It started last summer with the Morton Cranial Collection at Penn, spread to Harvard's Peabody and Warren Museums, and, in recent weeks, has come to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Samuel Redman, a historian who's made a serious study of the history of museums' collecting of human bones, says the moves by those three institutions could be...
"I think part of the answer is going to be for arts organizations to look in the mirror and ask themselves, “What really was working before the pandemic? And what was not?” There may be fundamental changes in the way that they did business. I’m not sure that everything that we did was truly sustainable even before the pandemic...
One artist: "I miss the openings ! The free wine! And friends who you don’t get to see often, making rare appearances. Seeing art in the flesh was something I didn’t realise I needed so much for my own inspiration. It’s just not the same on the screen, even with photography. I want to see the print and the...
How rigorously will patrons expect to be protected from the dangers of the COVID-19 virus? Have entertainment habits atrophied during a hiatus of more than a year, or has the shutdown only made the hunger for the arts even keener? - San Francisco Chronicle
As blockchain technology evolves, transaction speed increases, and transaction fees decrease (all of which are slowly, but surely happening) and more content becomes uniquely identifiable using NFTs, the need for central authorities (aka gatekeepers) will diminish and possibly disappear altogether. Why? Because the creator class will be able to do it by themselves. The concept of an open, honest,...
The anthropologist Elisa Bellato has called this an ‘identity crisis’ for the artistic manufacture of the gondola. While the boat made with cheaper materials may be indistinguishable to the untrained eye, its authenticity – not to mention quality and craftsmanship – has been lost. Bellato suggests that this modern gondola is more of a simulacrum than a true specimen,...
"The Substation was founded as Singapore's first independent arts centre in 1990 by theatre doyen Kuo Pao Kun. The careers of some of Singapore's most renowned artists … were launched here. The arts venue has always been at the forefront of efforts to push the official boundaries that limit public expression." The closure was supposed to be temporary (its...
The downward trend is occurring at community colleges across the country -- the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center recently reported a 9.5 percent decline at community colleges nationwide -- and is being compounded by the acute socioeconomic effects of the pandemic on students. - InsideHigherEd
"Not too long ago, stars aligning their images with multivitamins or prepaid debit cards might have been eyed skeptically, their efforts coded as a cynical money grab (George Clooney for Nespresso) or a pitiful last resort (the Joan Rivers Classics Collection for QVC). When celebrities cashed in, they also risked diminishing their credibility as serious artists. Now the opposite...
"Just as an example, when I put a post on Facebook that I was looking for someone to help clean my house, I got at least 50 replies from artists that I've seen on stage and people that I've worked with. I also know of artists who have been in the profession for many years who have had to...
Last summer, COVID forced the cancellation of the flagship of the Festival City's summer events; this year, with new cases falling in Scotland and people getting their shots, the show will go on — in three specially constructed outdoor pavilions "specially built to maximize air flow and allow social distancing." Edinburgh's weather being what it is, the pavilions will...
A recent Harvard study showed that students actually learn more when education is built on “active learning,” which promotes working collaboratively on projects. And now, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the disruption of education as kids and young adults have been forced to learn from home. In the collective reckoning on what learning should look like going forward, I’ve found...
An American company is suing a Chinese company in U.S. federal court for copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property violations. The goods in question? Interactive toy robots. And both the defendant's motion to dismiss the case and the plaintiff's response have invoked the famous movie robots. - The Hollywood Reporter
Research confirms that arts education contributes significantly to social-emotional well-being as well as college, career and citizenship readiness. - San Diego Union-Tribune
Why did the media not come out and treat it as the truly awful (and unacceptable) fact that it was? "Unlike past stories, The Hollywood Reporter’s offers, for the first time in Rudin’s almost 40 years as a producer, an unromanticized affirmation of the seemingly endless anecdotes about him as a manager. It details his alleged misbehavior as well as his...
