by almost a third compared to two years ago, new analysis shows. The difference was even higher across the top 50 news websites in the US, with monthly visits falling 37% since July 2024. – Press-Gazette
  
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• Weird Idea Spreads On Chinese Internet That Tang Dynasty Never Existed

  21-08-2026 20:03 via cnn.com
  
  The Tang era (618-907 CE) is considered a golden age, a period of territorial expansion, prosperity and high culture which every Chinese schoolchild learns about. Claiming it never happened is like telling Brits there was no Norman Conquest. Yet the bogus idea has caught on widely enough that China’s government is weighing in. – CNN
  
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• How The COVID Crisis Shifted Culture Funding

  21-08-2026 19:44 via culturaldata.org
  
  In 2019, arts organizations in BIPOC-majority neighborhoods of a major U.S. city received 16% less median grant funding than those in white-majority neighborhoods. By 2022, they were receiving 289% more. – SMU Cultural Data
  
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• Study: More Than One-Third Of Web Pages Created Since 2022 Show Signs Of AI

  21-08-2026 19:31 via techcrunch.com
  
  Over one-third of web pages published after the release of ChatGPT show signs of being written by AI, according to a new study from Pew Research released on Thursday. – TechCrunch
  
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• Christian Band Demon Hunter Sues Netflix Over Megahit “KPop Demon Hunters” Movie

  21-08-2026 19:15 via movieweb.com
  KPop Demon Hunters was the sleeper hit of 2025, dominating Netflix’s streaming numbers. The musical-fantasy produced by Sony Pictures Animation has over 600 million views since its debut in June of last year. – Movieweb
  
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• Lenny Bruce And His Endless Battles With The Vice Cops

  21-08-2026 19:04 via msn.com
  Working in the 1960s, when most standup was a succession of one-liners, Bruce used profanity, political satire, and sexual material which comedians today consider a basic right. Yet in his day he was regularly arrested and tried for obscenity; Phil Spector ultimately said Bruce died from “an overdose of police.” – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
  
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• Dance Man Ted Striggles, 84

  21-08-2026 18:58 via nytimes.com
  Ted Striggles, a dancer and lawyer who combined his disparate skills to support artists both struggling and successful, and to advise them on how to survive, including with his influential 1976 guide, “Poor Dancer’s Almanac,” died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. – The New York Times
  
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• How “Hadestown: The Musical” Became A Movie Hit

  21-08-2026 18:44 via indiewire.com
  
  Billed as a “five night only” event, “Hadestown: The Musical” has extended its run in theaters for four weeks, thanks to popular demand. In the process, the filmed stage show has become an indie blockbuster, grossing $20.7 million.  – Indiewire
  
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• More Schools Are Teaching Cursive Again. Should They Be?

  21-08-2026 18:31 via washingtonpost.com
  Pennsylvania and Florida legislators argue, for example, that an informed citizenry needs to be able to read historical documents, which are often written in cursive script. – Washington Post
  
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• Four Comics At Edinburgh Fringe Explain How They Developed Their Very Odd Characters

  21-08-2026 18:02 via theguardian.com
  For instance, Sam Eley gives the background on his Basil Crumbwick, whose papier-mâché head makes him seven feet tall, while Katie Pritchard recounts the origin story of her Sir Elton Scone, who hosts a Great British Bake Off-style show which uses no ovens. – The Guardian
  
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• How The Kennedy Center Plans To Put Trump’s Name Back

  21-08-2026 17:31 via npr.org
  
  In a status report submitted late Tuesday to a federal court, the Kennedy Center outlined its plans to put President Trump’s name back on the arts complex. – NPR
  
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• What’s Changed In Classical Music Over 50 Years

  21-08-2026 17:15 via classical-music.com
  
  What has surprised me, looking back to 1976 (when I started writing for a tiny magazine that sadly went out of business this year) is how much of the classical music landscape has survived, despite the economic pressures that you don’t need reminding about. – BBC Music
  
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• Research: Large AI Datasets Obscure Authorship

  21-08-2026 17:15 via news.mit.edu
  
  It feels counterintuitive, but at sufficiently large scales, they find, you can often remove any single image from the training data, or every image by a given artist, or every photograph of a given person, and the generated sample doesn’t change. – MIT
  
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• Paul Simon’s “Graceland” At 40

  21-08-2026 17:06 via theguardian.com
  Hard as it may be to believe today, Graceland was not an instant hit when it came out, and Simon received criticism for what’s now called cultural appropriation and for violating sanctions against apartheid-era South Africa. Now its influence is widespread enough that it can be hard to perceive these decades later. – The Guardian
  
