Today’s Stories
UCLA Study: TV Diversity Up In Front Of The Camera, Not Better Behind It
“There has been a lot of progress for women and people of colour in front of the camera,” Darnell Hunt, dean of the school’s social sciences division and the study’s co-author, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, there has not been the same level of progress behind the camera.“ – Toronto Star (AP)
Baltimore Museum Of Art Chair Defends Sale Of Warhol, Marden And Still
Clair Zamoiski Segal asserts that “there is nothing short-sighted nor nefarious about deaccessioning. It is a regular practice, undertaken by every art museum in the United States. Assertions otherwise are simply a means of inflaming controversy and serve only to maintain the status quo of museums as repositories of riches serving the elite alone.” – ARTnews
It’s Probably Not Possible To Live A Contemplative Life Any More
The contemplative life hits us as a kind of sudden derangement, ripping us out of the fabric of life, driving us into libraries, bookstores, and campus events in desperate efforts to meet fellow travelers. But when we get there, we find that our eccentricity, roughness, and lack of training in academic gentility make such relationships impossible. Letters go unanswered, invitations withheld, applications rejected. – Chronicle of Higher Education
How a 25-Year-Old From Nowhere Became Podcasting’s Go-To Guy
Within a couple years of starting his newsletter, this random guy was able to quit his day job and become, for lack of a better word, a full-time expert, his pod-related opinions and observations quoted in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. His newsletter Hot Pod now has between 20,000 and 25,000 subscribers (a combination of paid and free) and earns six figures, he says — a substantial figure for what amounts to a trade journal written almost like a personal zine, mixing the latest pod news with commentary and asides. – Medium
The Case Against Pierre Boulez
When conductors manage to continue performing into their eighties, their colleagues tend to soften their views, even of maestros who were once feared and despised. A shock of white hair and a newly tremulous tone of voice in rehearsals has helped many former tyrants come to be seen as benevolent fountains of wisdom. I can think of no other artist for whom this transformation was as complete, or improbable, as Pierre Boulez. When he was a young composer and polemicist in Paris in the 1940s and 1950s (he did not seriously take up conducting until later), he seemed intent on burning down the entire music world. – New York Review of Books
Our Biggest Strength Is Our Common Good. So Why Have We Forgotten This?
Anthropologists have long told us that, as a species neither particularly strong nor fast, humans survived because of our unique ability to create and cooperate… What is new is the extent to which so many civic and corporate leaders – sometimes entire cultures – have lost sight of our most precious collective quality. – Aeon
Michelle Obama’s Editor Launches New Publishing House With Unorthodox Marketing Strategy
“Rather than relying chiefly on bookstores, retailers, advertising and other traditional channels to promote authors,” Molly Stern plans to have her new venture, Zando, “team up with high-profile individuals, companies and brands, who will act as publishing partners and promote books to their fans and customers.” – The New York Times
Jazz Pianist Assaulted In Subway – He May Never Play Again
“I thought that this was how I was going to die,” he recalled two weeks later, describing the attack in a written note because it was still painful to talk about it. He did not know how many in the group had hit him. They fractured his right collarbone, injured his arm and bruised him all over. After surgery for the broken bones, he was not sure whether he will ever be able to play the piano again. He has been unable to use his right hand at all, and said he is learning to do everything with his left hand. – The New York Times
In Rural Nepal, Traveling Theatre Group Helps Villagers Challenge Child Marriage And Domestic Violence
Visiting isolated villages where many people have never seen a play before, the Nepali troupe called Shilpee does forum theatre, where a script is performed twice; the second time, audience members can stop the action and suggest or act out a different solution to the situation onstage. Says director Ghimire Yubaraj, “It would be easy to be judgmental and disregard the audience members as poor or uneducated, but their ideas can be brilliant.” – The Guardian
What We Could Learn From A Theatre That Is Inclusive Of Everyone
“Inclusion is not a final destination – it is something that enables greater creativity and brings greater value. I think it allows us to have different conversations around what that value is and where you might find it.” – The Stage
The Composer Who Has Her Students Cook And Do Nature Hikes
Gabriela Lena Frank hosts the young composers in her apprentice program at her mountainside farmstead in northern California, where, she says, “we get rid of the shame of wrong notes. We make good food and I say, ‘You get to make mistakes here.'” As one alumna put it, “It shows you that music making is an earthly thing, so why not connect to the earth while we make it?” – The New York Times
Some NY Theatres Lobby To Reopen Given Their Unconventional Spaces
A coalition of theaters are lobbying New York State for special permission to present ticketed performances to reduced capacity, socially distanced audiences. Because of their open spaces and flexible designs, these theaters argue that they can safely return to business now or soon, before standard theaters do. At present, though, only rehearsals, gallery exhibitions and film shoots are allowed. – The New York Times
As Museums Sell Off Art, Will There Be Enough Buyers?
