Short novels are finally getting their due
Plus, the Russian ballet companies claiming to be Ukrainian.
Hello. Since the last time we spoke, I:
Saw a great selection of pieces performed by Ailey II. Few dance companies achieve such perfected unison while performing with such agility as Ailey—it is always worth seeing them. Your next chance (if you’re in New York) is when they come to BAM in June.
Mostly poured my energy into redecorating my bedroom. Also, I hired a TaskRabbit to hang a chandelier I bought on Facebook Marketplace so now I kind of live in Versailles?
Now, the news.
Unfortunately we do have more fascism in the United States to discuss. On Thursday, Trump released yet another executive order; this one, on “restoring truth and sanity to American history” targets the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, which receives a little less than two-thirds of its more than $1B annual budget from federal funding. Trump’s order claims that, over the past decade, a “revisionist history” rewrote the American legacy as one that is “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.” He accuses the Smithsonian, which operates 21 museums and galleries, as having a “divisive, race-centered ideology.”
As such, he ordered Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents—the Congressional, bipartisan group that governs the institution—to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian, “prohibit expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy,” and exclude any mention of trans women from the forthcoming American Women’s History Museum. He also ordered the Secretary of the Interior to potentially restore monuments and memorials that had been taken down post-2020 allegedly “to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.”
Well that’s not good! Today, the American Historical Association, alongside 15 other signatories, released a statement defending historians in light of this executive order. It reads, in part:
Patriotic history celebrates our nation’s many great achievements. It also helps us grapple with the less grand and more painful parts of our history. Both are part of a shared past that is fundamentally American. We learn from the past to inform how we can best shape our future. By providing a history with the integrity necessary to enable all Americans to be all they can possibly be, the Smithsonian is fulfilling its duty to all of us.
It should go without saying that the kind of historical policing this executive order attempts is nothing short of fascistic, and it’s also in line with so moves we’ve seen thus far from this administration, like the executive order pushing for Neoclassical federal buildings and the demand for National Endowment of the Arts grantees to promote patriotism. “It is a five-alarm fire for public history, science and education in America,” University of Massachusetts Amherst history professor Samuel Redman told The Guardian. On Friday, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch sent an email to staff saying that the institution would continue to employ internal review processes, and that its work would be “shaped by the best scholarship, free of partisanship, to help the American public better understand the nation's history, challenges and triumphs,” NPR confirmed.
Last week, the Kennedy Center also notified employees in its Social Impact division that their work would be discontinued. As we’ve previously discussed, much of the Center’s Social Impact work focused on arts access, organizing more than 1,500 free performances annually that reached more than 24,000 people and involved nearly 1,700 artists. “Our work in Social Impact was to widen our cultural radius and to imagine that inspiration itself was a constitutional right afforded to ALL of this nation's people,” artistic director of Social Impact, Marc Bamuthi Joseph—who was one of seven employees let go—told NPR.
In two nights of performances at the Kennedy Center, this weekend, the rock band Guster showed solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community through small lyric changes. It also brought on cast members from “Finn”— a kid-friendly musical all about inclusivity, whose Kennedy Center-commissioned tour was canceled around the time of Trump’s takeover, allegedly for financial reasons. One of the show’s creators, Michael Kooman, who also joined the cast on state with Guster, previously told the Washington Post, that while the show was not explicitly about the LGBTQ+ community, it could certainly be read as a metaphor for the queer experience.
For the 2025-2026 season, the Washington National Opera and National Symphony Orchestra—both of which are based at the Kennedy Center—will continue generally as planned. That’s excepting one big change: the opera “Fellow Travelers,” which is about two gay men working for the government in the 1950s, was withdrawn from the performance season by its creators Gregory Spears and Greg Pierce out of concern after Trump’s takeover, the New York Times reported.
Last week we heard that Trump and DOGE were trying to cut down the Institute of Museum and Library Services; however, the agency’s advisory board sent a letter to its newly appointed acting director, Keith Sonderling, saying that many of its programs could not be eliminated except by act of Congress, the NYT reported.