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• How Adam Sklute Transformed Salt Lake City’s Ballet West

  21-08-2026 16:33 via theutahreview.com
  
  The ways that the company’s skill level, repertoire, national and international reputation, budget, and especially school (a ten-fold increase in enrollment) have grown during Sklute’s 20 years as artistic director are extraordinary. – The Utah Review
  
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• Scammers Are Posing As Terry Gross To Catfish Authors And Media Figures

  21-08-2026 16:05 via msn.com
  Comedy writer Brice Vilanch and psychologist Steven Pinker are among those who’ve been contacted by someone claiming to be not a producer but NPR host Gross herself or co-host Tonya Mosley, offering an interview on Fresh Air, displaying deep knowledge of the target’s work, then asking for “contributions.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)
  
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• Institute Of Contemporary Art San Diego Lays Off Nearly Half Its Employees

  21-08-2026 15:36 via sandiegouniontribune.com
  
  The ICA San Diego (not to be confused with the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego) is reducing its staff from 19 to 11, including almost all senior management and public-facing workers. The head curator position was eliminated last month. – The San Diego Union-Tribune
  
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• Texas Is Coming After The “Filthy, Dirty” Books In School Libraries, Says Lt. Gov.

  21-08-2026 15:04 via sacurrent.com
  
  “Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, during a Wednesday press conference, threatened to take over public school districts that don’t remove ‘obscene books’ from their library shelves.” – San Antonio Current
  
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• Utah Bans Novel Adapted Into Movie “Precious” From Schools

  21-08-2026 14:32 via sltrib.com
  
  “’Push’ by Sapphire got cut across the state Wednesday after the Davis, Granite and Washington County school districts removed it, bringing the total number of books banned from public schools to 37.” Current Utah law holds that if three county school districts ban a book, the title is then barred statewide. – The Salt Lake Tribune
  
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• L.A. Could Lose 4,500 Film/TV Jobs And Billions In Economy From Paramount-Warner Merger: Study

  21-08-2026 14:00 via thewrap.com
  
  “Overall, the economic impact of losing these jobs would be $1.26 billion in wages, $2.78 billion in economic value, $4.06 billion in total business output and $547 million in tax revenue, including $78.6 million in local taxes — most of which (63%) comes from property taxes.” – TheWrap
  
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• AI Has Plunged Publishing Into Chaos

  17-08-2026 18:40 via wsj.com
  The spectacular implosions of big book deals over suspected AI use—and fears about who might be next—are forcing a reckoning over the nature of authorship, the relationship between writers and publishers and the industry’s long-term survival.  – The Wall Street Journal
  
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• Warning: Screen Time Is Having An Impact On Kids’ Cognitive Abilities

  17-08-2026 18:21 via theguardian.com
  “Our children are less cognitively capable than we were at their age. For nearly two centuries, the west experienced steady generational progress. Each new cohort of children grew up, on average, healthier, happier, and better educated than the last. Until now.” – The Guardian
  
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• AI News Sites Are Now Reporting (And Breaking) News

  17-08-2026 18:01 via wired.com
  
  RuntimeWire has been operating since May, publishing nearly 2,000 stories that it sources by crawling the internet, including court databases, web forums, traditional and new media, company filings, social feeds, and more. – Wired
  
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• How AI Will Damage Children’s Brain Development

  17-08-2026 17:43 via theatlantic.com
  
  During the most foundational period of brain development, social interaction of the sort that AI can now emulate isn’t entertainment for the developing brain. It’s nutrition. Once you see it that way, the right parallel snaps into focus. A more apt comparison than social media is food—more precisely, processed food. – The Atlantic
  
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• Our Ability To Search The Internet Is Dying

  17-08-2026 17:20 via thewalrus.ca
  
  Search can no longer pretend to be a neutral gateway to a stable body of knowledge. While the web has always been organized around intermediaries that shape what survives online and who sees it, the internet’s archival function is today breaking down under relentless pressure from stakeholders with very different—and often conflicting—priorities. – The Walrus
  
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• The Anti-AI ‘Hand-Designed’ Trend Is Big, But Also Filled With Grift

  17-08-2026 17:00 via fastcompany.com
  “Most telling is Claude’s branding, incorporating hand-drawn illustrations and details that attempt to tell the world, ‘Hey, we’re the more human AI.’” – Fast Company
  
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• Confirmed: Amazon Is Scanning And Then Ripping Up Rare Books

  17-08-2026 16:30 via 404media.co
  
  Wow, OK, way to be just obviously evil. “The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands.” – 404 Media
  
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