“The market generally loves deaccessioned works; museum provenance adds the lustre of validation, and consequently monetary value. But will there just be too many of these works on the block in the coming months? … And, with an inevitably smaller market due to the [COVID] crisis, can prices be sustained?” – The Art Newspaper
Study: Our Brains Prefer Happy Endings To Happiness Earlier On
Participants prefer experiences with happy endings to experiences that became slightly less enjoyable towards the end. Thanks to their work with fMRI imaging, Martin Vestergaard and Wolfram Schultz are also able to suggest some of the mechanical underpinnings of this preference by showing that different parts of the brain preserve and process different pieces of information from the same experience. – Wired
James Randi, Magician Who Debunked Magic And The Paranormal, Dead At 92
“An inveterate skeptic and bristly contrarian in his profession, Mr. Randi insisted that magic is based solely on earthly sleight of hand and visual trickery. He scorned fellow magicians who allowed or encouraged audiences to believe their work was rooted in extrasensory or paranormal powers. In contrast, [he] cheerfully described himself as a ‘liar’ and ‘cheat’.” He made something of a second career out of exposing (and fending off lawsuits from) psychics and faith healers; he spent much of his MacArthur “genius grant” on attorney fees. – The Washington Post
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Quibi Was The New Coke Of Streaming Video
How so? Like New Coke, it was “product not enough real people wanted, a solution to a problem that didn’t really exist,” writes Josef Adalian. “There is an audience for bite-size entertainment with production values closer to Netflix than what you’ll find on social media, but I’m not so sure there’s a market for it.” – Vulture
Once Dance Was A Weapon In The Fight For Social Justice. Could It Be Again?
Gia Kourlas: “Back [in the 1930s], protests and social justice were part of the fabric of modern dance as it met the moment of the Great Depression and the rise of authoritarianism. ‘The Dance Is a Weapon.’ That was the title of the first recital of the New Dance Group, a socially minded collective formed in 1932. For me, that period of dance haunts the time we’re living in — the pandemic, the election, the uprisings against racial injustice — like a good, progressive ghost.” – The New York Times
How The Arts Deploy Fear In The Nerve-Wracking Year 2020
“[A package exploring] how fear informs the culture that we consume. … Chronicle classical music critic Joshua Kosman tells us how music can stoke terror in us with just a few notes. Chronicle theater critic Lily Janiak shows us how fear can be used to our advantage. And Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle explains how we’ve been living in a time of fear for 20 years, with a two-decade span of film that’s been reflecting the concerns around us.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Facing Closed Buildings And Budget Cuts, Schools Find Ways To Teach Kids Music Despite COVID
“For luckier, specialized schools, … planning for this unprecedented fall semester has boiled down to some common themes, including online vs. hybrid instruction, space constraints, and technological considerations. But for music education programs like the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music and the Harmony Program, planning has hinged on a more urgent question: How can we continue to provide music education to kids whose schools can no longer afford it?” – WQXR (New York City)
Some Of Cinema’s Earliest Experiments, Preserved With The Simplest Of Technology, Are Now Restored
Moving picture clips by Georges Méliès and Alice Guy-Blaché from the 1890s, long thought lost, were discovered over the last decade in the form of flipbooks, originally produced for people who couldn’t get to or afford tickets for a picture show. Now researchers have gathered some of those books and restored their images to film. – The Guardian
Philadanco Names Successor To Founder Joan Myers Brown
Brown, now 88, has been artistic director of the contemporary dance company for its entire 50-year history and, until last year, functioned as its executive director as well. Succeeding her will be the current assistant artistic director, Kim Bears-Bailey. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Confusing Messages From Our Screens
Less than two weeks before our quadrennial democratic experiment in terror, division, heartbreak and the art of the possible, our home screens are sending wildly mixed messages about democracy in action — how it was, how it is, how it should be and how we might save America from itself. – Chicago Tribune
Oh My But It’s Tempting To Hope Science Can Explain Life (Can It?)
By cracking the genetic code, we have become able to harness the machinery of living cells to do our bidding by assembling new macromolecules of our own devising. As we have gained an ever more accurate picture of how life’s tiniest and simplest building blocks fit together to form the whole, it has become increasingly tempting to imagine that biology’s toughest puzzles may only be solved once we figure out how to tackle them on physics’ terms. – Nautilus
At Issue Over The Hirshhorn’s Plan To Remake Its Gardens
The opinion of Hirshhorn officials about whether the sculpture garden is a work of art is central to their stewardship and decision-making about the sculpture garden’s proposed redesign. – Cultural Landscape Foundation
Adobe Is Using AI To “Fix” Video Of You Dancing (So You Look Better)
Like autotuning in music, which corrects your pitch, the dance AI adjusts your images in video so you’re actually keeping up with the beat. – Protocol