The fate of much art that is housed in the General Services Administration’s 1,500 some-odd buildings is also up in the air, Vanity Fair reported. Trump-appointed acting director Stephen Ehikian—a B2B SaaS entrepreneur with no art or governmental background—dismissed the three dozen staffers of the Center for Fine Arts at the GSA, which oversees more than 26,000 artworks that the U.S. government has curated, preserved, and commissioned over the past several decades, since John F. Kennedy’s administration introduced the Fine Arts in New Federal Buildings program in 1963. This includes artworks by Alex Katz, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer, Maya Lin, and more. The GSA, as a whole, is undergoing extensive DOGE cuts, which leads some, like Julie Trébault, the director of the international nonprofit Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), to believe that it’s likely the government will sell off the collection, and fast. Here’s a great detail from the VF story on ARC: “The international group helps protect creative freedom in autocratic-leaning states and other at-risk countries; it has recently expanded its presence in the United States.” Comforting!
Trump has demonstrated antipathy toward modern and contemporary art for a long time. Another great detail: Decades ago, Andy Warhol met with Trump with the idea to make a series of art starring Trump Tower, but Trump declined to buy the art, leading Warhol, at the time, to call Trump “cheap.”
Another piece of art that Trump really doesn’t like is the portrait of him in the Colorado State Capitol by artist Sarah Boardman, which does lean into the buccal fat without going full Botero. For whatever reason, he recently complained about the portrait—which was first unveiled in 2018—on Truth Social. It has since been removed from public view.
In better news, today, New York City Ballet announced its 2025-2026 season. Some highlights include: a full production of The Sleeping Beauty and new works by Justin Peck, Alexei Ratmansky, and Tiler Peck (no relation to Justin). Coppélia will be back in the spring, and principal dancer Megan Fairchild will retire after a final performance in the lead role of Swanhilda in that show. Serenade in the winter will also be a must-see. My absolute favorite Peck piece, Everywhere We Go—set to an original score by Sufjan Stevens—will also return in the winter. I am imminently aging out of City Ballet’s $30 for 30 program. Maybe you aren’t, in which case you should sign up before the company is back in late April.
Ratmansky, who grew up in Kyiv, is a very vocal proponent against the Russia-Ukraine War. Earlier this month, he shared on Instagram that the Bolshoi—the renowned Moscow-based company—was illegally reviving a production of one of his ballets, Bright Stream. “…know this,” Ratmansky wrote, addressing the Bolshoi dancers, “every step you take in this ballet is stolen. And every applause you receive will echo with hypocrisy.”
Swedish news publication SVT Nyheter also reported that a ballet company called Ballet of Ukraine, which recently performed in several Swedish cities, is actually Russian, thanks to a tip from an anonymous blogger. The company’s Kyiv address is fake, and payments for six of the performances were traced to a a Swiss AI company owned by a Russian entrepreneur. This has happened at least twice before; the Grand Ukrainian Ballet was discovered to have “weak” ties to Ukraine, and The Heritage Ballet was discovered to have links to the Russian state. Lana Roxy, press officer at Kyiv’s National Opera told the Swedish publication that it is hard to keep track of the many ballet companies claiming Ukrainian heritage: “They make money off our misery.”
Lincoln Center is nearing the end of its 2024-2025 Collider Fellowship, an eight-month residency program for six artists “exploring how technology can enhance and deepen in-person performing arts experiences.” It is, quite simply, the intersection of art and technology, if you will. This class of fellows will wrap up their residencies in May, but last week, they showcased some of what they’ve been working on. Artists include Brandon Powers, who has been developing an interactive Twitch channel that blends live theater with the game Fortnite (which is honestly really relevant in a world where Grand Theft Hamlet exists); Celine Daemen, who is creating “musical dreamscapes” that combine VR, AR, and opera; Kengchakaj Kengkarnka, who is modernizing Thailand’s tradition of gong ensembles with synthesizers, found objects, and coding; Angélica Negrón, who is writing a “cinematic lip sync opera” for drag queens, which she aims to turn into an interactive video installation and live performance; Andrew Schneider, who is developing “a large, immersive theatrical piece in a public space where the audience doesn’t know who the performers are and also becomes part of the performance” (fun); and Annie Saunders, who is creating a site-specific, physical and audio installation for intentional rest.
