Elizabeth Merritt: “All too often the decisions we make as individuals, companies, or countries are only good decisions if examined in a very short time frame. I call this phenomenon temporal colonialism. … We’re still working out how to decolonize the present (in so far as that is possible). What would it look like to decolonize the future? How do we give future generations a voice in the decisions we make today? … As you knew I would, I am going to make the case that museums can play a role in decolonizing the future as well.” – American Alliance of Museums
Prose Poetry: So If Everything Is A Poem, Then Nothing Is
It’s the insiders—the poets, the tenured—who like to “problematize” poetry and wield their whatabouts. The “prose poem” is one of the most abiding whatabouts. It remains an outlier, a problem. – The Walrus
A Miami Arts Organization Wants to Build Hundreds of Affordable Housing Units for Artists in an Art Deco Former Bakery
“Bakehouse Art Complex, an arts facility in Miami’s Wynwood district, is planning to build 250 units of affordable artist housing on its two-acre campus. … Today, the building houses 60 studios (occupied by some 100 artists), two galleries, and facilities for printmaking, photo development, ceramics, woodworking, and welding. Applicants for Bakehouse studios are evaluated based on need and merit, with an eye toward creating a community that is diverse in both the artists’ cultural background, as well as their medium and discipline.” – Artnet
All-Black orchestra showcases tunes that speak to the culture
“Jason Ikeem Rodgers, founder and music director for Atlanta’s Orchestra Noir, has captivated audiences with his fusion of classical music and contemporary genres like hip-hop and R&B. … ‘For the past 20 to 30 years, the symphony has been dying,’ he said. ‘I think hip-hop and R&B within the symphony is a great way to revive an old art.'” – Qcitymetro (Charlotte)
State Of Illinois Wants To Sell/Demolish One Of Chicago’s Best Post-Modernist Buildings
“In 32 years of annual “most endangered” designations from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Thompson Center is the youngest building ever to make the list. It’s also a prominent presence on the endangered lists of local activist groups Preservation Chicago and Landmarks Illinois (which, looking at the environmental impact, estimates that demolishing the center would create 145 million pounds of waste).” – Chicago Reader
When Copy Editors Backstopped The News Room
“It makes me crazy reading sloppy, typo-strewn copy. Ditto for readers, as has been made clear by the hundreds of emails I receive complaining about errors and inexcusable typos. The takeaway is that we just don’t care enough to give every story a good shake.” – Toronto Star
The Oldest Spinning Top Is About 5,500 Years Old [VIDEO]
Apparently, we can’t stop being fascinated with the momentary feel that perpetual motion could happen, if only we spun perfectly. – Aeon
Invent A Better Book? Maybe We Don’t Need To
“In hindsight, we can see how rarely one technology supersedes another: the rise of the podcast makes clear that video didn’t doom audio any more than radio ended reading. Yet in 1913, a journalist interviewing Thomas Edison on the future of motion pictures recounted the inventor declaring confidently that “books … will soon be obsolete in the public schools.” – The Paris Review
The Exhibition That Made, And Almost Wrecked, Francis Bacon’s Career
His 1970 solo show at the Grand Palais in Paris meant to establish Bacon in the very highest echelons of living painters — even, he hoped, as a peer to Picasso. Then his erstwhile lover, the subject of many of the works on display, killed himself in their hotel room just before the show’s opening. – The Guardian
Betty Corwin, Who Saved Broadway Performances For Posterity, Dead At 98
The Theater on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts “was the charismatic Ms. Corwin’s baby. She proposed it to the library in 1969 and, told that she could pursue it as a volunteer, coaxed it into being through a feat of extraordinary diplomacy, persuading each theatrical union that recordings would neither lead to piracy nor harm the box office.” – The New York Times
Audiences Prefer Actors With Disabilities To Play Characters With Disabilities: Study
“Findings from the Ruderman Family Foundation’s just released effort, Disability Inclusion in Movies and Television, show that … 55% would like to see characters with disabilities portrayed authentically. … [The study also found that] viewers rank ‘diversity’ in the top five most valuable characteristics for content when disability is included in the definition.” – Los Angeles Times
Artist Plants A Forest Inside A Soccer Stadium. Cue Backlash
“I have been working on this idea for 30 years, and the fact that it landed right on the dot amid this whole climate discussion feels a bit eerie to me,” he says. “ […] I am producing a radical image through relatively simple means: by taking something and setting it in a new context, it challenges people’s perception. I want them to reflect on how they deal with nature.” – Hyperallergic
Fire At NYC’s Cathedral Of St. John The Devine
