“As much as I’d like to dissolve the beach read label entirely, I must also admit I have a type: I want a meaty, absorbing book that takes me further into a vacation by connecting with the cultures that produced it. I want a book that can’t be disposed of, one that will take me somewhere entirely new.” – The Conversation
Does The Shed Suggest New York Is Looking For Something Different In Its Arts?
“It seems there is a divergence in our artistic landscape, where we value trend and zeitgeist as highly as artistic growth and creative development. The Shed serves as a manifestation of this tension between art and spectacle, highbrow and lowbrow. My suggestion is that we view the construction of the Shed as a call for change on an artistic level—a sign that audiences and funders are ready and searching for new ideas and, more importantly, a new approach to exacting those ideas.” – Howlround
Does The Arts World Have An Interns Problem?
“If the base salary in our field is $0, then it’s no wonder that the next step up is not much higher. We know what working for free does to the chances of truly diversifying or addressing equity within any intersection of art and museum labor.” – Hyperallergic
Why One Trustee Quit The Board Of The British Museum
Ahdaf Soueif: “Public cultural institutions have a responsibility: not only a professional one towards their work, but a moral one in the way they position themselves in relation to ethical and political questions. The world is caught up in battles over climate change, vicious and widening inequality, the residual heritage of colonialism, questions of democracy, citizenship and human rights. On all these issues the museum needs to take a clear ethical position.” London Review of Books
The World’s Latest New Opera House – In Hangzhou
“There is a competition amongst Chinese cities to create new destinations, each with their iconic cultural landmarks,” said Claude Godefroy, design director at Henning Larsen’s Hong Kong office. – dezeen
Yeah, Lots Of Us Love To Point And Laugh At ‘Florida Man’ — But Is That Really The Right Thing To Do?
“At its most comical, the Florida Man phenomenon encapsulates the wildness of both America and the Internet. At its most salacious, it’s a social-media update on the true-crime TV of America’s Dumbest Criminals and the gallows humor of tabloid headlines. At its most insensitive, Florida Man profits by punching down at the homeless, drug-addicted or mentally ill.” Reporter Logan Hill travels to a Florida prison to meet an actual subject of a Florida Man story — and he talks with the guy who started the Florida Man Twitter feed about the moral qualms he began to feel. – The Washington Post Magazine
Richmond’s Institute For Contemporary Art, Only A Year Old, Lays Off More Than A Fifth Of Its Staff
“Six full-time employees out of 27 are having their positions eliminated as a result of a reorganization, said Dominic Willsdon, executive director of the ICA. … The non-collecting contemporary art museum at Virginia Commonwealth University opened in April 2018 after four years of construction and roughly 15 years of planning.” And ICA has had staffing issues ever since. – Richmond Times-Dispatch
Francoise Gilot Was Picasso’s Muse. When She Left He Predicted Disaster. It Didn’t Turn Out That Way
“For one thing, Gilot ended up happily married to Jonas Salk, who was doubtless secure enough in his own accomplishments to like her for reasons that had nothing to do with Picasso. And she went on to have an admired career as an artist. Gilot is ninety-seven now; she has been painting nearly as long as Picasso did, and is enjoying something of a revival.” – The New Yorker
On The Nature Of Aphorisms
Adam Gopnik: “The aphorism, in the course of history, can be taken as the epitome of the rational or the epitome of the irrational. It can be compressed and self-contained wisdom, or it can be a broken fragment designed to show that ours is an already shattered world. But, whatever it is, it’s always an epitome, and seeks an essence.” – The New Yorker
John Leguizamo On The Difference Between Performing Solo In Comedy Clubs And Theaters
“In a comedy club, you can go nuts and go off and be funny, but you can’t really get emotional, you know? The crowd is there to get in a rhythm of set-ups-and-jokes with you. They don’t really care about stories — stories that last a whole show, I mean. In a theater, though, jokes are not enough. You better have a story, you better have a point. I loved the energy and immediacy of comedy clubs. You can see why it’s so addictive. But you get to a theater, people don’t let you slide.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Sony Picks Up Respected Book-To-Film Unit That Disney Shut Down
“Sony and HarperCollins Publishers said on Monday that they would finance a yet-to-be-named venture run by the executive, Elizabeth Gabler, who is considered Hollywood’s foremost bridge to the New York publishing world. Ms. Gabler, 63, was previously president of Fox 2000, a division of 20th Century Fox, which Disney absorbed in March as part of a $71.3 billion deal with Rupert Murdoch.” – The New York Times
Audit Finds ‘Substantial Uncertainty’ About Baltimore Symphony’s Viability, Says Management
“The organization’s independent auditor for the fiscal year that ended on Aug. 31, 2018, concluded that ‘there is substantial uncertainty about the BSO’s ability to continue [for one more year] as a going concern,’ the BSO said in a news release. The BSO did not respond to multiple requests that it provide a full copy of the audit.” – The Baltimore Sun
Terry Gross Talks To Emily Nussbaum About TV
“Let a hundred flowers bloom. Everything is valuable in its own way and they don’t need to be in tension with one another. You can love novels and love TV shows and not feel like they have to be placed in some sort of hierarchy.” – NPR
Should The Roosevelt Statue In Front Of The American Museum Of Natural History Come Down? The Museum Asks Visitors
“Addressing the Statue,” with an accompanying video and website, examines various aspects of the monument and the president it memorializes. It explores the history of the statue’s design and installation, who the men at the bottom of the statue may represent and Roosevelt’s own racism. The museum examines its own complicity at points, too, with references in the video to its exhibitions on eugenics in the early 20th century. – The New York Times
Spotify Slammed For Its “Dance Like Nobody’s Paying” Ad Campaign
The campaign comes after longstanding complaints about the company’s royalty payments, not to mention its attempts to appeal the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to increase songwriter rates by 44% over the next five years and its recent determination that it had overpaid music publishers by an undisclosed amount in 2018 and is requesting a refund. Predictably, songwriters and music industry pros aren’t happy about the new campaign, which seems to add insult to injury after the above incidents. – Variety
Yes, The Show Must Go On… Even Without Lights
Performers from multiple Broadway shows gave impromptu renditions to crowds along the streets outside the theaters when the power went out in Manhattan Friday night just before shows were about to start. – Washington Post
The Break Out Break-dancing Millennial Counter-Tenor
The singers who performed in operatic works by Handel or Vivaldi in the eighteenth century were the musical celebrities of their day, and Jakub Józef Orliński’s approach is to gleefully inhabit that space of stardom, rather than to handle the repertoire as if he were a reverent museum curator. “I treat Baroque music as, basically, pop music, but in their time.” – The New Yorker
Turkey’s War On Free Speech Is Intensifying, Says Author Elif Shafak
Shafak wants the world to pay attention to what Erdogan has been doing since the failed 2016 coup: “Much has been said about the anti-liberal nature of authoritarian populism, but relatively little about two other features concomitant with its rise: anti-intellectualism and anti-feminism. Authoritarian populism likes to divide society into two camps: the pure people versus the corrupt elite. Writers, poets, journalists and scholars are often associated with the latter group. In the populist imagination, being elite has nothing to do with economic power or social status. It is about values.” – The Guardian (UK)