ArtsJournal: Arts, Culture, Ideas

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Writer Robert Bly, 94

He "galvanized protests against the Vietnam War and started a controversial men’s movement with a best seller that called for a restoration of primal male audacity." - The New York Times

What If We Stripped Humanities Education Back To First Principles?

The Catherine Project’s commitment, borne out beautifully by our seminars thus far, is that great books are supremely egalitarian: They move and challenge us all alike. Indeed, what proves great books great is that they’ve stood the test of time. - Hedgehog Review

We Need To Puncture Our Knowledge Bubbles

"What we don’t know — about the lives of our neighbors and fellow citizens and why they think the way they do — is almost as important as what we do know." - The New York Times

An Appreciation Of Dave Hickey, Prolific Art Critic

Christopher Knight: "Lots of smart people write smart things about art but nobody was a better writer than Dave. ... Hickey, a brilliant and cantankerous wit, wrote for the ear. His work needed reading, not scanning, and rewarded effort with pleasure." - Los Angeles Times

It’s Well Past Time To Democratize The Arts In New York

In New York, the arts' elitism "stands in stark contrast to the middle decades of the 20th century, when the city was a haven for cash-strapped artists and New Yorkers across the income spectrum could make and enjoy a wide range of art." - New York Daily News

New Buyers Are Painting San Francisco’s Colorful Old Houses “Gentrification Gray”

"To their proponents, they're understated and contemporary, with paint jobs that will take a beating without ever looking dirty. To their detractors, they're unimaginative, historically inaccurate aberrations, the kind of thing an affluent biotech CEO who wears a gray Patagonia fleece vest every day might appreciate." - The Guardian

Will The Supreme Court Finally Declare Copyright Piracy Theft? (Wait… What?)

For quite some time, there’s been an esoteric debate running in intellectual property circles as to whether copyright infringement is best characterized as thievery. - The Hollywood Reporter

Why Did We Organize Time Into Seven-Day Weeks?

The development that really established the seven-day week as insurmountable, David Henkin contends, came in the middle of the twentieth century: the television schedule. - The New Yorker

Education As A Class Indicator (But Maybe Not How You Think)

Historically, in America, the true strength of the Classics and of a Classical education has not been among the elite but among the rising middle class. - Los Angeles Review of Books

One Of New York’s Biggest Collections Of Antiquities Is In The Manhattan DA’s Office

"The Antiquities Trafficking Unit is very much a victim of its own success. Set up in 2017 … to curb the smuggling of cultural heritage, it has seized 3,604 illicit items." 2,281 of those are still there; here's a look at eight of them. - The New York Times

A New Model For Funding Art?

It pools 100 medium-sized donation of $1,000 each, with the total amount going to one not-for-profit project. Community projects apply and have their applications assessed by the collective of $1,000 donors, who shortlist and select the successful recipient through democratic vote. - ArtsHub

Hong Kong’s Ambitious New M+ Opens, Built For A Different Time, Different Politics

The museum compares itself to Paris’s Centre Pompidou and New York’s Museum of Modern Art — but it has already moved to censor work as it walks a tightrope between its aspiration to be a world-class institution and the limits on free expression in Hong Kong. - Washington Post

King Solomon’s Mines, Archaeology, And Arguments Over The Old Testament’s Historical Accuracy

New finds at a remote site that's been identified, dismissed, and re-identified as the Israelite monarch's fabled copper mines have reignited debates about whether David and Solomon could have ruled over a great kingdom when no buildings from their period have ever been found. - Smithsonian Magazine

How The Week Shapes Our Perception Of Time

When you think it’s a Tuesday and it turns out to be Wednesday, you feel disoriented in a way that you don’t typically if you think it’s the 26th and it turns out to be the 27th. That’s the change: the real grip on our time consciousness that the week exerts. - The Atlantic

Davóne Tines Is Transforming The Song Recital — And Maybe Even Classical Singing Itself

The bass-baritone has made programming an art in itself, building evenings around a sermon or a Langston Hughes poem, slipping from Bach to jazz to Julius Eastman to plantation chant to R&B to Caroline Shaw. And, writes Alex Ross, he makes all of it matter. - The New Yorker

A Climate Change Imperative For Artists

We have to find a new art and a new psychology to penetrate the apathy and the denial that are preventing us making the changes that are inevitable if our world is to survive. - The Guardian

Some Encouraging Data On Whether And When Audiences Will Return

"In this blog, we first examine the historic impact of COVID on performing arts ticket sales and then we use the data to simulate three plausible 'what-if' scenarios – realistic worst-case, realistic best-case, and idealized best-case – to predict the impact of each scenario on ticket sales." - SMU DataArts

As People Continue To Work From Home, Will Weeknight Performances Remain Feasible?

Fewer people than back in The Time Before will be able to swing by the theater or concert hall after leaving the office. Will they come in from home? In no American city does the question loom larger than in San Francisco. - The New York Times

We Each Process Color Differently. Here’s How

Colour has a life beyond any individual perception. It exists as both the quality of a thing as well as an approach to that thing, or “a dance between subjects and objects, mind and matter.” - Prospect

Outsider Fashionista Passes Torch To 20-Year-Old, Takes Life, And A New Museum Is Born

Professionally, Steven Klein created logos and slogans for hotels and restaurants. But he belonged to no agency. Instead, as an independent consultant, he was a walking encyclopedia — and booster — of pop culture from the 1970s. The New York Times
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