As museums face increasing pressure to be responsive to historical intersections and contradictions in their presentation of works, it can be risky to introduce audiences, who otherwise might not seek complexity born out of conflict, to objects that may provoke embarrassment or pain. Yet some institutions still believe generating this tension is a necessary step toward reconciliation. Perhaps there is no more powerful feeling provoked by a museum than shame, which extends beyond the initial encounter with an object and allows for an extended moment of recognition. – Lapham’s Quarterly
UK’s Post-Brexit Plans On Copyright Worry Creators
Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) Deputy Chief Executive Barbara Hayes laid out the scale of the challenge the Government’s decision presents to authors: “At a time when the UK creative industries are growing to unprecedented levels we are also seeing a persistent decline in the earnings of professional authors, representing a real terms decrease of 42% since 2005.” – Arts Professional
Why Peter Schjeldahl Is Such A Great Critic
Schjeldahl’s primary mode is that of a lover, and you can read many of his pieces as impassioned love letters, often involving his favorite art: painting. His deep devotion to the medium continued throughout the decades painting was supposed to be dead. Every painter I know would give a couple fingers off their non-painting hand for a good long review by Peter Schjeldahl – not only for the recognition, but because he unfailingly brings something new into the discourse, getting to the very heart of the medium that he succinctly describes as “engaging our strongest sense, eyesight, and our finest physical aptitude, that of the hand – it’s about the hand and eye in concert.” – Momus
David Sedaris On His Sister Amy
“Movies and TV can’t capture what’s special about Amy. She’s not an actress, exactly, or a comedian, but more like someone who speaks in tongues. As opposed to myself, and just about everyone I’ve ever known, she lives completely in the moment. ‘What was that funny thing you said yesterday when we saw that old blind woman get mowed down by a skateboarder?’ I’ll ask. And she’ll have no memory of it. When Amy gets going, it’s like she’s possessed.” – Elle
Simplifying And Minimalizing Our Lives: What If It Doesn’t “Spark Joy”?
It is rarely acknowledged, by either the life-hack-minded authors or the proponents of minimalist design, that many people have minimalism forced upon them by circumstances that render impossible a serene, jewel-box life style. Nor do they mention that poverty and trauma can make frivolous possessions seem like a lifeline rather than a burden. Many of today’s gurus maintain that minimalism can be useful no matter one’s income, but the audience they target is implicitly affluent—the pitch is never about making do with less because you have no choice. – The New Yorker
How Bolsonaro Is Waging His Culture War On Brazil’s Arts Sector
“The president’s vow to rid cultural and educational institutions of ‘leftist’ values is changing the game at the institutions charged with fostering cultural production.” Here’s a rundown of the changes Bolsonaro has made so far. – Americas Quarterly
An Argument Against Fairness
The Left thinks of fairness as egalitarian “equal outcomes” distribution, and the Right thinks of fairness as meritocracy (i.e., the winner takes the spoils, the qualified take the reward). Frequently, these are incompatible notions of the good, and the tension between them may have never been more intense. But running orthogonal to the debate about fairness is this more obscure yet fundamental issue of favoritism. – Heterodox Academy
Stephen Joyce, James’s Grandson And Ferocious Guardian Of His Estate, Dead At 87
“[He was] an implacable enemy of anyone who wanted to study the legendary Irish writer for almost any reason. … Though his ability to thwart scholars and Bloomsday fans diminished after 2012, when the copyright on most of Joyce’s work lapsed, Stephen Joyce still had the dubious distinction of being the most well-known of a funny list of characters: extremely obstinate literary executors.” – The Outline
Peter Handke’s Nobel Prize Shows Why Aesthetics Alone Should Not Be The Criterion
The controversy has spurred long-standing debates about where stories come from, who is responsible for them and what it means as a writer to bear witness to truth — and also, which persons or institutions have the authority to do so. These events unfolded at a time of rising ethnonationalism across Europe. – The Conversation
Poetry Written By AI Is Getting Much Better (Stylistically)
GPT-2’s writing is grammatically correct. It all more or less sounds true to its source, if all you heard was the tone. But what those sequences mean, therein lies the rub. GPT-2’s poetry prizes style over substance. Which is understandable, because it doesn’t know what substance is. – LitHub
Why Do We Define Success As Growth? Success Might Actually Mean “De-Growing”
On this midsummer morning, 40 thinkers and activists have come together to challenge the core economic orthodoxy of our time: that growth is the most critical measure of human flourishing, an axiom that seems increasingly untenable in the age of accelerating climate change. The Hotel Belvédère du Rayon Vert symbolizes the very empire these adherents of “degrowth,” as the movement is known, wish to overthrow: consumption, wealth, inequality, travel, and cement, the whole modern industrial condition. – The New Republic
Arts Council England Says It Will Invest In Arts In Every Village And Town. Feasible?
