This is WESA Arts, a weekly newsletter by Bill O’Driscoll providing in-depth reporting about the Pittsburgh area art scene. Sign up here to get it every Wednesday afternoon. More than 100 area artists and arts groups received a holiday present last week. And it was the kind of gift that’s always the right size: cash. Two…

Artpark & Company has been awarded a $30,000 grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to support the nonprofit arts and culture sector. Through New York state’s continued investment in arts and culture, NYSCA has awarded more than $80 million since the spring to more than 1,500 artists and organizations across…

A fake Drake/Weeknd mash-up is not a threat to our species’s culture. It’s a warning: We can’t let our imaginations shrink to machine size. This was the year — ask your stockbroker, or the disgraced management of Sports Illustrated — that artificial intelligence went from a dreamy projection to an ambient menace and perpetual sales…

The worlds of art, music, literature, film and more lost some of their most notable giants and geniuses in 2023. Here are just a few of the actors, writers, producers, artists and musicians who died in the past year, listed chronologically below by the dates of their deaths. Free-spirited icon of American rock David Crosby…

This past year, Denver was thrust into the spotlight by a reality show (something we never asked for or wanted, but here we are), with ten Mile High residents marrying total strangers. Aside from those Bachelor rejects, we welcomed some real star power, too, with singer-songwriter Ciara and her husband, Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson, opening a…

Colorado has its tenth poet laureate: Andrea Gibson, who took on the two-year role in September after being appointed by Governor Jared Polis. “Andrea Gibson is an inspiring Colorado artist. Colorado’s poet laureate is an ambassador of the arts and someone who can truly share their talents while inspiring the artistic abilities within ourselves,” Polis said…

As the year draws to a close, we pause to take a look back at the artistic and cultural events that graced Monterey County’s galleries, stages, museums and concert halls in 2023. Below is a selection of the most interesting events, according to the Weekly. Looking back, it’s impressive how much art, music and literature Monterey…

Juneau’s first amateur porn film festival, first crowning of a Miss Gay Alaska America and a bunch of Bigfoot fans arriving on a boat didn’t make the cut. Taking their places in the spotlight, respectively, were an international Indigenous music festival, a part-time local resident crowned Mr. Gay World and a 47-month Polynesian canoe voyage.…

<a href="https://media1.inlander.com/inlander/imager/u/original/27188856/culture2-1-46ea3ac4fbf2df31.jpg" rel="contentImg_gal-27188863" title="Of course 2023 was the year of Barbie. – Young Kwak" data-caption="Of course 2023 was the year of Barbie.   Young Kwak” class=”uk-display-block uk-position-relative uk-visible-toggle”> click to enlarge Young Kwak Of course 2023 was the year of Barbie. As yet another year comes to a close and we reflect on the past and…

Google Arts & Culture released “Say What You See “in November as a fun little game that lets you learn about the “art of image prompting” and makes for good practice. This Google Arts & Culture experiment shows an AI-generated image on the left, and you have to write a prompt, up to 120 characters,…