[contextly_auto_sidebar id="oHcTuy4aEjunKWqhD4mC4hqre93rSFli"] Let me catch my breath a second and direct CultureCrash readers to my Salon piece on trigger warnings on university "trigger warnings," the poetry of Ovid, and my fears about Fox News. Of my recent Salon work, this seems like the one most relevant to ArtsJournal readers. Bottom line is, How do we regard the violence, rape, … [Read more...]
Overeducated and Underemployed
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="CM4KylwaAW4pMnqXeb36jIwUKqjajdfJ"] ONE of the oddest things about the brutal post-crash economy is that the average-is-over cries by neoliberals to educate the workforce for a global world have accompanied hard times for many educated people. It's especially true for academics caught in the adjunct trap, though it is not unique to struggling scholars. It's certainly … [Read more...]
How Artists Do (and Don’t) Make a Living
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="1O7lUANtRWwF1iIA86MpOYppo1xNtR5Y"] A NEW study is starting to draw attention, and it confirms some of what we've suspected: That despite the rise of university programs to educate artists, the employment market for the fine arts continues to tighten. So we're left with more and more people stranded, often with significant amounts of student-loan debt. And the number … [Read more...]
The Death of Art’s Third Place
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="m8KE0CbwCulzkRvRmJL6ZGSvuY8h2kLD"] DAVE Hickey has long been one of the orneriest and most original voices in the art world -- his book Air Guitar is a revelation -- and he recently posted something that hits me almost literally where I live. He's talking about the disappearance of a discourse around visual art that is neither grounded in academia or the marketplace. … [Read more...]
The Importance of the Humanities
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="K0EQ32yHOf7wBeZF6STx4dV8MrY6105L"] A GREAT Nicholas Kristof column today gets at the value of the humanities, especially philosophy, in a pragmatic, hyper-digital and neoliberal age. He writes, near the top: I wouldn’t want everybody to be an art or literature major, but the world would be poorer — figuratively, anyway — if we were all coding software or running … [Read more...]
What is the Ivy League For?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="JOGXf4pQNorMAGptHzzcW1DczyhB3tLM"] SOMETIMES a writer is attacked so widely and vigorously I can tell he's right. That's the case with William Deresiewicz's New Republic essay about the fallacy of elite college education, and Ivy League schools in particular. I don't mean I agree with every word of his piece, and I know the Ivy League only from a distance. (For what … [Read more...]
Historical Documentary and “The Story of the Jews”
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Jxeq7goyZFHTuT1NApP4ZsOM8ZKVKFcG"] TODAY I have a piece in the Los Angeles Times about a new documentary, commissioned by the BBC but playing in the US on PBS, The Story of the Jews with Simon Schama. (The first part broadcasts Tuesday night.) Schama, the British-born, Cambridge-educated historian who now teachers at Columbia, is likely known to many of my readers … [Read more...]
Making it as a Writer: MFA vs NYC
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="6RDST6owlrC0x8P60LIwnB5J7Z8Ftt9Q"] HOW does an aspiring novelist, poet, or essayist break into the business? What kind of ecosystem does he or she inhabit after getting established? Does grad school help? Among the best answers to those questions came from novelist Chad Harbach in his essay "MFA vs NYC," and he's expanded it into a provocative anthology that … [Read more...]
Week in Review: Obama on Art vs Factories, and More
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="UzOdqTdRr0f4bA3skq8em9vtTLiLXNnZ"] WHAT seems to have been a throwaway line on the impracticality of the "art history major" by President Obama is stirring up art-world folk. I first read about it in this Hyperallergic post, "Obama Loves Art History But Thinks It's (Economically) Useless," which describes him praising skilled manufacturing jobs over, you know, artsy … [Read more...]
British History and Texas Music
A SHORT, insightful new book about the making of the modern world – told in microcosm – has just come from the pen of a noted indie rocker.Here at The Misread City, we’ve been impressed with the melancholy genius of Matt Kadane since the first record, What Fun Life Was, from his old band, Dallas slowcore quartet Bedhead. Like the group that followed, The New Year, Bedhead was defined by melodic … [Read more...]