Art News from Around the World

Visual Arts Fri, 20 Jun 2025 17:06 Why Is Velázquez’s “Las Meninas” So Important? Because Of The Tricks It Plays On You. “A deconstruction of the relationship between viewer and viewed, depiction and depicted, Las Meninas comprises a nesting doll of paradoxes that play with pictorial space to ask, Just what is it you think you’re looking at?” – ARTnewsSource: Visual Arts Fri, 20 Jun 2025 16:46 GAO Agency Finds That Trump Administration Withholding Of Library And Museum Funding Breaks Law The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a decision on Monday finding that the Trump administration‘s withholding of funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), appropriated by Congress, is in violation of the law. – ARTnewsSource: Visual Arts Fri, 20 Jun 2025 15:31 Colorado Museums Brace For Program Cancellations Institutions across Colorado were awarded about $4.3 million in IMLS grants, most of which require matching funds from the museum or library, for the current fiscal year. – Colorado NewslineSource: Visual Arts Fri, 20 Jun 2025 13:06 One Of Gaudí’s Most Famous Barcelona Houses Has Its Rear Façade Restored “In a project Casa Batlló has described as a ‘remarkable rediscovery,’ the back façade has been returned to its original state following a years-long €3.5 million ($4 million) initiative. … This was the first comprehensive attention that has been paid to the building’s rear in more than a century.” – ArtnetSource: Music Fri, 20 Jun 2025 18:50 Miss Manners Weighs In On Female Orchestra Musicians’ Concert Attire A Gentle Reader complains about the seeming informality of some all-black women’s attire on orchestral stages. Miss Manners replies, “Surely women musicians can find long black dresses or trouser suits they can wear at every concert. … Miss Manners recalls reading about a cellist who …” – UExpressSource: Music Fri, 20 Jun 2025 18:31 Explaining The ABBA Phenomenon (In Retrospect) In the wake of the nineties revival, ABBA’s music has come to seem so universal—pure, uncut, lab-grade pop, purified of any particularizing influences—that it can be hard to remember that it originated in a particular milieu, and a marginal one at that. – The New YorkerSource: Theatre Fri, 20 Jun 2025 18:02 Bringing Malaysian Shadow Puppet Theater Into The 21st Century Like its better-known counterparts in Bali and Java, the wayang kulit of Kelantan in northern Malaysia tells the stories of the Hindu epics Mahabharata and Ramayana — which is why the conservative Muslim government has suppressed it. Kelantan’s last wayang master has trained (unusually) a female puppeteer who’s updating both stories and puppets. – HyperallergicSource: Media Fri, 20 Jun 2025 17:45 “Jaws” At 50 – Why It Became Iconic Jaws has earned the “classic” epithet. It invokes certain nostalgia for cinephiles and original audiences, many of whom fondly remember their first viewing. Aside from any cultural wistfulness, however, feelings towards the film may very well be a harkening back to a pre-neoliberal era when the embers of baby-boomer optimism still smouldered. – The ConversationSource: Words Fri, 20 Jun 2025 17:31 The Long-Controversial Semi-Colon Is Falling To Neglect Abraham Lincoln was one of the punctuation mark’s supporters: “I have a great respect for the semicolon; it’s a very useful little chap,” he wrote. The American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, on the other hand, was steadfast in his derision of the semicolon. “All they do is show you’ve been to college.” – SmithsonianSource: People Fri, 20 Jun 2025 17:15 Two Years After The British Museum Thefts Were Revealed, Big Questions About The Curator At The Center Of It What might have motivated a respected professional to allegedly take such high risks for such low rewards? Why is the police investigation taking so long? How did the museum not notice the missing artefacts for so many years? And why did the thief, whoever it may be, make so little effort to cover his tracks? […]Source: Ideas Fri, 20 Jun 2025 16:30 The Loneliness Epidemic And Its Link To Technology Studies link loneliness and social isolation to increased mortality, dementia and stroke. Among adults, loneliness is linked to chronic diseases such as heart disease and obesity, and it is known to worsen job performance and commitment. – AeonSource: Words Fri, 20 Jun 2025 16:14 Seventeen Years Later, Spain’s Publishing Industry Works Itself Back To 2008 Level  Spain was especially hard hit by the 2008 financial crisis, with a housing market collapse, credit growth in real estate, a fast-shrinking GDP, unemployment reportedly hitting 27 percent, and political upheaval. In 11 years of annual growth—a 39.2-percent increase since 2014—the Spanish market has made its way back into profitability. – Publishing PerspectivesSource: Dance Fri, 20 Jun 2025 16:04 Ballet Shoe Company Faces One-Two Punch: Catastrophic Fire And High Tariffs The pointe shoe manufacturer Virtisse, based near Philadelphia, saw its entire inventory — 25,000 pairs, worth over $3 million — literally go up in smoke. Now, as it tries to get back on its feet, it faces costs 50% higher than before because of the Trump administration’s tariff policy. – MarketplaceSource: Issues Fri, 20 Jun 2025 15:44 The Festival That Puts a Scientist In Every Pub The Roving Scientist Bar thus became a flagship program of the Beaker Street Festival, this year returning to Hope & Anchor, Australia’s oldest continuously licensed pub. Over 150 Australian scientists will be stationed at a table over the course of three days (13-16 August), with experts on topics from Gg(fear of sharks) to dark matter. […]Source: Music Fri, 20 Jun 2025 15:15 Neuroscientist: Music Involves Every Cognitive Ability We Have “The interesting thing about music is that it touches memory, perception, motor skills, emotions, and reading. It touches everything.” – El PaisSource: Words Fri, 20 Jun 2025 15:03 The Reason American Small-Town Newspapers Are Closing Isn’t Lack Of Money As the only outlet covering their communities, these papers still have an audience willing to pay for them, and many of them are profitable. What they don’t have is anyone to take over when the publisher gets sick, dies, or is simply desperate to retire. – Columbia Journalism ReviewSource: People Fri, 20 Jun 2025 14:31 Journalist William Langewiesche, “Master Of The White-Knuckle Narrative,” Has Died At 70 “A globe-trotting correspondent for The Atlantic, Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine, … (he) worked as a commercial pilot before becoming one of the most acclaimed magazine writers of his generation, traveling around the world to report on plane crashes, shipwrecks, nuclear proliferation and war.” – The Washington Post (MSN)Source: Media Fri, 20 Jun 2025 14:05 “Golden Girls” Gossip: Bea Arthur And Betty White Despised Each Other Said co-producer Marsha Posner Williams, “When that red light was on, there were no more professional people than those women, but when the red light was off, those two couldn’t warm up to each other if they were cremated together.” (Arthur regularly used the c-word to refer to White.) – The Hollywood ReporterSource: Theatre Fri, 20 Jun 2025 13:32 France’s Most Notorious Rape Trial Is Put Onstage Only Six Months After It Ended At the Vienna Festwochen, director Milo Rau and dramaturg Servane Dècle presented The Pelicot Trial, a seven-hour reading of excerpts from the courtroom proceedings, interviews, and commentary about the trial of Dominique Pelicot dor drugging his wife, Gisèle, and allowing dozens of men to rape her while he watched. – The New York TimesSource: Music Fri, 20 Jun 2025 12:34 Curtis Institute Raises Nearly $200 Million To Keep Tuition Free “’What will it take to keep Curtis tuition-free?’ asked Curtis president Roberto Díaz in 2016, when the Institute was still in the early days of a major fundraising campaign. Now the small music conservatory has answered, raising nearly $200 million for endowment, musical instruments, programs, and another building.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)Source: