In The New Economy - MFAs Trump MBAs? "Is art school the next B-school? Hardly, though artists often possess the skills and temperament that business leaders regularly say are in short supply: creativity, resiliency, flexibility, high tolerance for risk and ambiguity, as well as the courage to fail."

Fast Company 05/22/13

email this story | Posted 05/24/13@06:38AM

What's Really At The Root Of The Culture Wars? Onanism Hugo Schwyzer: "The questions that self-pleasure raises are foundational: to whom do our bodies belong? What is sex for? Tell me how you really feel about masturbation, and I can more or less predict how you'll feel about the more frequently debated 'sex war' issues."

The Atlantic 05/22/13

email this story | Posted 05/24/13@12:55AM

Why Teens Are Turning Off Facebook "The report cites teens' dislike for over-sharing and stressful "drama" on the social network. Teens also don't like the fact that more and more adults are joining Facebook, although Pew found that 7 in 10 teens are Facebook friends with their parents."

Mashable 05/22/13

email this story | Posted 05/23/13@08:28AM

An E-Book Education Revolution In Poorest Countries "Is there another way to provide affordable education to poor people on a giant scale Bridge is betting that there is -- in fact, its business and academic models are based on scale."

The New york Times 05/23/13

email this story | Posted 05/23/13@08:24AM

The World's Largest Youth Arts Festival Is Beginning - But Did Anyone Tell The Target Audience? The Come Out Festival, which opens this week, has been taking place in Adelaide, Australia for four decades. But when Shona Benson asked around the city, she got fond-but-vague memories from adults and blank stares from teenagers (who showed interest once she filled them in, and obvious tie-ins in the national media have been going unmade. What gives?

Limelight (Australia) 05/22/13

email this story | Posted 05/23/13@12:53AM

Teens And The Privacy Paradox (It's Complicated) "So what explains the privacy paradox? Teens care about privacy in a social context, not a big data context. That teens are fleeing Facebook is illustrative of the phenomenon."

Pacific Standard 05/21/13

email this story | Posted 05/22/13@05:34AM

Lincoln Center Sued Over Public Access To Park "A lawsuit has been filed against New York City and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts accusing them of limiting public access to Damrosch Park by using it for commercial purposes, including Fashion Week, for as many as 10 months of the year."

The New York Times 05/21/13

email this story | Posted 05/22/13@12:56AM

UK's National Lottery Contributed £390 Million To Arts In 2012 A record-breaking annual spend of almost £7 billion on the National Lottery's portfolio of games saw donations to the arts growing to £390 million in the year to the end of March.

The Stage 05/22/13

email this story | Posted 05/21/13@10:00AM

The Manuscripts Of Timbuktu: A Post-Occupation Progress Report "An unintended consequence of the Islamist occupation of the city has been a renewed global focus on the priceless manuscripts, which although mostly written in Arabic also include centuries-old writings in Greek, Latin, French, English and German. But while the Ahmed Baba Institute is painstakingly working to preserve preserving this history, other manuscripts in Timbuktu are faring less well."

The Guardian (UK) 05/20/13

email this story | Posted 05/21/13@01:01AM

'Muslima', A New Online Exhibition Of Female Muslim Creativity Co-founder Samina Ali: "The impression many have of Muslim women is that they have no voice, no freedom - not even a face because they move around behind burqas! ... We wanted to help reverse the stereotypes and the best way to do that seemed to present Muslim women speaking to the complex realities of their own lives, through interviews and art."

The Guardian (UK) 05/20/13

email this story | Posted 05/21/13@12:56AM

Yeah, 'Digital Ethnic Cleansing' Is As Bad As It Sounds "You could imagine autocratic regimes or other communities taking advantage of that, creating a scenario in which one group finds a way to, for example, filter another group's content from the web. Or to shut down -- or severely slow down -- their Internet access."

The Atlantic 05/18/13

email this story | Posted 05/19/13@09:00PM

Digging Through The Shelves For The Dirt On China's Elite "'There are so many things that we've been deceived over,' he said, waving toward books on the devastating famine of the late 1950s and early 1960s, an episode that official histories have muffled in euphemisms. 'We can't learn the truth, so black becomes white and white becomes black.'"

The New York Times 05/18/13

email this story | Posted 05/19/13@08:50PM

The Kennedy Center Changes Its Award Process - Somewhat "You still have the same three white males who are going to make that decision. If you keep doing the same thing, you're going to get pretty near the same outcome."

