“The Arts and Activism ColLABoration, a pilot project funded jointly by The CrossCurrents and Compton Foundations to support the work of artists in partnership with organizers and activist organizations, announced five projects that were awarded $30,000 to engage in arts-integrated organizing through themes of democracy, power, and freedom in the United States.” – Grantmakers in the Arts
As Banned Books Week Comes To An End, One Might Wonder If Books Are Really Still Banned
The answer is yes. Yes, they sure are. And it’s not just Harry Potter or And Tango Makes Three. “Our government doesn’t actually ban books, does it? Sure it does! The federal government, and state and local governments, do it all the time. The New Jim Crow. The Color Purple. Excel for Dummies. In the incarceration capital of the world, books are often withheld from prisons because of their content, though sometimes for capricious and inexplicable reasons. When this kind of censorship becomes public prison officials often back down because it’s embarrassing. But still it happens.” – Inside Higher Ed
Of News Fake Or Emotional (Do We Understand The Difference?)
“What we do is share content that gets people riled up. Research has found that the best predictor of sharing is strong emotions — both emotions like affection (think posts about cute kittens) and emotions like moral outrage. Studies suggest that morally laden emotions are particularly effective: every moral sentiment in a tweet increases by 20 percent its chances of being shared.” – The New York Times
Has “Cancel Culture” Become A Culture Cancer?
“Whatever you call it—public shaming, call-out culture, or cancellation—what’s happening now is in no way a new phenomenon. But what is new is the scale of it all. This isn’t just happening to public figures; it’s happening everywhere that social media exists, and you no longer have to be powerful, or even notable, to get canceled. And sometimes the offense was committed when the guilty party was just a kid.” – The New Republic
The Troubling Symbiosis Between Museums And Their Rich Funders
The contradiction between the lofty stated values of the museum and the predatory exploits of its patrons would be great fodder for satire if it were not so deeply disturbing. – The New Republic
After 20 Years And An Asbestos Crisis, A Josef Albers Mural Greets Manhattan Commuters Again
“Hundreds of interlocking panels — black, white and Coca-Cola red all over — made up Josef Albers’s Manhattan, a mural in which geometry and meticulous precision met modernist vivacity. It was undeniably busy, which was appropriate, given its home high above the commuters bustling to and from Grand Central Terminal through 200 Park Avenue, best known as the MetLife Building.” – The New York Times
Berkeley Art Museum Director Lawrence Rinder To Step Down
In 2016, Rinder led the move of the museum from its original home, an architecturally significant but seismically challenged structure, to an acclaimed new building. The $112 million project, designed by New York architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, relocated BAMPFA from the southeast periphery of the Berkeley campus to a lively corner of Center Street. In the process, art and film became a much-needed linchpin between the university and the downtown of its host city. – San Francisco Chronicle
The Night Broadway’s ‘Slave Play’ Was Performed For An All-Black Audience
The producers of Jeremy O. Harris’s daring drama set aside all 804 seats on Sept. 18 for Black theatregoers, and they marketed the event almost entirely through direct outreach. Harris was thrilled by that night’s atmosphere: “People got out of their seats to go to the bathroom when they needed, people spoke, people laughed loudly, talked back, people (mon dieu!) texted with their ringers off and screens turned low. And the whole room felt free.” – American Theatre
The Art Of Ticket Pricing
A survey of more than 600 arts professionals (half of whom are directly involved in pricing decisions) reveals some interesting points about how those decisions are made — not least that a large majority of respondents would rather increase attendance than maximize ticket revenue. – Arts Professional
1,800-Year-Old Bust From Palmyra Digitally Reconstituted Based On Pigment Traces
Researchers in Copenhagen have scanned and examined an unusually well-preserved half-length tomb sculpture, discovered in 1928 and dubbed The Beauty of Palmyra, and analyzed the surviving fragments of pigment — red and yellow ochre, Egyptian blue, madder lake — to create a full digital reconstruction. – The Art Newspaper
Why Make Art In Times Of Disaster? The Point?
