We are at the point where real differences between populations can be scientifically engineered, we face a new challenge. As gene-altered or AI-assisted humans emerge, how can we preserve the political sense of equal citizenship that we have (imperfectly) developed? – Noema
Survival: Hibernate Or Adapt?
Amid this backdrop, what are the options available to arts venues, upon which so much of the industry relies, when they find traditional spaces not fit for purpose within social distancing guidelines? Will hibernation or adaptation be the best long-term survival strategy? – Toks Dada
As We All Know Now, Time Both Is And Isn’t Real
OK, let’s get metaphysical: “‘The true present is a dimensionless speck,’ Alan Burdick writes in his book Why Time Flies. ‘The specious present, in contrast, is ‘the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’ ’—he quotes James. The specious present, Burdick adds, ‘is a proxy measure of consciousness.’ It is what we think of as now. Not the general now, as in “the way we live now,” but right now. And how long is now?” – The Paris Review
Museum Of The Bible In Talks With Iraq Over Collection Items That May Have Been Looted
“While a final agreement is still pending, the Iraqi government has reportedly consented to a $15 million settlement over 4,000 disputed antiquities in the Museum of the Bible’s collection, which have been handed over to Iraqi control based on the suspicion that they were looted. In exchange, the museum may retain the right to display some of the objects on loan.” – Artnet
Here’s One Set Of Turf Dancers On The Subway Who Are Actual Professionals
Yung Phil and his crew Turf Feinz may work the BART trains in and around San Francisco, but only between gigs for commercials, music videos, and concert tours. “We’re using [the subways] as another outlet,” he tells Jennifer Stahl. “It’s not just about trying to get a quick dollar. We try to push the movement, we try to push the culture forward.” – Dance Magazine
So Who Was ‘Jim Crow’, Anyway?
As you might guess, that’s not the name of any real person. Jim Crow was, arguably, the original minstrel show character. The performer Thomas Dartmouth Rice (1808-1860) didn’t invent minstrelsy, but he was its first famous practitioner, and Jim Crow was his (grotesquely stereotyped) blackface persona. – Mental Floss
Matt Herron, Photojournalist Who Documented Civil Rights Struggle In Deep South, Dead At 89
“A child of the Depression and a protégé of the Dust Bowl documentarian Dorothea Lange, Mr. Herron assembled a team of photographers to capture the clashes between white Southerners and Black protesters, aided by their white Freedom Rider allies, as they sought to claim the rights they had been legally granted a century before.” – The New York Times
Antitrust Rules Against Studios Owning Movie Theaters Struck Down (Will That Save The Theaters?)
Known as the Paramount Consent Degrees, the regulations followed from a 1948 U.S. Supreme Court ruling ordering Hollywood studios to sell off their national cinema chains; a US District Court judge has ruled that the current distribution landscape, including streaming, means those rules are no longer necessary. With chains reeling from the coronavirus lockdown (and AMC in particular facing bankruptcy), maybe Amazon and Netflix should just buy themselves chains? (Disney, no doubt, will.) – Wired
How The Internet Turned People Into Users
Google is, as Joanne McNeil writes, “the intermediary between my ideas and action forward, the glue between my questions and answers, a placeholder for thoughts and a way to sort my desires.” But it’s also an advertising, machine-learning, and data-collection regime, with material incentives for addressing it as an advice column rather than an algorithm. – The Nation
The End Of Second-Hand Bookstores?
Decades, even centuries, of history and tradition are disappearing because of market forces, and the pandemic that we are all suffering through has sped matters up. – The Critic
In Malawi Theatre Artists Debate: Low Ticket Prices Or Making A Living…
On one side of the debate, there were those who said the low prices were a way of coping with the prevailing circumstances in our economy. On the other were those who want art to claim its value and who feel like arts students should know better the value of art. They believe low prices undercut the theatre groups that charge a higher, more professional rate. – Howlround
The Museum Problem – Is It More A Relevance Problem?
In reality, museums merely reflect the massive inequalities in society at large. After the pandemic, museums may represent an even greater concentration of wealth in fewer hands. The American Alliance of Museums has repeatedly warned that roughly a third of museums may never reopen. Almost half of those that will reopen expect to do so with reduced staff. A study of the arts and culture sector of New York City suggests that the revenue of smaller institutions has been disproportionately affected by the lockdown. – Hyperallergic
Trump’s TikTok Ban: National Security Or Freedom Of Speech?
