“A huge haul of paintings, etchings and prints are unaccounted for – with the authorities at the House blaming database errors but admitting they do not know whether they have been stolen.”
Here’s Provocative Art That Really Provokes, And How Two Museums Are Handling It (Carefully)
At the University of Kansas’s Spencer Museum, one of the 16 flags in the project “Pledges of Allegiance” drew enough anger that the university president ordered it taken off the flagpole. The Blanton Museum at the University of Texas at Austin is displaying The City, Vincent Valdez’s life-size painting of a modern-day Ku Klux Klan meeting. Both museums expected controversy; Claire Hansen reports on how they prepared.
Remains Of 1,800-Year-Old Library Discovered In Cologne
The walls of the structure, which dates to the second century, included niches for storing several thousand scrolls. Access to the ruins will be preserved when the construction project that unearthed them is complete.
UK Theatres To Get Protection From Noise Complaints By Neighbors
Until now, theatres near new developments have faced the threat of restrictions to their licences or – in the worst-case scenarios – complete closure, because of potential noise complaints from people moving into properties nearby that were granted planning permission after the live venues were established.
Why Are Series Based On Books Lasting Far Beyond The End Of The Book?
And how did HBO’s Sharper Objects not fall under the sway of the sequel season? Amy Adams wasn’t interested, basically – but the actors on The Handmaid’s Tale, Big Little Lies, and of course Game of Thrones certainly have been, and so have their networks.
An Artist, With The Help Of Many Others Across The DMZ, Unites The Koreas By Hand
Kyungah Ham found a North Korean propaganda leaflet – something she hadn’t seen for decades – in 2008, and that changed her art, and her life. “For a decade, Ms. Ham has been producing designs on her computer that are printed and smuggled into North Korea through intermediaries based in Russia or China. Then a group of anonymous artisans, whom she has never met or spoken to, are paid to convert them into embroideries, using exquisitely fine stitching. With bribes and subterfuge, the works are smuggled back out. Ultimately, they are shown and sold at galleries and exhibitions.”
Grammar Purists Are Running A Ridiculous (And Classist, Racist, Etc.) Ponzi Scheme On The English Language
What’s ‘standard’ English? What’s ‘colloquial’? Why is one right or wrong? “There is no official source of grammar prohibitions. For the English language, no one has the authority to lay down laws. Rules exist. It is possible to speak or write ungrammatically. It’s possible to be ‘wrong.’ But right and wrong derive from a far more powerful, albeit hard-to-pin-down source: us.”
What We Learn By Returning To Books We Loved As Kids
For many, having kids of their own provides an opportunity to share these beloved stories with the next generation. But revisiting them alone as adults can also provide comfort, relaxation and the pleasure of rediscovery. Not only do rereaders rediscover the story, but they may also rediscover themselves.
There Is No Such Thing As Unconscious Thought
In particular, when you walk away from a difficult problem, then come back later and suddenly see the solution, your mind was not working on the problem unconsciously. Your brain doesn’t work that way, and if it tried, the electrical signals traveling along your neurons would get hopelessly crossed. Behavioral scientist Nick Chater explains what’s really going on in such cases.
How A Venerable Oregon Chamber Music Festival Revitalized Itself
The first five weeks bristled with listener-friendly new music, fresh young performers, diverse older ones, jazz, tango and even contemporary music by Chinese-American composers. And Chamber Music Northwest has pulled this off while holding on to most of its aging core audience, its renowned longtime performers, and a healthy dose of core, classic repertoire. Audience numbers have stabilized—a triumph in the beleaguered classical-music world—and the demographic is gradually growing more diverse.
Your Mind Is Not Like An Iceberg, With Masses Of Stuff Hidden Below The Surface
Behavioral scientist Nick Chater: “This whole idea of uncovering things from the unconscious and making them conscious has the presupposition that they are of the same type. … The tip of the iceberg is made of the same stuff as the rest of the iceberg, which is an invisible mass. And I think that’s really a mistake. The reality is that the things we’re conscious of — experiences, thoughts, fragments of conversation — are completely different in type from the things we’re unconscious of — all these mysterious brain processes, which lay down and retrieve memories, piece fragments of information together, and so on. The brain is doing lots of unconscious work — but it is not thought in any way we understand it.”
Have We Lost Our Sense Of Moral Rigor And Equivalency?
The outrage over a police shooting of an unarmed black teenager unfolds at the same level of intensity as the outrage over what might or might not be a case of racial profiling by a sales clerk in a small Brooklyn boutique. This is intentional: The general feeling seems to be that distinguishing between degrees of morally repugnant conduct will lead to some sort of blanket pardon of all such conduct; that to understand is always to forgive. Such concern is understandable, but misplaced — it flattens and obfuscates, rather than clarifies.