Michael Chabon: “Maybe the world in its violent turning is too strong for art. Maybe art is a kind of winning streak, a hot hand at the table, articulating a vision of truth and possibility that, while real, simply cannot endure. Over time, the odds grind you down, and in the end the house always wins. Or maybe the purpose of art, the blessing of art, has nothing to do with improvement, with amelioration, with making this heartbreaking world, this savage and dopey nation, a better place.” – The Paris Review
How Gallery Prices Impact Museum Diversity
This is a textbook example of how a narrow viewpoint and blind devotion to procedure can lead you to bad ends. It’s the permanent-collection equivalent of following a navigation app’s directions deeper and deeper into a known wildfire just because you know for certain the route happens to be free of traffic. – artnet
Olafur Eliasson Named As UN Special Ambassador On Climate Change
Eliasson is known for his environmentally-themed work, which includes the installation Ice Watch, displayed during the UN Climate Summit in 2015. He is the subject of a retrospective show currently on display at Tate Modern, London. – Arts Professional
A Need For A New Definition Of Museums
“We are used to seeing a museum as a building, a precinct, an institution and a collection. Museums are indeed spaces of particular kinds, but these kinds of international visits, exhibition loans and research projects suggest that, even more fundamentally, museums are networks.” – Apollo
A First: More Boys Than Girls Graduate National Ballet Of Canada School
The class of 2020 at the Toronto-based academy is comprised of 16 boys and 11 girls. – Newsweek
Self-Help For Millennials Means Something Different
Millennials aren’t looking for lifehacks to win friends and influence people; they are looking for workable systems that will sanction and codify their behaviors. Luckily for them, philosophers have been working on doing just that for the past several thousand years. – LitHub
How A Once-Dirt-Poor Italian Town Of 60,000 Became An EU Capital Of Culture
“Every European Capital of Culture offers a unique selling point – it goes with the territory for those attempting to brave the European Commission’s exacting selection process. For sheer boldness of vision, Matera 2019 seriously breaks the mould.” – The Stage
How To Stage A Dance Piece Overseas When The Choreographer Won’t Fly
Jérôme Bel has decided to do his part to reduce greenhouse gases by ending his travel by air. Catherine Gallant is dancing his new solo work, Isadora, in New York. Reporter Roslyn Sulcas visits Bel in his Paris kitchen to see how he choreographs on Gallant via Skype. – The New York Times
The Downsides Of Meritocracy
“Merit is a sham,” the preacher saith. “Merit itself is not a genuine excellence but rather—like the false virtues that aristocrats trumpeted in the ancien régime—a pretense, constructed to rationalize an unjust distribution of advantage.” – The New Yorker
L.A.’s Free-Shakespeare-In-The-Park Will Finally Get A Permanent Stage Of Its Own
“The Independent Shakespeare Co., which has put on [the Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival] since 2010, said the city soon will build a $4-million permanent stage where the temporary stage was located, pushing forward the stalled project.” – Los Angeles Times
Anne Midgette Resigns As Washington Post’s Classical Music Critic
“I am resigning from @washingtonpost as of Nov. 22 to work on my book, be home at night for my son, and see what the next chapter holds. … The Post is committed to replacing me, and it will be exciting to see a new voice in the role. This was completely my choice. Excited to see what comes.” – Twitter
Baltimore Symphony Musicians Ratify One-Year Contract, End Lockout/Strike
For the time being — this season — management got what it wanted: a reduction of the orchestra’s season from 52 weeks to 40. Thanks to a special donation, the musicians will be paid for next summer, and their total compensation will fall by only 1.6%. – The Baltimore Sun
What Amazon’s Big Emmy Wins Mean For The Future Of Streaming
With an avalanche of streaming platforms on their way to compete with Amazon as well as Netflix, what can Amazon’s very successful Emmys Sunday tell us about the future of the streaming wars? Mostly that the era of deep-pocket campaigning has only just begun. – Vanity Fair
Report: Cultural Districts Could Make More Impact
The report, commissioned by the Global Cultural Districts Network, urges cultural districts to plan, deliver and evaluate their social impact more effectively. It says there is “more that cultural districts can do to clarify where their social impact priorities lie and how they relate to their programme and other activities”. – Arts Professional
The Tools A Well-Educated Person Needs
For Aristotle, the virtues of character are not enough by themselves to work the magic of illumination that comes with exiting Plato’s cave. We also need the intellectual virtues: practical wisdom (phronêsis) and theoretical wisdom (sophia) – the latter being what philosophia is the love of. – Aeon