Los Angeles Times 05/17/13

email this story | Posted 05/19/13@09:38AM

MoMA's Thirst To Destroy The Folk Art Museum Is Territorial "Williams and Tsien's physically small (a mere forty feet wide and eighty-five feet high) but architecturally powerful incursion into MoMA's presumed turf has long been known to be a thorn in the side of Glenn D. Lowry, the Modern's director since 1995."

The New York Review of Books 05/23/13

email this story | Posted 05/19/13@09:13AM

Cairo - In Need Of Artistic Revitalization "It's a city of a lot of things hidden and because of neglect and a general feeling of apathy over the last 50 years of military rule and dictatorship and oppression and a general feeling of not valuing your own self as individuals and also of society," he says. "So the city is abandoned."

NPR 05/16/13

email this story | Posted 05/17/13@09:46AM

Kennedy Center Changes Selection Process For Honorees "The Kennedy Center hopes to bring greater transparency to a selection process that has been largely opaque in past years. Last year, some national Hispanic advocacy groups criticized the Honors' selection process after noting that only two of the 186 honorees since 1978 were Hispanic."

The Washington Post 05/16/13

email this story | Posted 05/17/13@12:56AM

Broadway Vet Named President Of Lincoln Center "Jed Bernstein, who for more than a decade led the Broadway League, the industry's national trade association, and has produced Broadway shows himself, was named on Wednesday as the successor to Reynold Levy, who is stepping down in January after 11 years as Lincoln Center's president."

The New York Times 05/15/13

email this story | Posted 05/16/13@03:58PM

Australia Council Gets New Chief "Tony Grybowski is well known to the industry from his role as executive director of the council's Major Performing Arts Board since 2007. Before that he was an executive with several classical music organisations and with Arts Victoria."

The Australian 05/16/13

email this story | Posted 05/16/13@12:17PM

Patti Smith To Young Artists: Don't Come To New York "New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling. But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie... New York City has been taken away from you... So my advice is: Find a new city."

Vanishing New York 05/14/13

email this story | Posted 05/16/13@08:18AM

France Proposes Taxing Smartphones To Fund Culture "Here's a proposal that would have a hard time finding support in the United States. A new government study in France suggests levying a new tax as high as 1% on the sale of smartphones, tablets and other Internet devices, with the funds going toward funding cultural initiatives."

Los Angeles Times 05/15/13

email this story | Posted 05/16/13@12:54AM

Planning A National Museum For Palestine Jack Persekian, director of the new institution, to open in Birzeit in late 2014: "The Palestinian Museum is a political symbol only in so far that it celebrates the accomplishments of the Palestinian people in arts and culture, and that it affirms the presence of Palestinians as a people who have agency, who are productive, who shape their own histories."

The Art Newspaper 05/14/13

email this story | Posted 05/16/13@12:48AM

German Court Rules Google Must Remove Search Results If They Threaten Privacy "The feature is notorious in Germany after it began suggesting results for the wife of former German President Christian Wulff suggesting she might have been a prostitute or had an affiliation with a red-light district."

Der Spiegel 05/15/13

email this story | Posted 05/15/13@07:07AM

Researchers: Victorians Were More Clever Than We Are New research in the journal Intelligence suggests the Victorians were naturally cleverer than we are, and draws the startling conclusion that "the Victorian era was marked by an explosion of innovation and genius, per capita rates of which appear to have declined subsequently".

The Guardian (UK) 05/15/13

email this story | Posted 05/15/13@06:56AM

Growing Divide Between Arts Donating In London And Out Of London "Philanthropic giving to theatres, galleries and other arts and heritage organisations rose 10% in London between 2011 and 2012. But donations elsewhere fell 3.5%, said Arts & Business, a charity that seeks to connect arts bodies with donors."

BBC 05/14/13

email this story | Posted 05/15/13@06:24AM

How Cooper Union's Endowment Failed The School's Mission "Since Peter Cooper's heirs gave the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art the land under the Chrysler Building in 1902, the school's endowment has enabled it to offer students a high-quality, tuition-free education through two world wars, the Great Depression and multiple stock market crashes and financial crises. So why does Cooper Union now find itself forced to charge tuition of an estimated $20,000 a year?"

The New York Times 05/11/13 (includes video)

email this story | Posted 05/15/13@12:58AM

Top Cultural Official In Dublin Suspended Pending Scandal Investigation "Dermot McLaughlin, chief executive of Temple Bar Cultural Trust," which funds arts and culture organizations in the Irish capital's cultural district, "has been suspended on full pay pending an investigation by its board of his role in offering three senior staff members redundancy packages last week, each worth €100,000 or more."

