The running news file on American cultural institutions: leadership changes, prize shortlists, grant decisions, canceled seasons and new programming. Items are short, dated and sourced. Useful for curators, publicists, grantmakers and readers who need to know what shifted in the arts this week.
Five dispatches from the culture conversation: a genre-crossing album of the year, a record Broadway season, federal arts arithmetic, a registry induction, and vinyl's long second act.
Percent-for-art laws have quietly financed American public art since 1959 by taxing construction budgets a penny on the dollar — and they fail the same way they succeed, by being invisible.
Independent bookstores have died by the thousands, organized under the American Booksellers Association, and reopened in surprising numbers — because the business model turned out to be about everything except books.
The National Endowment for the Humanities announced $75.1 million for 84 projects in January 2026 and $41.4 million for 81 more in July — a semiquincentennial spending plan for museums, archives, and scholars.
The summer 2026 museum calendar runs from a Frida Kahlo survey in Houston to 'Basquiat × Banksy' in Washington and a Pokémon fossil show in Chicago — three theories of the blockbuster, all at once.
The 79th Tony Awards nominations, announced May 5, 2026 by Uzo Aduba and Darren Criss, fill five Best Featured Actor in a Play slots with a striking mix of film transplants and stage veterans.
The Pulitzer Prizes 2026, announced May 4, 2026, gave the Fiction medal to Daniel Kraus's 'Angel Down,' the Drama prize to Bess Wohl's 'Liberation,' and the History award to Jill Lepore's constitution chronicle.
Every spring the Library of Congress names 25 recordings to the National Recording Registry — a process that begins with anyone, anywhere, typing a nomination into a website.