The strategy lists four principles guiding whether ACE will invest public money: “ambition and quality”, “inclusivity and relevance”, “dynamism”, and “environmental responsibility”. The ACE chief executive, Darren Henley, said he wanted to move away from having centres of excellence in a small number of places and instead bring “world-class art and culture to people’s doorsteps”. – The Guardian
Using Fun And Games To Teach Professional Dancers
“Just because students are in an advanced technique level doesn’t mean they’ll feel confident moving without set steps.” To get students to explore outside their comfort zones, Alisia Pobega and Louis-Martin Charest use the lightness of open-ended games and exercises as a kind of permission for students to begin to create something independently, without the goal of technical perfection or aesthetics. – Fjord Review
Dancers Are Expected To Be More Flexible Than Ever — And That Can Be Dangerous
“While high extensions can be very exciting, it is thought that this trend has led to an increase in injuries in the lower back, hips and ankles. Adam Sklute, artistic director of Ballet West, has noticed that dancers who are incredibly supple often have a greater lack of control. … The fact is, the more flexible you are, the more you have to work on gaining the strength to manage it.” – Dance Magazine
England’s Business Tax To Be Cut 50% For Small Music Venues
“230 small and medium-sized venues in England and Wales will see a 50% reduction in business rates, a fee which is charged to most non-domestic properties. It should save each venue an average of £7,500 a year, according to the Independent Venues Trust – a charity which aims to protect and improve UK grassroots music venues – and make it more likely that acts still have small, sweaty spaces to hone their craft.” – BBC
Will AI-Powered Avatars Replace Many Of Our Public Interactions?
The idea is that these kinds of AI interactions scale in a way that actual humans do not, and while that may seem ominous for the future of real human connections, from the AI Foundation’s point of view it’s not all that different from the way we use social media today. In both cases, the interactions are asynchronous, and they allow us to reach people we otherwise might not talk to at all. – Fast Company
A ‘Slave Play’ Post-Mortem By The Cast And Creative Team
Producer Greg Nobile: “Just north of 30 percent of our audience were what we call ‘new to file,’ which means they were actually first-time ticket buyers, which is an incredible number. Usually that’s in the single digits, if anything, especially for plays.” – The New York Times
Smithsonian’s Hoped-For London Outpost Cut Back To A Two-Year V&A Show
The original plan, announced in 2015, was for a Smithsonian museum in the planned Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; by the next year, it had been reduced to a partnership with London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and in 2018 an agreement was signed for a permanent presence at the V&A East in the QEOP. Now the Smithsonian’s new chief, Lonnie Bunch, has decided downgraded that permanence to a two-year co-curated exhibition when the V&A East opens in 2023. – The Washington Post
For First Time, Graphic Novel Wins Newbery Medal; Caldecott Medal Goes To Picture Book About Great African-Americans
The Newbery, for best children’s book, went to Jerry Kraft’s New Kid, the story of a 12-year-old who’s one of the few nonwhite students at a fancy private school. Taking the Caldecott, for best picture book for children, was The Undefeated, with illustrations by Kadir Nelson and text by Kwame Alexander. – The New York Times
Joyce DiDonato, Nicola Benedetti, Jennifer Higdon, Caroline Shaw: Classical Grammy Awards 2020
The Dudamel/L.A. Phil recording of Andrew Norman’s Sustain took Best Orchestral Performance, with Caroline Shaw’s Orange by the Attacca Quartet winning Best Chamber/Small Ensemble Performance and the Houston Chamber Choir’s all-Duruflé disc receiving Best Choral Performance honors. Best Opera Recording was the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s release of Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, Joyce DiDonato’s Songplay took Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, Nicola Benedetti’s rendition of Wynton Marsalis’s Violin Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra won Best Classical Instrumental Solo, and the Best Contemporary Classical Composition was Jennifer Higdon’s Harp Concerto. – Classical Music (UK)
Outcry Over “American Dirt” Shows What’s Wrong With The American Publishing Business
The clumsy, ill-conceived rollout of “American Dirt” illustrates how broken the system is, how myopic it is to hype one book at the expense of others and how unethical it is to allow a gatekeeper like Oprah’s Book Club to wield such power. Imagine a publishing industry that dispensed with hit-making, that used the millions of dollars poured into “American Dirt” to invest more into promoting a greater number and panoply of authors. – The New York Times
Where Broadway’s Super-Fans Are: BroadwayCon
Some arrived in full character for the event, where attendees can meet and take photos with the stars of their favorite shows. Passes range from $80 for one day to $1,000 for a full weekend platinum pass with extra perks. – The New York Times
Boycott Brexit Commemorative Medal Over Lack Of Oxford Comma?
“The ‘Brexit’ 50p coin is missing an Oxford comma, and should be boycotted by all literate people,” wrote the novelist Philip Pullman on Twitter, while Times Literary Supplement editor Stig Abell wrote that, while it was “not perhaps the only objection” to the Brexit-celebrating coin, “the lack of a comma after ‘prosperity’ is killing me”. – The Guardian
Kosher Becomes Croissant
Those nostalgic for the closed Moishe’s Kosher Bake Shop in the East Village may wish to read this. (I walk the other way when nostalgia comes around the corner.) – Jeff Weinstein
Time enough
What if I never write another book, or direct another play? Will I die a disappointed man? – Terry Teachout