The Irish Times 05/14/13

email this story | Posted 05/15/13@12:57AM

Is Investing In Going To College Worth It? (In Many Cases Not) "An April study from Payscale.com, a data firm based in Seattle, ranked 1,500 educational programs on their return on investments for 2013. There were 74 schools that showed a return of $1 million or more on the investment in an education, while 30 schools had a negative return on investment--meaning the cost of attending was more than what the students would make up with increased wages, even over a 30-year period."

Pacific Standard 05/13/13

email this story | Posted 05/14/13@07:51AM

Does The Idea Of "Commons" Work For The Arts? "No organization is made better off by focusing on the broad shared vision; they are only made better off when they focus on the part of that vision that can be attributed immediately to their work. In this way, the shared vision of cultural innovation is lost to the competitive struggle for funding."

Createquity 05/14/13

email this story | Posted 05/14/13@07:20AM

The Cleveland Kidnappings: An F.A.Q.? The Plain Dealer actually has put together a list of Frequently asked questions about the three women who were rescued last week after a decade in captivity. Sasha Weiss considers - even as she understands why the paper did that - how coverage of the ordeal got to that point - and why the media narrative takes the forms that it has.

The New Yorker 05/12/13

email this story | Posted 05/14/13@12:51AM

Why I Teach a College Class On How To Think About Pornography "Most of my students were born in the early-to-mid-1990s; they hit puberty under the influence of two conflicting social realities: the widespread availability of broadband and the Bush-era abstinence-only sex education policies. ... [This] meant that Internet pornography became the primary and ubiquitous source of information about [sex] ... It's as if instead of offering driver's ed, we taught you how to operate a car by showing you a James Bond movie."

The Atlantic 05/09/13

email this story | Posted 05/14/13@12:50AM

Tibet's Capital Is Being Demolished "The Chinese authorities have begun demolishing the ancient capital of Lhasa, including one of the most important Buddhist sites of the city, Tibet's holiest Jokhang Temple."

The Tibet Post 05/11/13

email this story | Posted 05/13/13@09:42AM

The Minnesota Lockout, More And More Painful By The Day "The Minnesota case is particularly agonizing and seemingly inexplicable."

The New York Times 05/12/13

email this story | Posted 05/12/13@06:39PM

The Arts Versus Dementia & Alzheimer's "While visual arts generated the greatest immediate sense of achievement, it was music and dance that demonstrated a significantly longer energising effect than other art forms, with the results concluding that art practices can combat many of the most difficult effects of early dementia."

Limelight Magazine 05/13/13

email this story | Posted 05/12/13@06:18PM

If The Artist Is A Criminal, What Should The Wall Text Say? "if you do a large-scale presentation, then you need to do a full accounting. If you're going to show individual pieces, you may not have to."

The Art Newspaper 05/11/13

email this story | Posted 05/12/13@10:17AM

Could Local Theatres Help Spur An Arts Funding Revolution? "If building audiences and arts engagement, and widening arts access at grassroots level, are prioritised, it could be that the arts find they have an army of advocates. It is those people whom this and future governments can't afford to ignore."

The Guardian (UK) 05/07/13

email this story | Posted 05/12/13@10:03AM

Greece's Financial Crisis Might Kill Off One Of The Country's Best Museums "When Mr. Delivorrias takes a list of employees from the top drawer of his desk, his hands are trembling just a bit. There are red question marks beside some of the names -- the ones who might be getting laid off next. "

The New York Times 05/10/13

email this story | Posted 05/12/13@09:21AM

Why Culture Comes Under Attack (A Short History) As Czech historian Milan Hubl once said: "The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster."

BBC 05/10/13

email this story | Posted 05/10/13@10:22AM

Disney Backs Off Attempt To Trademark Mexican Festival "After raising the ire of critics online, The Walt Disney Company quickly backed away today from its move to quietly trademark 'Día de los Muertos' for an upcoming Pixar animated feature."

Deadline 05/07/13

email this story | Posted 05/10/13@12:58AM

UK Circus Artists Fear Education Reform Will Endanger Their Jobs "Equity is warning that a proposal to remove a section of the Education Act, which allows travelling performers to educate their children on the road, would 'have a huge knock-on effect not just for child performers but also for experienced professional performers with families who could be forced to give up their careers'."

The Stage (UK) 05/09/13

email this story | Posted 05/10/13@12:53AM

Comic-Book Characters Conquer The Culture "In 2012, comic-book-based movies accounted for a whopping 14 percent of U.S. box office revenue. ... They represent a huge chunk of our cultural imagination. ... But on the road from Tony Stark's (pretty racist) origin fighting a bunch of commies to a world where graphic novels can be just as artful as stories without drawings, something remarkable happened. The nerds won."

NPR 05/07/13

email this story | Posted 05/09/13@12:44AM