Met Museum Now Will Require Non-NYC Residents To Pay Admission

The change reflects the Met’s efforts to establish a reliable, annual revenue stream after a period of financial turbulence and leadership turmoil, particularly given what the Met describes as a sharp decline in people willing to pay the current “suggested” admission price, also $25. But the move could provoke objections from suburbanites and tourists as well as outcry from those who believe a taxpayer funded institution should be free to the public.

Critics: Met Museum’s New Admission Policy Is A Mistake

“I worry that the Met’s plan is classist, and nativist. It divides people into categories — rich and poor, native and foreign — which is exactly what this country does not need right now. I think this is tied to the abstract way wealth is accrued these days. In the last Gilded Age the rich had a much more literal sense of the suffering their fortunes were built on and a greater need to give back.”

We Need To Distinguish Between Creative “Human” Music And That Made By Machines

A distinction is necessary here between creative ‘composing’ and ‘compositing’. Artificial Intelligence generativity (so-called “creativity”) is based on a compositing process; it’s basically all just recombinations of pre-existing data. While it is clear that the human process of creativity lies on a continuum between compositing and composing, a salient aspect of human creativity involves the creation of new ‘data’ rather than the novel recombination of prior ideas.

Las Vegas Needs A Museum (It Doesn’t Have One)

“Art museums are an essential part of a city’s character. Las Vegas doesn’t have a museum that could stand alongside a MoMA or a Broad, and we need one. Cynics like to hold up the early-2000s failure of the Venetian’s two Guggenheim spaces as evidence that Vegas can’t support an art museum, but could Vegas have supported an NHL team back then? There are 2 million people now living in this Valley, and they’ve proven that they don’t want to travel for the things LA can take for granted. It’s art museum time.”

Information (As Opposed To Opinion) Is Fundamental To A Functioning Democracy

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is well known for his description of known knowns, the “things we know we know,” and the unknown unknowns, “the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” This second part is the realm of science. Exploring, searching, finding. But, as we saw numerous times in 2017, today we struggle to keep the catalogue of what we do know.

Academics Raise Concerns About Chinese Government’s Increasing Influence In Education

“In recent years the Chinese government has stepped up its crackdown on domestic dissent at the same time it continues to expand the country’s global influence. A confluence of events has China studies scholars raising concerns about whether the Chinese Communist Party is exporting its censorship regime abroad, and what the implications are for free discussion and research at universities outside China.”

Most People Believe They’re Self Aware. Research Reveals The Contrary

Our research revealed many surprising roadblocks, myths, and truths about what self-awareness is and what it takes to improve it. We’ve found that even though most people believe they are self-aware, self-awareness is a truly rare quality: We estimate that only 10%–15% of the people we studied actually fit the criteria. Three findings in particular stood out, and are helping us develop practical guidance for how leaders can learn to see themselves more clearly.

The Stage 100 For 2018: Britain’s Most Influential Theatre Folk

Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of London’s Royal Court Theatre, “has leapt from last year’s placing of 39th in the annual list, reflecting her ‘brave’ and ‘enlightened’ leadership in the face of allegations around harassment and abuses of power in the theatre industry. … In taking the number one position, Featherstone knocks commercial producer Sonia Friedman off the top of the list to third place.”

San Antonio Symphony Cancels Rest Of Season, ‘Suspends Operations’

“The Symphony Society board met late into Wednesday evening ‘to determine whether there was a path forward for the Symphony Society,’ said Board Chair Alice Viroslav in a statement issued following the meeting … ‘To be clear, this is not the end of the symphony.’ … An attempt on the part of major donors to take over the Symphony’s operations [recently] failed.”