“I recently got asked by an administrator at the Library of Congress to do unpaid labor for its website. … I was dumbfounded to get hit up by a federal agency with an annual budget of $750 million. Yet clearly my experience was not a random event.” Gioia proposes “five simple rules of etiquette for this ugly new beggar-thy-neighbor economy:”
Grumpy People Get The Details Right (Well, That Explains A Few Things)
“Feisty personalities, although unpleasant, can be tremendously effective. … You’re probably avoiding this strategy because you think that being negative is, well, negative. … The good news is that a whole range of negativity – of beneficial negativity, mind you – has nothing to do with being a jerk.
Jury Rejects Oklahoma Ballet Dancer’s Suit For Wrongful Arrest
“A jury has ruled against a ballet dancer with a bad hip who sued Oklahoma City over his arrest in a park, where he was exercising in high heels with his cane. The woman who saw Allen Galbreath and called police testified she was concerned for the safety of her grandchildren.”
Whatever You Get Out Of That Arts Degree, It Probably Won’t Be Well-Paid Employment (So Says The Data)
“There’s one very clear take-away from the latest report released by the collective BFAMFAPhD: … ‘the fantasy of future earnings in the arts cannot justify the high cost of degrees’.” Alexis Clements crunches the numbers.
Amazon Strikes Deal With Another Major Publishing House That Isn’t Hachette
“The agreement ‘is economically advantageous for both Simon & Schuster and its authors and maintains the author’s share of income generated from eBook sales,’ said a letter signed by Carolyn Reidy, the publisher’s chief executive.”
Information Is Power (How We Go To War?)
“Global information warfare is not virtual. It is mostly latent; that is, it is in the world but not experienced as part of the world. It is a war without shadows. You cannot see it, and you cannot hear it; it happens silently every day, can hit anyone anywhere, and we can all be its unsuspecting victims.”
Can An Art Biennial Fix New Orleans?
“Conceived in 2006, one year after Hurricane Katrina, the biennial was created with lofty goals. Billed as a kind of saviour of the struggling city, it was founded by the curator Dan Cameron “on the principle that the art of our time can play a significant role in the revitalisation of an important US city”, according to an early mission statement.”
The Realities Of Writing In The Age Of Citizen Critics
“Everyone is a critic. Everyone’s got a soapbox. And the worst fate for a writer isn’t being attacked … it’s being ignored.”
Why Has Innovation Become A Religion?
“I’ve decided that the champions of innovation-speak are as confused by the subject as anyone. To them, technology is a thing with a life of its own. And it can evidently only be understood via the ministrations of a class of reverent spiritual adepts, duly catechized in treating its essence as holy and its creators as demigods. And so their tales are ultimately as simple, as explicit in their lessons, as a sacred text.”
Smithsonian Turns To Private Funding To Supplement Its Budget
“In an era of tighter federal funding the Smithsonian is increasing its private fundraising efforts to pay for its stepped-up ambitions at its sprawling network of museums and galleries, the National Zoological Park and research centers, one of the largest collections of museum and research centers in the world.”
The End Of Traditional TV Networks?
“Eventually cable will follow bunny ears into the basement of dead technology, and online TV will be called something else: plain old TV.”
Paris Opera Ejects Audience Member In Muslim Face Veil
Officials at the Opéra-Bastille asked a woman seated in the front row, a tourist from the Persian Gulf area, to either remove her niqab or leave the theater after some cast members refused to begin the second act while she was there.
Memphis Symphony Musicians Agree To 38 Percent Pay Cut
“Memphis Symphony Orchestra musicians on Monday formally agreed to accept a one-year, 38 percent pay cut in an attempt to help the financially struggling performance arts organization reduce expenses as it works toward the goal of balancing its budget.”
Drawing The Disappearing Bookstores Of New York
Bob Eckstein offers watercolor-style portraits, with anecdotes, of the likes of Coliseum Books, Scribners, Shakespeare & Co., and Forbidden Planet.
How To Put Your Graffiti Tag On Insanely Expensive Art Without Actually Damaging It
“It’s resourceful, at least: Instead of going straight for the million-dollar works, an especially DGAF graffiti artist used the reflective surface of a Koons piece by spray-painting the white Whitney wall next to it. All the better to selfie with.” (includes video of incident)
Will The Networks’ New Streaming Services Eventually Devour Each Other?
“Do I get Netflix, HBO, CBS and Showtime?”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.20.14
Klinghoffer’s Unheard Silence
AJBlog: Creative Destruction
What do college students in the arts do after graduation?
AJBlog: For What it’s Worth
What is it about sunshine?
(Deborah Jowitt on L.A. Dance Project)
AJBlog: Dancebeat
The Perelman-Gagosian Brawl
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts
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Harvard Will Finally Get A Theatre (And Dance) Major. Will Princeton Ever Cave?
“We have so many students who are active in the arts and are trying to figure out how to make that a core part of their experience, and this does that.”
Suni Haru, Who Sacrificed Her Career To Help Other Asian American Actors In Theirs, Dead At 75
“To her Philippines-born parents, dismayed that she had participated in a public protest, Haru said, ‘How else can we let people know that here’s discrimination in the theater?’ she wrote in “Iron Lotus” her 2012 autobiography. ‘You’ll see, someday I’ll make a living acting.'”
Paul Krugman Is Deeply Over Amazon And Its Defenders
“The desirability of new technology, or even Amazon’s effective use of that technology, is not the issue. After all, John D. Rockefeller and his associates were pretty good at the oil business, too — but Standard Oil nonetheless had too much power, and public action to curb that power was essential. And the same is true of Amazon today.”
Beethoven Changed *Everything* About Classical Music, And Not All For The Better
Alex Ross: “He not only left his mark on all subsequent composers but also molded entire institutions. … How did Beethoven become ‘BEETHOVEN’? What prompted the ‘great transformation of musical taste,’ … the shift on the concert stage from a living culture to a necrophiliac one?”
Edward Snowden’s Filmmaker
“You asked why I chose you,” Snowden wrote to her. “I didn’t. You chose yourself.” George Packer profiles documentarian Laura Poitras.
Has U.S. Copyright Law Gone Overboard?
“Rod Stewart is being sued over the rights to an image of his own head.” (True story.) Louis Menand gives an in-depth look at the current approaches to the concept of copyright – and asks if we need to update our ideas and laws for the Internet era.
Content And Its Discontents: The Future Of Netflix
“If you really look at Netflix, it’s a pay-TV company. People still think of Netflix as a video store, because that’s their history. But the way a pay-TV service works is that people subscribe and pay a monthly fee for a service that aggregates content and offers original content of its own. That’s exactly what Netflix does.”