“They are ordinary objects from the not-too-distant past. They are the stuff of basements, like what you might find at a yard sale, or landfill. Yet, put under glass and labeled, and the things take on a magical air. The more mundane the things are, the more you wonder why they have been saved at all, the more magic they seem to have.”
Pulp Thrillers In Egypt And The State Of The Egyptian Nation
“The golden age of illicit crime fiction translation – from the 1890s through the 1960s – corresponds to the construction of the Egyptian nation, from colonial rule and monarchy to President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization project. … And now, as authorities attempt to restore law and order, the crime genre is making a comeback.”
Where Will Amazon Start Using Delivery Drones (Since It Can’t In The U.S.)?
In India – specifically in Mumbai and Bangalore, where the e-retailer has large warehouses. Service could start as early as this autumn.
Sympathy For The Devil: Laura Miller Feels Bad For Amazon, Sort Of
“Lately Amazon has become the Goofus of publishing news, the surly, inconsiderate and gauche kid who never seems to get anything right. … Its pronouncements come in Amazonspeak, a language bred in a corporate echo chamber and the cheerleading threads of its self-publisher forums.”
How Bookslut Became A Tarot Card Reader
Jessa Crispin: “We all tell ourselves stories, as a way to understand and cope with what’s happening. … Stories were my way in. Those figures in the cards became characters and plot points. I would pull one card every morning, and then look for that character or that plot point in my own life. That argument I keep having with my ex, the one that never resolves? Five of swords.”
Poet Simin Behbahani, 87, The “Lioness Of Iran”
A two-time Nobel Prize nominee and one of the country’s most revered writers, “she was a fierce feminist who subverted the form of Iran’s traditional ghazals, love poems traditionally written by male admirers to women. Behbahani flipped the ghazals and wrote hers to men. She used them to write about a mother’s anguish over the loss of her son in the Iran-Iraq war and the horrors of stoning women to death.”
Vandal Disrupts Jeff Koons Retrospective
14 Artists Who Are Transforming The Future Of Opera
“The artists below are some of our favorite opera innovators, toying with non-linear narratives, unusual instruments and new media, to name a few. Some take inspiration from subject matter we’d never expect to see on an opera stage, from gentrification to bad shroom trips to Milli Vanilli.” Some you may know of – composer David T. Little (Dog Days, the upcoming JFK), “electrodiva” Pamela Z – others, you will. (includes video clips)
A Place Beyond Words: The Literature Of Alzheimer’s
“As baby boomers approach their seventies and Alzheimer’s disease becomes increasingly commonplace, more and more fiction writers are attempting to reach into that obscure space. … Because the full, internal experience of Alzheimer’s is an account that fiction alone can deliver, … [this is a good time] to reassess the burgeoning genre and determine what its writers can and can’t tell us.”
Art Isn’t *Only* For Art’s Sake; Politics Is There, But It Isn’t *Everything*
Alex Ross, responding to Jed Perl: “To debate whether politics is always present or always absent is to play a parlor game irrelevant to the complex, ever-shifting reality in which both artists and their audiences reside. … Ultimately, I cannot forget the historical context. But forgetting is not essential to a full and passionate engagement with the music.” Ross takes as examples the much argued-over Richards, Wagner and Strauss.
Deaccessioning: The Ethics For Art Dealers
“If someone helps another person commit a crime, he’s an accessory to the illegal act and probably guilty of an infraction.” But if an art museum commits the ethics violation of selling off art for operating money, is the dealer who handles the sale doing anything wrong?
Just Watching “Jersey Shore” Could Turn You Into A Jerk (Annals Of Suggestibility Research)
“[The study] finds watching ‘reality shows’ of that variety, in which cast members habitually attack or undermine their rivals, appears to raise the aggression level of viewers. What’s more, this effect is more pronounced than it is for watching violent fictional crime dramas.”
L.A. County November Election Will Include Arts Funding Measure
The ballot measure concerns “whether to absorb $23 in annual per-parcel property taxes over the next 30 years for improvements to parks and cultural facilities within them as well as recreational facilities, beaches and wildlife areas. If the required two-thirds supermajority says yes, the county would have $53 million each year to spend for all those purposes combined.” Most major arts venues in L.A. County are technically within parks.
