ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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Irish Author Paul Lynch Wins The Booker For A ‘Soul-Shattering’ Novel

The book, Prophet Song, pictures a Dublin descended into fascist tyranny. - The Guardian (UK)

Remember When The UK Was Going To Return The Parthenon Marbles?

Greece remembers. But does Britain? And where exactly do the negotiations stand? - The Guardian (UK)

You’ll Never Guess Who Won The Streaming Wars

A Merry Scottish Christmas, anyone? - Wired

Spotify Quits Uruguay After Lawmakers Mandate Equitable Pay For Artists

Article 285 will put into copyright law the “right to a fair and equitable remuneration” for all “agreements entered into by authors, composers, performers, directors and screenwriters with respect to their faculty of public communication and making available to the public of phonograms and audiovisual recordings”. - The Guardian

How Mass Culture Gave Rebellion To The Individual

How did we get here, where men who benefit most from our social structures, position themselves as the little guy? This comes from a longer history of political shifts in America and of the rise of mass cultural consumption as a means of political expression. - 3 Quarks Daily

Redefining And Redeploying Expertise

The phenomenon is sped by automation, which usurps routine tasks, leaving employees to handle the nonroutine and unanticipated—and the continued advance of which throws the skills employers value into flux. It would be supremely ironic if the advance of the knowledge economy had the effect of devaluing knowledge. - The Atlantic

Athletes Are Reshaping Parts Of The Art Market

"Many sports figures are being courted by galleries, auction houses, art shows and museums." - The New York Times

Nora Roberts Has Been Laughing All The Way To The Bank

"Before Roberts, the romance genre was dominated by tepid and virginal women who were overpowered by brooding men. Roberts changed all that by thrusting romance into the modern era." - The New York Times

An Epic Pandemic Theatre Trek

Part I, in which "a Lakota playwright, 7 Indigenous actors, and an L.A.-based ensemble survive a pandemic, cross thousands of prairie miles, and confront centuries of history to make a play." - American Theatre

Why Activism Leads To So Much Bad Art

"During the past decade, politics has intruded on daily American life more than at any time since the 1960s; in the same period, technology has given a microphone or printing press to anyone with an internet connection. The result is the feeling that everyone should say something whenever anything happens." - The Atlantic

An Inside Look At How Fox News Started Peddling The “Trump Didn’t Lose” Big Lie, Even Though The Murdochs Were Against It

In an excerpt from his new book, Network of Lies, Brian Stelter lays out how, despite Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch being clearly in favor of conceding and moving on, the network first broadcast the conspiracy theories that ended up costing it $787.5 million. (The key figure: host Maria Bartiromo.) - Politico

What The Vegas Sphere Says About Our Relationship With Art

The Sphere is a distillation of an evolving relationship among art, artist, and technology—somewhere between a warm embrace of and a final surrender to screens. It is an acknowledgment and maybe even a tribute to the ways in which our screens have become extensions of ourselves... - The Atlantic

But Tattooing A Scannable Barcode Of Your Favorite Song On Spotify Seemed Like Such A Good Idea!

A growing cadre of music fans have joined the Spotify tattoo craze as a conversation starter or a way to commemorate sentimental favorites like wedding first-dance songs. But while many on social media tout the tats and how well they scan, some are starting to discover that nothing in life is permanent, even tattoos. - The Wall Street Journal

Cleveland Ballet Suspends CEO And Artistic Director Amid Investigation Into Alleged Firing Over Body Size

Artistic director Gladisa Guadalupe and president/CEO Michael Krasnyansky, who are married, are alleged to have fired a teacher at the company school's outreach program after seeing a photo of her in class, and then to have fired the outreach program's manager after he complained to HR. - WKYC (Cleveland)

A Father Makes Theater Of His Son’s Murder In The Parkland School Shooting

"Manuel Oliver donned a paper mask of the face of Joaquin, who was a 17-year-old senior when he was killed. He grabbed a hammer and turned to a life-size portrait of Joaquin and methodically banged it four times — once for each bullet that had struck him." - The New York Times

There’s A Big Controversy (As Usual) About The Latest Official Scrabble Tournament Word List

Actually, there are two controversies. One is about restoration to the list of some of the epithets that were deemed offensive and eliminated in 2020. More appalling is the addition of some word forms, particularly plurals of irregular nouns, that just don't actually exist in English, such as "feceses." - Slate

Read A New Play By Anna Deavere Smith: “This Ghost Of Slavery”

"For this work, Smith’s decision to blend her contemporary interviews with historical accounts of Maryland in the mid-1860s is apt. The echoes of history reverberate loudly, revealing the power of historical trauma to shape behavior in the present day." - The Atlantic

America’s (Unnecessary) Fear Of Black History: Lonnie Bunch

"In all my years doing research at the National Archives, I had never cried. …" The Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and co-founder of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture writes about the implications of his research into the post-Civil War Freedmen's Bureau. - MSN (The Atlantic)

The Fisk Jubilee Singers And The Birth Of The Spiritual

Vann R. Newkirk II, based on the diaries of Ella Sheppard, the group's first pianist and composer, and on materials in the historically black university's archives, recounts how the group came together in the 1870s to help save the impoverished school — and created a great American genre of music. - MSN (The Atlantic)

First They Took ‘Sex’ Out Of The Title, Then They Shut Down The Whole Site

Why did G/O shut down Jezebel when millions of readers click every day? You can blame AI - and "brand safety." - 404 Media
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