ArtsJournal Classic

AJ Four Ways: Text Only (by date) | headlines only

DANCE

    IDEAS

    ISSUES

    • Met Museum Calls Off John Galliano Costume Institute Show

      “The Metropolitan Museum of Art is canceling its planned exhibit honoring British designer John Galliano, which had led to severe backlash in the Jewish community and beyond because of the designer’s past antisemitic and racist statements.” – AP

    • Like It Or Not, Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms Changed Visual Art

      “She made more than 20 variants of her mirrored chambers, which use light, sculpture and reflection to create a kind of 360-degree celestial infinity. They have traveled around the world and reached enormous popularity, forever changing the types of exhibits that are staged and the way the public engages with them.” – CNN (Yahoo!)

    • Rotterdam’s Major Art Museum Caught Up In Alleged Municipal Corruption Scheme

      “Two municipal employees in the Dutch city of Rotterdam have been dismissed following an investigation into alleged corruption involving construction contracts. They include work connected to asbestos removal at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, one of the country’s most important museums.” – ARTnews

    • Controversy Over Peter Thiel’s Private Viewing Of Bayeux Tapestry

      While the exhibition of the massive medieval embroidery at the British Museum hasn’t yet opened to the public, the right-wing tech billionaire was hosted by the museum’s director of development for a private viewing — for which he is reported to have made no donation — on August 18. – The Guardian

    • The Ridiculous Claims For Trump’s Ballroom

      The design is rapidly descending into parody—even as Sauer told the court it has been built so solidly that it cannot be demolished, should the court (correctly) so rule. Just like the “unsinkable” Titanic. The ridiculous grand stair from nowhere to nowhere has reappeared on the prominent elevation facing President’s Park. – Architecture and the City

    MEDIA

    • How Did Brooklyn’s Skyline Go So Wrong?

      Two decades ago, Downtown Brooklyn was well connected but underpopulated, a combination that drew armies of fresh college graduates, quintupling the population. It’s hard to believe how thoroughly and quickly the skyline has been remade in that time—and how shoddily. – Curbed

    • City Audit Of Financially Troubled San Francisco Arts Center Is Complete

      Calls for an audit of the African-American Arts and Culture Complex came after the nonprofit was consistently late with required reports on the spending of millions in city grant money. The audit found no misuse of funds but identified shortcomings with both the AAACC and the San Francisco Arts Commission. – San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)

    • What Happens When American Universities Try To Shrink Their Way To Profitability

      What’s happening to the New School is an increasingly common story across all of higher education, hit by a perfect storm of financial and political pressures. Well-paid bosses, touting fiscal crises, seek to fire their way to profitability. – Dissent

    • Report: Women In UK Arts Say Discrimination Is Rampant

      Nearly all (95%) women working in the arts thought gender inequality persisted, while three-quarters (75%) reported experiencing unconscious bias or sexism, according to a survey of 76 arts professionals. – The Guardian

    • New York’s Arts Ed Programs Are A Powerhouse For The City

      Across the city, community-based arts education organizations employ thousands of music educators, teaching artists, arts therapists, accompanists and administrators — together, one of the city’s largest employers of working artists. New York’s real competitive advantage is the ability to attract and retain creative talent. But artists need reliable employment, benefits, professional networks and room to grow. – Crain’s New York

    MUSIC

    • The Long-Growing Audiobook Market Is Turning Into A Bubble

      “(The) gap between the rapid expansion in available titles and slowing revenue growth is creating new pressure across the industry. … More titles are competing for a finite amount of listening time, raising the value of established audiences and making it harder for individual projects to break through.” – TheWrap (MSN)

    • What — Or Who — Persuades You To Buy That Particular Book?

      “The reality is that our reading choices are directed and massaged at every turn. … And who are the persuaders? They’re the booksellers, the supermarket stock buyers, the publishing houses and their ranks of marketers and publicists. And, more recently, persuasion often comes from (social media). How is all this changing publishing?” – The Guardian

    • Yayoi Kusama Also Had A Career As A Serious Author

      “(She) produc(ed) 12 novels, four volumes of poetry, one collection of short stories, and an autobiography between 1977 and 2002. … Kusama’s novels are dark, violent, and, in many cases, clearly informed by her decade in New York, no matter how emphatically she entreated readers to interpret them otherwise.” – Artnet

    • Google Releases An AI Tool For Books That Publishers Actually Like

      “Expert Intelligence (is) a feature that allows someone reading an e-book purchased on Google Play’s e-bookstore to interact with the title — by asking questions about the book, taking a quiz after reading it, or producing an infographic of key data.” And it respects copyright. – Publishers Weekly

    • AI Paul Gigot Responds To WSJ Opinion Page Editor Paul Gigot

      “I have been thinking about this for close to 20 minutes, and I have concluded that human writing is finished.” – The Atlantic

    PEOPLE

    PEOPLE

    THEATRE

      VISUAL

      • What I Learned From China’s Robot Games

        For the first hour or so, I found the Robot Games enthralling. What can robots already do, and where do they still fall short? Which robot will manage to crawl under an obstacle, and which will pitifully get stuck? But after a while, I suddenly realized that I had grown deeply bored. – Yascha Mounk

      • The Fake Experts That AI Keeps Citing

        The authors don’t actually exist, but are instead names that large language models repeatedly produce when tasked with generating experts in certain fields. – 404 Media

      • How Social Media Changed The Ways We Remember

        There were ups and downs in the stories I saw people telling, but the trajectory I observed most frequently was an upward one. Growth, expansion, improvement, overcoming. Vacations as burnishments to the image. Illnesses as stress tests, ways of ultimately proving fitness. – The Walrus

      • Why Dictators Fear “Common Knowledge”

        The difference between private knowledge, even when widely shared, and common knowledge is not a mere logical nicety. It can unify knowers in coordinated action and sometimes explode a social status quo. – Persuasion

      • The Very Definition Of Kitsch

        In one moment, you see children playing on the grass, and you are genuinely moved. In the second moment, you see the children playing, and you think how nice it would be to be moved. The latter is the substance of kitsch. – 3 Quarks Daily

      WORDS