Art News from Around the World

Visual Arts Sun, 07 Dec 2025 17:00 Artist Imprisoned In Iran For Six Years Says Creativity, And Sewing, Kept Her Alive Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe: “They can take away the world you live in, but they can’t take away what’s happening in your mind, your imagination and your creativity. Holding on to that was how we survived.” – The Guardian (UK)Source: Visual Arts Sun, 07 Dec 2025 13:00 According To The BBC, These Are The Ten Most Iconic Gehry Buildings From Spain to France to the Czech Republic and, well, Spain again, here are the BBC’s faves. – BBCSource: Words Mon, 08 Dec 2025 06:41 Behold The “Performative Reader” Performative reading has firmly implanted itself into the popular imagination, becoming a meme for a generation of people who, by all accounts, aren’t reading a whole lot of books. – The New YorkerSource: Blogs Mon, 08 Dec 2025 05:34 The AI that has Colonized our Creativity Everyone’s talking about AI, and you’re being pestered to use it every time you open your phone. But are you aware the extent that AI has taken over how much of what you see and hear online?Source: The World Sun, 07 Dec 2025 21:14 Good Morning Today’s AJ highlights: The Kennedy Center is dissected in a report calling its atmosphere under the new administration “emptier, showier, and way more political,” detailing an aesthetic and strategic “Trumpian revamp” (Washington Post (MSN)). The financial instability of public media is also in the spotlight, with major concern over the defunding threats facing PBS Kids […]Source: Music Sun, 07 Dec 2025 21:00 It’s Just Science: Some Christmas Music Really Tanks Productivity Those who love torturing customers and co-workers alike might have to listen to the science. The fact is, Ariana Grande and Andy Williams are out. “On the other hand, Brenda Lee’s ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ emerged as the most productivity-friendly holiday track.” – Fast CompanySource: Music Sun, 07 Dec 2025 20:30 Gehry Was The Rare Architect Who Also Changed Music “The ‘Goldberg Variations’ was Gehry’s favorite work. He loved its otherworldliness and its worldliness. He loved its invitation to dance and to dream. He loved its astonishing sense of design, complex yet flowing with the ocean’s grace, its depth and its inviting surface.” – Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)Source: Issues Sun, 07 Dec 2025 20:00 The Kennedy Center Under The 47th President: Emptier, Showier, Way More Political “What is the Kennedy Center now? For one thing, it’s getting a Trumpian revamp. He ordered new marble and the repainting of the exterior columns in austere white. Portraits of the first and second couples now hang in the center’s Hall of Nations.” – Washington Post (MSN)Source: People Sun, 07 Dec 2025 19:30 Guy Cogeval, Art Historian And Curator Who Turned The Musee D’Orsay Into A Well-Traveled Blockbuster Site, Has Died At 70 “In a country with a reverential approach to its artistic heritage, the flamboyant Mr. Cogeval — ‘deceptively reserved and genuinely eccentric,’ according to Le Figaro newspaper — was a subversive figure. He was unconcerned, even pleased, by the criticism.” – The New York TimesSource: Words Sun, 07 Dec 2025 19:00 According To A Linguist Who Works At A Language App, Here Are 2025’s Most Mispronounced Words We all know that a lot of folks get the new mayor of New York’s name wrong – sometimes deliberately. And then there’s a museum in Paris that had a famous theft this year. But Denzel Washington? Really? – NPRSource: Music Sun, 07 Dec 2025 18:30 A Flash Mob Waves Ukrainian Flags As La Scala’s Grand Opening Features A Russian Opera “A dozen activists from a liberal Italian party held up Ukrainian and European flags in a quiet demonstration removed from the La Scala hubub that aimed ‘to draw attention to the defense of liberty and European democracy, threatened today by (President Vladimir) Putin’s Russia.’” – Seattle Times (AP)Source: Issues Sun, 07 Dec 2025 18:00 Dear Ted Sarandos, We Beg Of You Not To Screw This Up Please, please, please, PLEASE do not screw this up, Netflix. We want HBO to be HBO, Warner Bros. to be Warner Bros. – and we need movie theatres. Cinemas. Big screens … maybe for your movies, Ted. – Los Angeles Times (MSN)Source: Issues Sun, 07 Dec 2025 17:30 As Slop Fills Streaming And Public Media Is Defunded, What Will Happen To PBS Kids? Parents and researchers are very worried – and rightly so. – Boston GlobeSource: Ideas Sun, 07 Dec 2025 16:30 Don’t Put Hannah Arendt On A Pedestal “Nearly a year into a second Trump presidency and 50 years after Arendt’s death, she is still routinely invoked as the key to understanding our moment. It’s been a strange afterlife for an idiosyncratic thinker who believed that politics was inherently contingent and unpredictable.” – The New York TimesSource: Issues Sun, 07 Dec 2025 16:00 The Sphere May Be The Horrifying Future Of Entertainment For All Of Us “There is no escape in the Sphere. The walls are screens. The ceilings are screens. The floor, swooping underneath you at an impossible angle, is a screen, too.” – SlateSource: Media Sun, 07 Dec 2025 15:30 Mad Men’s Special Effects Foreman Has Some Things To Say About The Events Of Recent Days Such events being HBO’s Mad Men remaster that showed a little too much. “We always tried to camouflage ourselves as much as possible, but these days they tend to just say ‘we’ll erase it in post.’ Only this time, apparently they didn’t erase us.” – The Verge (Archive Today)Source: The World Sun, 07 Dec 2025 15:00 Performance Professionals Are Learning From Toddlers “Some artists are … making very young children a part of the choreographic process, or creating music designed to get them moving. They’re considering why these tiny dancers bring us such joy, and what lessons they might have for grown-ups.” – The New York TimesSource: Music Sun, 07 Dec 2025 14:30 Four European Countries Boycott Eurovision Over Israel’s Participation Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, and the Netherlands have all withdrawn from the 2026 competition. The Dutch broadcaster: “After weighing all perspectives, Avrotros concludes that, under the current circumstances, participation cannot be reconciled with the public values that are fundamental to our organisation.” – The Guardian (UK)Source: Words Sun, 07 Dec 2025 14:00 What Changed About Hamnet Between Page And Screen The book is not only made up of words but also concerns words. The author, who co-wrote the screenplay: “To make a 400-page novel into a 100-page script, there’s a lot of stripping back.” But then they had to add in more Shakespeare. – The New York TimesSource: People Sun, 07 Dec 2025 13:30 This Oscar Winner Has Been In The Business For More Than Six Decades Youn Yuh-jung, Oscar winner for Minari, doesn’t want to be seen as an icon, however. “In Korea, they usually say, ‘Is there any message for the younger generation?’ So I usually say, I’m not the Pope, I don’t have any message.” – VarietySource: