You should probably watch this
Plus, Berlin's culture minister calls it quits.
Hello. It is my birthday so this is a short newsletter today. I plan to go to the Frick, drop by the Met if I have time to catch the Caspar David Friedrich exhibit, and see New York City Ballet perform my favorite, Glass Pieces.
If you want to get me anything, you can recommend this newsletter to a friend who you think would enjoy it.
Since we last spoke, I:
Saw the Metropolitan Opera perform a new production of Salome. This is one of my favorite things I’ve seen at the Met lately—I recommend going. Performances run through May 24.
Got halfway through Étoile. (I am enjoying it, I just haven’t had time to finish.) During the first episode, I said aloud, “Who is this for?” because the show is, in fact, so particularly insider-y for fans of New York City Ballet, which means it is for me. We first spoke about the show back in March.
Got an email that means I have officially aged out of New York City Ballet’s $30 for 30 tickets, which means today is actually the worst day of my life. I have been thinking a lot about the issues of ticket affordability in the arts and also how so many of these activities are isolating and how these non-profit arts organizations do need bigger audiences but so many of their young patrons programs are financially accessible. All this to say is I had an idea. Maybe it will come to fruition in a few weeks.
Now, the news. Any typos are intentional.
The New York Times profiled New York City Ballet principal dancer Roman Mejia (who is engaged to and frequently partners fellow principal Tiler Peck) as he performed the titular role in Balanchine’s Apollo. For the first time this season. Apollo is a really special ballet; it’s Balanchine’s oldest, choreographed for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1928, though Balanchine continued to revise it through his life. It’s set to music by Stravinsky and has many striking Neo Classical elements. Here’s a 1965 performance with Jacques d'Amboise, Suzanne Farrell, Gloria Govrin, and Patricia Neary. You should probably watch this. It will be good for you.
Berlin’s top culture official, Joe Chialo—who was behind the major arts cuts last year—resigned last week, in response to criticism about those cut. While he defended the cuts that he made, he says he opposes additional cuts being planned that could “lead to the imminent closure of nationally known cultural institutions.”
In France, culture minister Rachida Dati has proposed a French National Trust inspired by the U.K.’s National Trust, which mobilizes volunteers to protect the country’s monuments, historic sites, and landscape. It is the largest landowner in the country and has 12,000 employees.
Both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are reimagining their cultural outputs. The former has plans to open a privately funded contemporary culture center and an arts museum in its biggest city, Almaty. The museum will be “central Asia’s first private museum dedicated exclusively to regional Modern and contemporary art,” The Art Newspaper reported. The Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation hosted a two-day summit to “explore how arts, cultural heritage, and design can support environmental regeneration” and community-building in the area around the Aral Sea, ArtNews reported.
Trump is trying to eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services according to his 2026 budget proposal. On Friday night, arts organizations around the country reported that they received notice their NEA grants were being canceled, the New York Times reported. As the NEH has also been canceling grants, the Mellon Foundation launched a $15 million emergency fund for state humanities councils. The Trump administration is also trying to get rid of PBS and NPR’s funding.
At the Kennedy Center, the Washington National Opera debuted an opera about Steve Jobs. The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs runs through May 10. The Detroit Opera, meanwhile, will open The Central Park Five this week, in which Trump himself is a character. The Detroit Opera, luckily, got a $40,000 federal grant for the production before the NEA started canceling those grants.
Translations of pre-modern Chinese literature are on the rise thanks to Oxford University press’s Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature, the Los Angeles Review of Books reports.
San Francisco Ballet announced its 2025/2026 season, which includes that Onegin we already talked about, as well as a full evening of works by William Forsythe, a full Balanchine program, classics La Sylphide and Don Quixote, and Aszure Barton and Floating Points’ Mere Mortals, which reimagines “the ancient tale of Pandora’s Jar through the lens of artificial intelligence with a fully immersive sensory experience.”
I really want to know what Stormzy has in the works for the National Theatre. ▲
i am also grieving the impending loss of access to the 30 under 30 program. i have only 3 more months :(