Arts news

• When Is The Right Time To Read A Famous Book?

  04-08-2024 17:00 via nytimes.com
  
  Maybe when you’re old enough to appreciate it. “It turns out, being wrong is one of the best things in life.” – The New York Times
  
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• The Tony Awards, Updated Live

  08-06-2026 02:40 via playbill.com
  
  In case you can’t tune in … – Playbill
  
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• Broadway’s big night — hold the comfort food

  07-06-2026 23:42 via artsjournal.com
  Good Morning,The Tony awards last night said a lot about where Broadway’s head is at: more reassurance than risk. Vulture handicapped the field (Vulture) — while the argument that the season has gone soft, “serving up liberal comfort food” instead of the gut punch theater does best, gets a sharp rebuttal over at AJ’s own For What it’s Worth. The four new musicals bet the form can still turn a corner (Washington Post).Meanwhile the institution that can’t
  
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• A New Documentary Shows Just How Much Movie-Makers Can’t Handle The Reality Of Michael Jackson

  07-06-2026 22:00 via huffpost.com
  
  Capitalizing on his name is one things, as the fictional Michael heads to a billion-dollar take at the box office, but Netflix is also, rather disgustingly, cashing in. – HuffPost
  
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• The 1980s Centered A Neon-Colored End Of The World, And Now It’s All Coming To A Theatre Near You

  07-06-2026 21:30 via americantheatre.org
  
  Revisiting the 1980s, a decade whose “reality pulsed with cultural Balkanization, financial erosion, systemic disinvestment, and televised neurosis, the American theatre conjures a cultural imagination crowded with the outsiders, monsters, con artists, hungry things, and chosen kindred of the analog twilight.” – American Theatre
  
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• An Appreciation For Kanya King, Who Changed And ‘Revolutionized’ Black British Culture

  07-06-2026 21:00 via theguardian.com
  The founder of the Mobo Awards was “engaging, self-effacing, funny, modest. Someone with so much to brag about but who was so humble. Her superpower, it turns out, was kindness and warmth.” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• The Four Musicals That Are Counting On Broadway Shows Finally Turning A Corner

  07-06-2026 20:30 via yahoo.com
  “There’s a big reason it takes years for a fresh musical to land on Broadway. Cracking any story is a painstaking process. The same goes for crafting a songbook. Getting the two to coalesce? It’s a delicate alchemy.” – Washington Post (Yahoo)
  
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• Who’s Going To Win At The Tonys Tonight?

  07-06-2026 20:00 via vulture.com
  
  Can Jellicle Ball beat out the universally loved Ragtime? Will Lesley Manville’s British chops beat out Susannah Flood’s incredible performance in Liberation? Find out soon! – Vulture
  
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• Gut Punch

  07-06-2026 19:44 via artsjournal.com
  (Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, 1949).
  In a guest essay in the New York Times, former Washington Post theater critic Naveen Kumar writes that “Broadway is Serving Up Liberal Comfort Food.”
  His piece concludes:Not everyone goes to the theater hoping to be confronted with big questions, the kind that compel audiences to turn inward and disrupt their worldviews. But offering easy answ
  
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• Anthony Stewart Head, Star Of Buffy The Vampire Slayer And Ted Lasso, Has Died At 72

  07-06-2026 19:30 via nytimes.com
  “One of his most formative experiences, he said, was seeing Tim Curry in the musical The Rocky Horror Show while in drama school as a teenager. He told The Guardian that it ‘ignited something in my core.’” – The New York Times
  
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• The Story Of Hong Kong’s Popular Music Can Tell The Tale Of The City’s History

  07-06-2026 19:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Cantopop is “predominantly Hong Kong music that blends Chinese and western pop sensibilities.” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• A New Edith Wharton Story Highlights The Human Inability To Deal With War

  07-06-2026 18:30 via nytimes.com
  “The story, on two typed and undated manuscripts that appeared to be different drafts, centers on a dinner party hosted at the same table where, earlier in the war, an army surgeon had performed amputations.” – The New York Times
  
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• Mary Shelley’s Sisters

  07-06-2026 18:00 via lithub.com
  
  “Fanny’s few surviving letters testify to her interests in poetry, education, art history, literature, current affairs, social politics, and the wellbeing of her extended family. … She counted Aaron Burr (former USA vice president), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (poet), Humphry Davy (scientist), [and] Charles and Mary Lamb (writers)” as acquaintances. – LitHub
  
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• Two And A Half Centuries On, Someone May Have Figured Out The Mystery Of The Declaration Of Independence

  07-06-2026 17:30 via nytimes.com
  Pretty cool: “Scholars have identified about 17 distinct broadside editions created in print shops across the colonies in July and August 1776, usually in runs of hundreds of copies.” One was anonymous – but perhaps not anymore. – The New York Times
  
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• The UK’s Heirloom Ceramics Sector Is In Deep Trouble

  07-06-2026 17:00 via theguardian.com
  “The UK ceramics sector employs 20,000 people, half of them in the West Midlands, and is regarded as an indispensable to the economy” – but repeated blows are breaking even the ceramics for the defense sector. – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• AJ Chronicles: A New Policy to Eliminate Arguments for the Arts

  07-06-2026 16:51 via artsjournal.com
  This notion that the ultimate measure of American educational value is economic is an impoverishing one. We measure for success. If that measure is earnings then we optimize for earnings. Social value measured on an earnings scale doesn’t just get deprioritized, it doesn’t exist.
  
