Students at Pleasure Ridge Park High School in Louisville have checked out 4,200 library books in the first three months of this school year, twice last year’s total, since the school district locked phones away “bell to bell.” Noah Berry, a senior, says he had never borrowed a book there before (Aging Untold).

Davi Ramos, now the Australian Ballet’s first Black principal, started ballet at 12 in Rio’s Vidigal favela. His school waived the fees, friends’ mothers helped pay his way to the Prix de Lausanne, and Lausanne brought him 12 offers (Dance Australia).

Thélyson Orélien, a Haitian-Canadian writer, has sold 35,000 copies in France of his first novel, C’était ça ou mourir, a Goncourt contender. An anonymous X account says the detector Pangram scored it 94 percent AI-written; when AFP ran the excerpts through other detectors, one called them “very probably” human and seven others disagreed. Orélien denies using AI (Euronews).

In distressed institutions news: Kanal, Brussels’ new Centre Pompidou partner museum in a former Citroën garage, gave away all 30,000 opening-weekend tickets in a day. Its director, Yves Goldstein, leaves two days after the November 28 opening, and a budget once promised at €35 million a year is headed toward €10 million by 2029 (Artforum). The Nashville Symphony says it lacks the cash to keep operating at its current level, a month after the death of Martha Ingram, who took on its $20 million mortgage in 2013 (Nashville Scene).

All of our stories below.

Davi Ramos grew up in a Rio favela and didn’t start ballet lessons until he was 12. Only two years later, he competed in Youth America Grand Prix and, subsequently, the Prix de Lausanne; he studied in London and apprenticed in Amsterdam before coming to Melbourne, drawn by AD David Hallberg. – Dance Australia

Students at Pleasure Ridge Park High School are checking out books at a rate librarians say hasn’t been seen before, coinciding with a districtwide cell phone ban that took effect at the start of the 2025 school year. – Aging Untold

MAD Architects is a team that has completed major cultural and residential projects in 16 countries and counting. Their signature is hard-to-believe designs that do all of the shouting — etched towers churning like hula-hooping women; a museum honed like an ancient stone; an opera house resembling a mountain, bursting from the ground. – The New York Times

“Deadline hears that the BBC is expected to unveil what one source described as ‘audience-facing’ closures next week, as the UK broadcaster ramps up efforts to save £500 million ($660M) over the coming years. … Speculation (is) rife that youth network BBC Three is at risk of being unplugged for a second time.” – Deadline

The changes come as the CSO prepares to welcome its new, buzzy music director, Klaus Mäkelä, who will officially step into the role next fall. – WBEZ

Too many of our finest performers and musicians feel compelled to leave Australia. Productions, concert seasons and festivals are being cancelled or scaled back. – ArtsHub

C’était ça ou mourir (It Was That Or Die) by Thélyson Orélien has sold over 35,000 copies and been hailed in France’s literary mediasphere as a revelation. On Monday, an anonymous X (Twitter) account claimed the AI-spotting software Pangram found that “this novel was written almost entirely by an artificial intelligence.” – Euronews

Many literary translators fear that if machine-assisted translation becomes the norm in book publishing, it could fundamentally change the nature of their profession. – Publishers Weekly

With an 11 am PT virtual hearing before Judge Martinez-Olguin widely viewed as a rubber stamping of the September 21 antitrust settlement and hence the mega-merger itself, the granting of Block the Merger’s move makes it almost certain the deal won’t be formally approved today. – Deadline

At least for now, then, robots legally are things, not persons. But neither category quite fits. Instead, robots are outlaws: they lie outside the protection of the law, and their actions are not answerable to it. – The New Yorker

When Kim and Jon Shirley visited Alexander Calder’s Mountains and Clouds (1976/1986) in the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building, the stabile portion of the sculpture (the mountains) was there, but the mobile part (clouds) had been removed due to structural damage. Ten years and $10 million later, the clouds are back. – ARTnews

Today, bibliotherapy takes many different forms, from literature courses run for prison inmates to reading circles for elderly people suffering from dementia. Sometimes it can simply mean one-on-one or group sessions for “lapsed” readers who want to find their way back to an enjoyment of books.  – The New Yorker

The decades-long effort got its final push with the bipartisan efforts of Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, a stalwart of the civil rights movement, and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; the bill establishing the museum was signed by President George W. Bush in 2003. – The Smithsonian

“These promises are extremely, exquisitely hard to enforce,” said Alvaro Bedoya, an antitrust lawyer, likening Paramount’s concessions to a pinkie promise. If Paramount fell short of its spending commitments, for instance, attorneys general would need to rely on the company’s own data to prove it, Bedoya said. – The Wall Street Journal

“Over the last three decades, a growing cohort of theater artists across Latin America have … used journalism, documentary and memoir to explore the boundaries between fact and fiction while confronting their region’s troubled past and turbulent present in a genre known as Theater of the Real.” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine

“Yves Goldstein will leave (the new contemporary art museum) two days after its opening on November 28. He has spent a decade leading Kanal through the planning and renovation of its home in a massive Art Deco building, which formerly housed a Citroën garage, and navigating a partnership with the Centre Pompidou.” – Artforum

“The organisation has reported … 8.3 million streams across BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds. Proms content generated 65.8 million views across BBC social media platforms. … The Last Night of the Proms achieved 505,000 live plays, up 12% on 2025’s figure of 450,000, and in total 10.2 million users watched Proms broadcasts on television.” – Gramophone

“The landmark New York prosecution began nearly a decade ago with multiple accusers, but after retrials, mistrials, acquittals and appeals, it was whittled to a single victim: Miriam Haley, who … had worked briefly on the Weinstein-produced reality series Project Runway.” – AP

What with the ongoing battle over the Kennedy Center, Trump administration staffers are reportedly trying to find other spots to which his name could be added without legal wrangling. An MS NOW report said that among the places aides considered was the site of Lincoln’s assassination, a suggestion Trump himself angrily denies. – AlterNet

“Executive Director Matt Floca cited recent studies of roofing damage he says could harm pedestrians in a status report filed Wednesday evening. … Floca has said the current shutdown is separate from the board’s decision” to close indefinitely, which requires the court’s approval, “and was prompted by immediate safety concerns.” – The Washington Post (MSN)

Money troubles aren’t new to the orchestra, but in the wake of the recent death of longtime benefactor Martha Ingram, “the organization does not have sufficient cash on hand to sustain operations at its current level. The Symphony’s executive committee is developing a restructuring plan designed to stabilize the organization.” – Nashville Scene

The “Dancehouse” will be part of the WestK Performing Arts Centre, opening next year in the West Kowloon Cultural District. The theater will be the new home of Hong Kong Ballet, which will be able to increase the length of its season. – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)