The company — which operates its U.S. headquarters out of Los Angeles and hired Disney veteran Kevin Mayer as its CEO this spring — said it has been working with the government for nearly a year to find solutions to the concerns, including expressing a willingness to sell its U.S. operations to an American company. “What we encountered instead was that the Administration paid no attention to facts, dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes, and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses,” TikTok said. – The Hollywood Reporter
What’s Needed To Defeat COVID: Morality Pills?
When someone chooses not to follow public health guidelines around the coronavirus, they’re defecting from the public good. It’s the moral equivalent of the tragedy of the commons: If everyone shares the same pasture for their individual flocks, some people are going to graze their animals longer, or let them eat more than their fair share, ruining the commons in the process. Selfish and self-defeating behavior undermines the pursuit of something from which everyone can benefit. – The Conversation
Charlie Parker at 100
In his too short, too fast, too hard, too brilliant 34 years, Parker transformed an art form, no less than Mozart or Chopin or Gershwin did in their similarly brief time among us. Like those revolutionaries, Parker played his instrument – alto saxophone – with astonishing virtuosity. But Parker also did as much as anyone (and more than most) to forge a musical language, one that dominated 20th century jazz and continues to influence it in the 21st. – Chicago Tribune
WPA Murals Slated For Demolition Saved, Thanks To Black Nurse Born In 1818
History of Medicine in California, a 1938 ten-panel fresco by Bernard Zakheim, is in a building at UCal-San Francisco that the school is going to tear down and replace. UCSF gave Zakheim’s family 90 days this summer to find a way to get the 2,000-pound paintings removed (at Zakheim expense) or they would be destroyed. Then a young scholar discovered that one fresco features Biddy Mason, a formerly enslaved woman who became an admired nurse, midwife, and philanthropist — and a cause was born. – The New York Times
How Non-Profit Arts Organizations Measure Their Impact
“The important idea here is this – there is a sharp difference between the meaning of the concept of art (which certainly doesn’t need you to be indispensable) and the meaning of the purpose of the art that your nonprofit performing arts organization produces. When your performing art makes its case by showing intentional measurable impacts, then it too will be indispensable.” – LinkedIn
Arts Indstries In U.S. Lost 2.7 Million Jobs To COVID: Brookings Study
“Examining the period between April 1 through July 31,” the Brookings Institution paper by Richard Florida and Michael Seman “estimates that some 2.7 million creative Americans were fired and more than $150 billion in sales of goods and services for creative industries nationwide evaporated.” – Forbes
Berlin Says Choirs There May Start Singing Together Again
“The Senate of the City of Berlin has announced a decision to allow choral singing in closed spaces to resume, under very strict and precise regulation.” (Very strict and precise, in fact.) – OperaWire
Christmas Pantos All Over England Are Cancelled; Theatres Face Crippling Losses
“Theatres are entering a critical stage in their fight for survival, with the cancellation of the 2020/21 pantomime season expected to cost the industry more than £90 million in lost revenue. … Some [theatres] have said that their annual pantomimes can provide almost 50% of their yearly income in just over a month.” – The Stage
WarnerMedia Lays Off Hundreds
Impacted staffers begun being informed about the cuts at roughly 10:30 a.m. PT. Approximately 650 people at Warner Bros. are expected to be let go, according to people familiar with the matter, while HBO will cut 150 and 175 staffers. – Variety
The Wellness Trap
Once we realize that we cannot find lasting happiness through relying on outer things, we might turn to meditation, but now a new problem can arise. Many people today are drawn to meditation practice for enhancing their own well-being: we would all like to achieve “inner happiness,” but again we are back to the search. The very attempt to seek a happy mind becomes endless, with chasing the happiness leading to more chasing. At the same time, our efforts to get rid of stress can seem to create even more stress. Meditation itself now becomes a new kind of hamster wheel upon which we endlessly run—running but not moving. – Lithub
Rudy Giuliani Being Sued By His Art Advisor
In November 2019, Miller Gaffney invoiced a total of $27,300 for her services appraising the estranged couple’s fine and decorative art collections in order to determine their market value “for equitable distribution purposes.” – Artnet
Major Layoffs At DC Comics
Roughly one third of DC’s editorial ranks are being laid off, according to sources. Insiders also say the majority of the staff of the streaming service DC Universe has been laid off, a move that had been widely expected as WarnerMedia shifts its focus to new streaming service HBO Max. – Hollywood Reporter
UK’s Summer Theatres Work Through, Around, And With COVID Restrictions
A stage on the beach in Brighton with audience groups at picnic tables. A solo show in a Belfast shopping mall and another amid the Narnia sculptures in C.S. Lewis Square. And, of course, open-sided tents in car parks and on lawns. Here’s how regional theatre festivals are making sure the show goes on. – The Guardian