Oil paintings and an 18th-century icon were destroyed and other artworks damaged. And the plumes of smoke that rose up through heating vents in the floor into the cathedral’s vast interior left soot everywhere. – The New York Times
The Chasm of Disbelief
Think you (or your organization) don’t understand the people you are trying to reach? If you are talking about people other than your current attendees/donors and their peers, you are 100% correct; and they understand you even less. (And if you don’t think you don’t understand you are probably deluding yourself.) – Doug Borwick
Norman Lear At 97
For Jimmy Kimmel, who produced “Live in Front of a Studio Audience” with Lear, the iconic producer is an inspiration: “To be 97 years old and looking to the future, and trying to make the world a better place, I think is a pretty unselfish thing to do.” – Variety
The Shambolic Ways In Which We Learn To Write
John Warner defines “the writer’s practice” as a set of “attitudes, skills, habits of mind, and knowledge” that writers embody, carry with them, or engage in. He describes the most important writerly attitude this way: “Writers continually build expertise without ever becoming expert. It is like being inside an endlessly right-scrolling game of Super Mario World – except you never get to defeat the big boss.” – Plough
Why Ruben Santiago-Hudson Is Taking August Wilson’s ‘Jitney’ On A Coast-To-Coast Tour
“Many audiences haven’t seen August Wilson’s plays done well, so my mission is to go out and do the plays well the way the author intended. The celebration of African American life and the way we navigate this landscape.” – American Theatre
In Rare Show Of Defiance, Russian Celebrities Rally Behind Jailed Actor
Pavel Ustinov, 24, was sentenced to 3½ years in prison for assaulting a police officer, though video shows that he was simply a bystander who was attacked by police at a demonstration. Many of his well-known colleagues are leading public calls for his release despite the risks to their own careers: most of them work in government-sponsored theatre, television and film. – The New York Times
Merriam-Webster Dictionary Admits ‘They’ As Nonbinary Singular Pronoun
“We will note that ‘they’ has been in consistent use as a singular pronoun since the late 1300s; that the development of singular ‘they’ mirrors the development of the singular ‘you’ from the plural ‘you'” noted M-W on its blog, “yet we don’t complain that singular ‘you’ is ungrammatical.” – The Guardian
The Struggle For Control Of The Salzburg Easter Festival Is Over
“The fight has pitted two strong-willed artistic leaders against one another: Christian Thielemann, the principal conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Easter Festival’s artistic director since 2013; and the man tapped last November as his successor, Nikolaus Bachler, who is nearing the end of his tenure as general manager of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.” Thielemann and his orchestra will be leaving Salzburg after 2022, and Bachler plans “to reinvent the festival.” – The New York Times
Cokie Roberts, Longtime Commentator At NPR And ABC, Dead At 75
“[She] earned three Emmy Awards, was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame in 2000 and was named a ‘living legend’ by the Library of Congress in 2008. The consummate Washington insider, she had covered Capitol Hill since the Carter administration” and literally grew up in and around the halls of Congress. – The Washington Post
Getty Trust Commits $100 Million To Conserve Antiquities Around The World
The trust, which operates the Getty Museum, has long focused on ancient Greek and Roman antiquities. This new program, however, is designed to expand the conservation efforts it underwrites to countries where they have not worked before, including Southeast Asia and Central and South America. – The New York Times
Dublin’s Quirkiness Is Being Scrubbed. Why?
The past few years have seen several of Dublin’s murals painted over, street markets canceled, and bars and cultural venues closed. Often, the things replacing them are facilities for tourists. With many fearing that the city’s vitality and character is being permanently stripped away, there’s a growing concern that Dublin risks being totally surrendered to pressures created by developers and the tourist industry. – CityLab
Propwatch: the bell in ‘Amsterdam’
It’s kind of calling-for-immediate-attention bell that invites a sharp smack with palm or finger, and drives Basil Fawlty to the very verge of derangement. Ping! It’s a comedy device – an indicator of short-fuse entitlement, an enhancer of retro-farce chaos. It retains its comic tinge in Amsterdam, which is unnerving, given the context. – David Jays
£1 Billion Investment In London To Create Cultural Events Centre
Investment includes plans to include a 1500-seat theatre, a 1000-seat performing arts venue, a four-screen cinema and a 670,000 square foot creative co-working space, as well as two hotels, shops, cafes and a “jazz-club style restaurant and venue”. When completed in 2023, the site is projected to attract up to £9m in consumer spending and 10 million visitors to the borough each year. – Arts Professional