Good reads

Curiousity has long been hypothesised as a rational process of weighing up possible outcomes. Arianne Cohen looks at new research that suggest creativity is more closely correlated with error.

Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer is a terrible dancer, writes Gia Kourlas. Why do audiences want to keep seeing him?

East German art reflected "the repressive circumstances of its creation", The Economist reports. Exhibiting these historical works in a contemporary context casts them in a new, but no less meaningful, light.

For hundreds of years, studying the humanities was the vanguard of the elite - now it's in steep decline. Clifford Siskin and William Warner ask: if the humanities are in crisis, are they even worth keeping?

Theatre criticism is under renewed threat as The Evening Standard sheds its staff and the English National Opera withdraws tickets for critics' companions. Norman Lebrecht considers what reasonable accommodations are needed to keep criticism alive.

There has been an exodus of female arts leaders in Vancouver, writes Marsha Lederman. They describe the challenges of leading while female.

Fifty artists were asked to respond to the causes and consequences of a growing compulsive screen culture. Their works aim to wake audiences up from "our dogmatic slumbers about how the 24/7 world is changing us", Stuart Jeffries writes.

Is Brexit a step back for regional arts? Carys Stallard considers the dependence of small centres on EU funding and the likelihood of new Government subsidies.

Hettie Judah looks at the history of London's art nightclubs - platforms for new types of artistic expression that were the very definition of participatory theatre.