The Theatre Director Who Seeks To Divide His Audiences Rather Than Unite Them
“Dissatisfaction itself has become a commodity. Every day I see the headhunters from Western Europe’s theatres searching for fresh blood from problematic countries. At one point, everybody was asking me if I knew any directors from Ukraine. Then the focus shifted to Syria and Poland. There’s something deeply humiliating and colonial in the reduction of the work of an artist to her or his country of birth and the political problems of that same country.”
Warren Brown, Washington Post Auto Columnist Who Co-Wrote Memoir On Kidney Transplant, Dead At 70
“He described himself as a ‘servant’ to his readers — a representative who looked out for their financial interests while also trying to satisfy car enthusiasts’ passions for details about fuel efficiency, horsepower and torque. But in writing about one of the largest sectors of the U.S. economy, he also challenged readers who might have preferred that he stick to interiors and exteriors, penning columns that could veer sharply into politics and race.” In 2002, he and Post colleague Martha McNeil Hamilton published Black & White & Red All Over, about her donation of one of her kidneys to him.
Australian Museum Director Resigns After Failed Fundraiser
Dolla Merrillees’ resignation comes in the wake of revelations that the black-tie dinner hosted by the museum in February was a massive loss maker, costing $388,000 to stage, and requiring the museum to chip in $215,209.50 from its own budget. The fundraiser raised $78,000, of which a mere $1050 was raised from supporters on the night.
Filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos’s Archives Destroyed In Greek Wildfires
“‘My husband’s books, his letters from celebrities, all the texts that authors had dedicated to him’ were destroyed in the fire, Phoebe Angelopoulou told local television. … The filmmaker, who won the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1998 for Eternity and a Day, often spent summers with his family at the house in Mati, east of the capital.”
Robert Lepage Cancels Second Controversial Production
Earlier this month, the Canadian director’s piece SLĀV, which featured African-American slave songs performed by white singers, was cut from the Montreal Jazz Festival after protests. Now Lepage has called off Kanata, a show about the relationship between European settlers in Canada and First Nations peoples which he created for Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil in Paris. Indigenous Canadian artists had objected to work about them being made without their participation, and the controversy led several North American co-producers to back out of the project.
Fyre Festival Organizer Pleads Guilty To Second Fraudulent Ticket Scheme
“Billy McFarland, whose efforts at running the disastrous Fyre Festival led to wire fraud charges last year, pleaded guilty on Thursday to a new set of federal charges related to a fraudulent ticket-selling scam that authorities said he operated while out on bail in the first case.”
Some World Music Artists Are Skipping WOMAD Because Trying To Get UK Visas Is So Awful
“Acts from 128 countries are due to attend this year’s festival. But [organiser Chris] Smith said some had accepted the invitation to perform, only to withdraw after looking into the visa process. He blamed the situation on the 2016 decision to leave the European Union, which sent a message out that the UK was closed to foreigners.”
Brexit Without Freedom Of Movement Could Wreck UK Arts Sector, Says House Of Lords
“The House of Lords EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee says that treating EU cultural workers under the same rules as third-country nationals could lead to a talent drain, as current visa rules require a minimum salary that far exceeds what many arts organizations can offer.”
Egyptian Military Court Sentences Actors Arrested For Play That ‘Insulted The Armed Forces’
The playwright, director, and cast of a play titled Suleiman Khater – about a young policeman who shot seven Israeli tourists in the Sinai in 1985 – were arrested and jailed in March following a performance near Cairo. Following the four months the men spent in prison awaiting trial, the tribunal gave them a suspended sentence of two months.
Missing Pages From Malcolm X’s Autobiography Turn Up
Their possible existence was first teased at in 1992, when a private collector at an estate sale scooped up material belonging to Alex Haley, Malcolm X’s collaborator on the book, who died that year. Years later, one biographer was allowed a 15-minute look at some of the papers, but otherwise they have been mostly locked away, surrounded by a haze of carefully cultivated mystery.
Classical Music’s Ugly Side: Rampant Sexual Harassment Is Institutional
Over a six-month period starting last November, The Washington Post spoke to more than 50 musicians who say they were victims of sexual harassment. These artists, many of whom shared their stories for the first time, described experiences ranging from sexual harassment to sexual assault, at every level from local teachers to international superstars. Opera singers spoke of attempted assaults in dressing rooms or in the wings during performances. Students described teachers inappropriately touching their bodies during lessons.
Was Artist Robert Indiana Exploited In His Final Years?
Wrangling over who had Indiana’s best interests at heart has stoked conspiracy theories about his death, said John Wilmerding, a friend and art historian who has studied Indiana’s work. Indiana might have relished this development, said Wilmerding, an emeritus professor at Princeton. For Indiana treasured fame, even as it tormented him, and courted chaos, even when it endangered his craft.
How a Beethoven Tweet Broke Our Twitter Feed (And Other Lessons About Social Media Today)
A few weeks ago we posted a link in ArtsJournal to a piece in the Toronto Star under the admittedly provocative headline: “Time To Retire Beethoven’s Ninth?” And the response on Twitter was, well …