{"id":702,"date":"2016-01-24T13:20:21","date_gmt":"2016-01-24T21:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/?p=702"},"modified":"2016-01-25T19:52:38","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T03:52:38","slug":"five-picks-stories-from-this-weeks-artsjournal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2016\/01\/five-picks-stories-from-this-weeks-artsjournal.html","title":{"rendered":"FIVE PICKS: Stories From This Week’s ArtsJournal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"oscars\"<\/p>\n

Welcome to our weekly “best of” ArtsJournal. These aren’t necessarily the most important of the 156 stories we found this week, but they particularly caught our eye.<\/p>\n

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    1. Your #AllWhiteOscars Controversy Primer<\/strong>
      \nThe biggest flurry of stories this week was the reaction to last week’s Oscars nominations, where for the second week in a row, all the top nominees were white. The week began with talk of boycotts by African-American members of the Academy, led by comments from Spike Lee<\/a> and a passionate video by Jada Pinkett Smith<\/a>. But a boycott is complicated<\/a>. Then there was the predictable pushback from the clueless, with actor Charlotte Rampling suggesting <\/a>that the diversity protests were racist against whites. \u00a0The head of the Academy of Motion Pictures wrote<\/a> that she was “heartbroken and frustrated” over the nominations lack of diversity and vowed changes. There were numerous thoughtful arguments about the controversy, including in the Chicago Tribune, The Daily Beast<\/a>, by actor Idris Elba<\/a>. And in record speed, the Academy announced Friday that it had voted to dramatically overhaul its membership<\/a> to address the problem.<\/li>\n
    2. How Our Ideas about Art And Artists Are Changing In The Digital World<\/strong>
      \nThis       thoughtful article from the Atlantic<\/a> suggests that the changing relationship between artists and audiences is reshaping what it means to be an artist:\u00a0\u201cA new paradigm is emerging, and has been since about the turn of the millennium, one that\u2019s in the process of reshaping what artists are: how they work, train, trade, collaborate, think of themselves and are thought of\u2014even what art is\u2014just as the solitary-genius model did two centuries ago. The new paradigm may finally destroy the very notion of \u201cart\u201d as such\u2014that sacred spiritual substance\u2014which the older one created.<\/li>\n
    3. Is Opera The New Old Thing?<\/strong>
      \nIn the last half of the 20th Century, new operas were a rarity, and those that did get produced didn’t get much traction. No more. Hundreds of new operas get produced each year, and in some ways, it’s one of our more vital art forms. It’s just that much of it might not look much like the traditional Thing. The       Washington Post’s Anne Midgette<\/a>: \u201cClassical music, some say, is in decline. I say, over and over, that it isn\u2019t. Classical music is just fine. It\u2019s the institutions that perform it that are having trouble. \u2026 Of course, new work has an audience. It just may not be a traditional opera audience.\u201d Speaking of things changing, The Economist reports<\/a> on opera’s increasingly powerful new divas – the directors.<\/li>\n
    4. How Visual Culture Is Changing In 2016 (According To The Data)
      \n<\/strong>Getty Images is the world’s largest clearinghouse for images, with millions of images licensed to publications around the world. This year it crunched data about how the images are being used and searched for, and made a <\/span>      series of observations<\/a> about what is driving today’s visual culture (including color picks!)\u00a0\u201cCreative In Focus 2016 sorts its emerging threads in visual culture into six categories, each with its own snappy, slightly cutesy title. I think of them as offering the outlines of the boxes our corporate image-overlords are sorting our tastes into.\u201d So is it any surprise that museums are looking at what and how they <\/span>change the audience experience<\/a> to adapt to changing tastes?<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n
    5. I Say Banana…
      \n<\/strong>Language is a fascinating thing, and it shapes how we think. And how we interact. We have many languages that are so similar to one another that the speakers of one can be understood by speakers of the other. Then there are dialects that are so different – Italian dialects, for example – that speakers of other dialects of the same language can’t be understood. So what makes one thing a language and another a dialect? This <\/span>      fascinating Atlantic story<\/a> explores the differences.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/ol>\n