What Do We Really Learn From Teaching Apes Language? Inside The Strange World Of Koko The Gorilla And Kanzi The Bonobo
“Koko is perhaps the most famous product of an ambitious field of research, one that sought from the outset to examine whether apes and humans could communicate. … But no new studies have been launched in years, and the old ones are fizzling out. A behind-the-scenes look at what remains of this research today reveals a surprisingly dramatic world of lawsuits, mass resignations, and dysfunctional relationships between humans and apes.”
St. Paul Ballet Makes A Go Of It As A Dancer-Run Company
“A little more than a year ago, the company and school faced debt and considered cutting back on performances and even closing its doors. It reorganized as an artist-led organization, with dancers taking on administrative roles. Heading into the 2014-15 season, it looks like the dancers’ dedication has paid off.”
New Route Chosen To Keep Cruise Ships Out Of Historic Venice (This Isn’t As Good News As You Think)
The decision is “to use a channel in the lagoon called the Canale Contorta Sant’Angelo to bring the vast cruise ships into the port of Venice instead of sending them through the city. … It is like stopping juggernauts from travelling along the London Embankment by rerouting the same traffic and more down a new highway across Hyde Park.”
And The Smithsonian’s Most Iconic Item Is … (It’s Not The Original “Star-Spangled Banner” Flag!)
The flag that flew at Fort McHenry only came in a distant second, with Woody Guthrie’s original recording of “This Land is Your Land” placing third and the “Lansdowne” portrait of George Washington in fourth.” And the winner isn’t even the Smithsonian’s property, technically.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.20.14
Ethics 101 For Dealers: Deaccessioning
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-08-21
Will Indie Film Survive?
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-08-20
Rationales
AJBlog: Engaging Matters | Published 2014-08-20
Name The Best Four Hudson River School Paintings — To Go On Stamps
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-08-20
The Six Sins of Joan Mitchell
AJBlog: Artopia | Published 2014-08-19
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India’s Top Film Censor Arrested For Soliciting Bribes
“The head of India’s Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) has been arrested on suspicion of soliciting a bribe from a film producer. Rakesh Kumar was arrested on Monday in Mumbai for allegedly seeking 70,000 rupees (£692) to approve a film from the central state of Chhattisgarh.”
The Library Is Ferguson, Missouri’s One Oasis Of Calm
“[The staff] has used Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to offer residents a place of respite for them to get bottled water, check their emails, and avoid the unrest developing on Ferguson’s streets.” (includes video)
This Soprano Is Morphing Into A Maestro (And She’s Serious About It)
At age 43, Barbara Hannigan “is developing a second career, as a conductor, and she seems to be stealing shows around Europe with some regularity.” Simon Rattle is such a fan that he sent her to legendary teacher Jorma Panula, who came out of retirement to coach her.
North Carolina Ends Tax Breaks For Movie Production
“North Carolina has been offering producers a 25% refundable tax credit, which meant, state legislators note, that taxpayers offset about 25 cents of each dollar spent. Refundable credits reimburse a company for its investments, even if it doesn’t owe state taxes.”
Why Isn’t The Edinburgh Int’l Festival Pulling In Any Of The Huge Fringe Audience? Asks Incoming Head
Fergus Linehan “pointed out that the EIF has the biggest theatre audience in the world on its doorstep, but struggles to exploit it. … ‘Why do we struggle to deliver an audience that looks like even a cross section of the people in this room, or even more, a cross section of people walking down the street?'”
Why People Fall For Fake News Stories (It’s Not Just Irony Impairment)
“‘This isn’t about shortened attention spans. This is about an overabundance of decontextualized snippets of info.’ Facebook headlines and Tweets simply don’t consistently provide the cues one would need to distinguish weird news from fake news, ‘unless the [source] is consistently ironic’.”
Head Of Korea’s Gwangju Biennale Resigns After Censoring Mural
“Earlier this month, a painting by the artist Hong Seong-dam was removed from an exhibition … following pressure by the Gwangju city government … The picture depicts the South Korean president Park Geun-hye being assailed by the families of children who died in the country’s MV Sewol ferry disaster last April.”