MOST RECENT AJBLOGS

Robert McGrath talks about building a historic collective bargaining agreement

‘Burning Boris’ by David Erdos

Dancers and Social Workers Unite: Recovering the Body through Creative Movement

Mocking Freedom? What To Do With the “Star-Spangled Banner”

Making an Impact on Elections

DANCE

Using Dance To Teach Girls Of Color To Code

America’s 150 Largest Ballet Companies And Where They Stood Financially In FY2020

Refugee Ukrainian Dancers Have Formed A New Ballet Company In Europe, And They Have Big Stars In Their Corner

Behind The Ailey Company’s Contract Dispute With Its Dancers

IDEAS

Romanticism Was Once A Challenging Dynamic Force. What Happened To Defang It?

Why We Need To Cultivate Toleration

Bumping Up On The Limits Of Wellness Culture

The Peril Of Being Surrounded By Admirers

As AI Software Learns To Write Prose, Create Art, And Make Conversation, We Might See Too Much Of Ourselves In It

Your Fitbit Is Only A Materialistic Delusion Of Who You Are

Where Do Our Minds Go When We’re Under Anesthesia?

ISSUES

Black Mountain College — The Underfunded, Never-Accredited, Long-Defunct Rural School That Transformed American Arts And Education

What Was (Or What Is) The Chitlin Circuit?

Until The 1880s Anthropologists Researched In Libraries. When They Finally Went Into The Field It Was Eccentric

Twitter Sues Indian Government Over Orders To Remove Tweets

Japan Is Conflicted About Resuming Tourism

Can Cultural Institutions Help Heal Countries Torn Up By Civil War? Look To Bosnia

Arts Audiences In Australia Are Coming Back, Even As COVID Cases Rise Again

What Will Be The New Australian Government’s Arts Policy?

“Disneyfication”: What Has Xi Jinping’s Government Done To The Ancient Silk Road City Of Kashgar?

How Did The Romans Keep Wine From Going Bad In Their Amphorae? Like This.

SXSW Expands Beyond Austin For The First Time —And It’s Going A Very Long Way South By Southwest

MEDIA

Back To The Future: Canadian Internet Goes Down — Fans Urged To Print Tickets For Shows

And You Think You Have A Spam Problem (Twitter Removes A Million Accounts Each Day)

Hollywood’s Answer To The World’s Problems: Only Superheroes. So Ordinary Humans Are Powerless?

As Boris Johnson’s Prime Ministership Collapsed, British TV News Got Very, Very Weird

Warning: Current Streaming Model Is Rotten, Must Change

Journalists Prize Access To Sources. But Too Much

CBC News Is Launching A New Streaming Service. But Aren’t They Providing Us Enough Programming Already?

How Social Media Platforms Decide Which Ideas Are Allowed

Ridley Scott Called These Studios “The Finest Facilities In The World”. The EU Shut Them Down, And They’re Just Now Reopening.

Movie Theatres Have An Aging Audience Problem

MUSIC

America’s First Luthier And (Probably) First Composer Of Chamber Music

Who’s Running The Ship? San Francisco Makes More Major Changes In Its Leadership

The Future Of Opera: Detroit?

It Took War For North Americans To Learn About Ukrainian Music

Sounds Like They’ve Finally Fixed The Acoustics At The Sydney Opera House’s Concert Hall

In Response To Highland Park Shooting, Ravinia Festival Cancels This Week’s Concerts

The Remarkable Turnaround Of The Atlanta Symphony

The Young Conductor Who Replaced Muti On A Moment’s Notice And Wowed The Chicago Symphony

Someone Thinks Orchestra Music Died In The 20th Century

“Country-House Opera” In England Is Thriving, And Not Just At Glyndebourne

After 51 Years, A Boston New Music Institution Calls It Quits

How Lilith Fair Changed Music 25 Years Ago

Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” Has Been An Orchestra Favorite For The Fourth Of July. But Not So Much This Year

Shocked And Confused: Why Is Montreal’s McGill Conservatory Of Music Suddenly Shutting Down?

Why Pittsburgh Festival Opera Is Not Putting On Any Operas This Year

PEOPLE

Harvey Dinnerstein, Who Sketched The Civil Rights Movement, Has Died At 94

Roy Moore Loses His Lawsuit Against Sacha Baron Cohen Over The “Pedophile Detector” In “Who Is America?”

Actor James Caan Dead At 82

Clint Eastwood Wins $2 Million In Lawsuit Against Defendants Who Used His Name And Likeness To Promote CBD

Harold Rosenberg Was A Towering Critic. How Did He Disappear?

Bass René Pape Gets Himself Into A Heap of Trouble With A Drunken Facebook Post About The Met Opera And Gay Pride

Remembering Flame-throwing Musicologist Richard Taruskin

Jim Oestreich Remembers Richard Taruskin

Peter Brook’s Death “Marks The End Of A Theatrical Era”

Stage Director Peter Brook, 97

THEATRE

For The Age Of #MeToo, There’s Still A Lot Of Old-Fashioned Misogyny Being Put On Stages

Pay Equity Is Great, But Can Theater In America Afford It Without Shrinking?

A Second Staff Rebellion In Two Years At Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theater

Over 1,500 Edinburgh Fringe Participants Demand Reform

A New Golden Age For Black British Theatre

At A Comedy Club In Lviv, Finding Humor In The War

Mariupol’s Drama Theater Is Destroyed, But Its Theater Company Is Still Working

Meet Some Of The Workers Making Theatre Accessible To Disabled People

VISUAL

Those Who No Longer Want To Teach, Do

Hong Kong’s Huge New Palace Museum Opens

Are Museums Investing Their Money In Positive Ways?

Richard Armstrong To Step Down As Guggenheim Director

Why Not Just Have A Robot Make Copies Of The Elgin Marbles To Replace The Originals? In Fact, Someone’s Doing Exactly That.

A Battle Breaks Out Over Who Gets To Design And Make Philadelphia’s Harriet Tubman Monument

Man Recreates Banksy Mural Inside A Vending Machine To “Start Discussion”

Authentication Wars: She Bought A Chagall. Years Later Sotheby’s Suggests She Sell. Panel Says Destroy It

Whistleblower Group Calls For Detroit Institute Of Arts To Lose Accreditation

US Museum Attendance Hits A Post-Pandemic Plateau

How The Pyramid-Builders Lived

How Design Can Cause People Not To Use Public Space

Anti-Oil Protesters Glue Themselves To More Art In London Museums

The Cathedral Climbers Working On Salisbury Cathedral

Seattle To Remove Two “Culturally Inappropriate” Totem Poles From Pike Place Park

How MacIntosh’s Iconic Glasgow School Of Art Was Recreated After The Great Fire

How Exactly Do They Get Fireworks To Create Fancy Shapes In The Sky?

Paris Reveals Planned Overhaul Of Outdoor Space At Notre-Dame

WORDS

A New Study Says Literary Snobs Are Right

Libraries Are Digitizing And Something’s Being Lost

Why Do Writers Write?

The Most Unlikely Literary Rediscovery Ever? “Don Quixote” In Sanskrit

How Is It A Century-Old Book On Prose Is Still Popular?

Librarians Get Trapped, And Even Targeted, In The Culture Wars

UK Schools Delete Irish Writers In Bid To Diversify Curriculum

The “Insignificant” Details That Bring Historical Writing Alive

Women From Trinidad Like Monique Roffey Are Reinvigorating Caribbean Literature

A Great Writer/Editor Partnership: Robert Caro And Robert Gottleib

TikTok Is Now An Integral Part Of The Book Market