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• California And Other States Are Possibly Suing To Block The Warner Bros. And Paramount Deal

  07-06-2026 16:30 via msn.com
  One advocate for the lawsuit: “The consequences would be felt nationwide, from destroying CNN the way that Ellisons have devastated CBS to entertainment industry job losses and consumers losing access to independent voices and a competitive market.” – Los Angeles Times (MSN)
  
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• The French Open Finals Courts Get Choreographed Ballet Dances For Some Reason

  07-06-2026 16:00 via nytimes.com
  Choreographed by Benjamin Millepied, no less. “Tennis doesn’t have a strong tradition of opening numbers — and certainly not of dance routines.” – The New York Times
  
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• The Movie Cars Ruined Pixar

  07-06-2026 15:30 via salon.com
  
  “Pixar plummeted to the ground with such a force that I began to question my undying devotion to an animation studio. Could my beloved Pixar, which had already anthropomorphized so many things, really make something so upsetting and perplexing, and on so many levels?” – Salon
  
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• A Century On, Martha Graham’s Modern Dance Vision Still Matters Intensely

  07-06-2026 15:00 via nytimes.com
  “Her choreography landed like a bomb in a landscape where vaudeville and ballet ruled the day.” – The New York Times
  
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• Why Is There No Tony For Best Wigs?

  07-06-2026 14:30 via vulture.com
  
  Weird: “There’s an Oscar and an Emmy. I’ve been nominated for Emmys for TV stuff. Theater is literally the only area in our industry that does not acknowledge us.” – Vulture
  
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• What Marjane Satrapi Did For Iranian Women

  07-06-2026 14:00 via theguardian.com
  “Satrapi was a spokesperson for our trauma, our upbringing and our particular flavour of shame, repression and outspokenness. She made us legible to our western peers in our 20s and 30s, and I was sure she would do it again in middle age.” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• The Kennedy Center’s Lawsuit Against Musician Who Refused To Play Christmas Eve Is Tossed Out

  07-06-2026 13:30 via nytimes.com
  “The judge, Tanya M. Jones Bosier, wrote that the Kennedy Center failed to prove that Chuck Redd, a jazz musician and a host of the institution’s holiday program, had signed a contract to perform as he had in years past.” – The New York Times
  
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• The Effort To Save The Kennedy Center From This President Is Far From Over

  07-06-2026 13:00 via theatlantic.com
  
  “Fundamental questions about the institution’s leadership, finances, and artistic direction remain in flux. ‘It’s not clear if there’s any money to stay open with. … And it’s also not clear who’s going to be in charge.’” – The Atlantic
  
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• YouTube Now Has, On Average, More Daily Viewers Than Netflix

  04-06-2026 16:02 via theguardian.com
  “Average daily usage per YouTube account (worldwide) rose from 87.2 minutes in 2024 to 99.1 in 2025, according to analysis conducted by the Digital i agency across 20 international markets. The figure for Netflix dropped from 100.5 to 93.4 minutes.” – The Guardian
  
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• New Jersey PBS Finally Finds Its New Operator: Montclair State University

  04-06-2026 15:35 via newjerseyglobe.com
  “A consortium led by Montclair State University has won a competitive process to take over New Jersey’s public television station.” The move comes months after New York PBS outlet WNET declined to renew its contract to run the New Jersey outlet. – New Jersey Globe
  
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• Colorado Passes Landmark Law: Artists Can Now Protect Their Rights By Becoming Corporations

  04-06-2026 15:01 via coloradosun.com
  
  “Senate Bill 133 creates Colorado Artist Companies, or A Corps, a new subset of limited liability corporations that guides artists through the complexities of setting up a business while ensuring they retain creative control over their work, which can include everything from songs, paintings and poems, to less obvious output, like creative coursework.” – The Colorado Sun
  
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• Artists Say They’ll Sue Venice Biennale If They’re Included In Public-Vote Prizes

  04-06-2026 14:36 via apnews.com
  
  https://apnews.com/article/venice-biennale-protest-russia-israel-golden-lion-0d1c92d173c530e63b146f1c3dd27063
  “Dozens of artists participating in this year’s Venice Biennale contemporary art show are threatening legal action if their names are not removed from the ballot allowing visitors to vote for the best national pavilion and overall participants in the absence of a jury” — they all resigned — “to award the prestigious Golden Lions.” &ndas
  
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• Marjane Satrapi, Creator Of “Persepolis,” Is Dead At 56

  04-06-2026 14:00 via deadline.com
  
  She achieved international fame for the graphic memoir of her girlhood in Khomeini’s Iran, and then for co-directing the animated film adaptation. Based in Paris, she went on to direct other films, animated and live-action, and publish graphic works, and remained a lifelong advocate for the rights of Iranians, particularly women. – Deadline
  
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• Is Trump’s Wreckage of the Kennedy Center an Opportunity for Something Better?

  04-06-2026 09:29 via artsjournal.com
  The Kennedy Center is a treasure. Not just for what it has been, but because of what it represents. But the practicalities of providing a roof for a bunch of artistic enterprises that essentially have nothing much to do with one another — or worse, having to squabble dysfunctionally among themselves for resources — are an argument for the need for something better.
  
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