Also cool: the Dutch National Opera is committing to moving closer to carbon neutrality by revisiting its dining options (offering only vegetarian food, eliminating plastic), reconsidering opera set materials (opting for endlessly recyclable wood, choosing steel, which is more sustainable than aluminum), and creating a database of props and costumes to encourage reuse, the New York Times reported.
The Museum of Modern Art has hired Christophe Cherix as its next director; Cherix has been the museum’s chief curator of drawings and prints since 2013. ArtNews points out that with this appointment, all of MoMA’s directors in its history have been white men! That unfortunate fact aside, the art market currently reflects an appetite for printed work; The Art Newspaper reported that ticket sales and registrations for the VIP preview of the IFPDA Print Fair and the launch of the Brooklyn Fine Art Print Fair suggest a growing interest in this medium, especially among a younger demographic. It makes sense: prints are a far more affordable entry point than a painting or even a sculpture, especially in this economy.
Musicians in the U.K., including Annie Lennox, Sir Elton John, Stormzy, and Harry Styles, have signed an open letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer asking for a £250M music education package for state schools, which educate 93% of the country’s children and saw a 21% decline in their music budgets from 2014 to 2019.
Just Stop Oil—the activist group you know for its museum protests—have said that it will end its demonstrations in the U.K., as the country has finally adopted a law banning new oil and gas projects that haven’t already been approved, for which the group had long been advocating, ArtNews reported.
New Bizet just dropped. The Carmen composer, who died in 1875, debuted a world premiere of some of his early melodies and an opera, at the Festival Georges Bizet in France, Le Monde reported. The event commemorated the 150 anniversary of his death.
I strongly feel that many books are too long. Luckily, we are starting to see a new acceptance of shorter books; eight of the 13 titles on the International Booker longlist, The Times reports, are under 200 pages long. Why have long books dominated for so long? For one, publishers and book retailers historically have been anti-novella for pricing reasons. But also, independent presses and publishers of translated literature have been bringing forth many inventive shorter novels. “Shorter books are more likely to be risk-taking or challenging, so there’s more likelihood that they’ll come from a press happy to take risks and challenge,” says indie bookseller Tom Robinson.
A decidedly not-short book that people are reading in droves is Lonesome Dove, the Pulitzer-winning 1985 western that clocks in at 858 pages, Esquire reports. Also, everyone on Substack is still reading Middlemarch.
InStyle reports that singles are increasingly looking for love in bookstores at dating-focused events. I wonder if anyone told them how quickly the tickets for women looking to date men tend to sell out for these events… A.J. Jacono, co-founder of the Soho bookshop/wine bar/coffee shop Bibliotheque gave advice for people for people looking for love: “Read in public. Do it more. Bring a book anywhere.” Sweet baby boy…if that worked I’d already have several marriage proposals.
If that doesn’t work, you can aways enjoy your free time combing through the archives of another bookish couple. Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne’s 336-box archive can now be perused by anyone with an NYPL card.
Tommy Orange and Kaveh Akbar seem to be having fun on their joint book tour for Wandering Stars and Martyr! This is a fun little interview in Vanity Fair, but I especially appreciated reading this sentiment from Akbar: “It makes sense that a fascistic regime would try to erode education and access to the arts, because education and access to the arts teaches one critical thinking, and an uneducated electorate is more compliant, is more able to be convinced to vote against their own best interests. So it’s a perfectly rational set of plays that they’re making from their perspective. But you know—there’s a pretty long history of art persisting despite, and because of, such fascistic interventions, and I have faith that it will continue to.” ▲