The public sphere has been replaced with emotional outbursts and opportunities for consumption. Museums have followed suit, relinquishing their mission to enlighten and challenge the public and offering mere content instead. - ARTnews
As petrodollars flowed and it became one of Latin America's most prosperous cities, Caracas built cultural and architectural landmarks such as Parque Central, the Museum of Contemporary Art, University City, and Teresa Carreño Theater. Now, amid shortages of money, staff, and good management, they're moldering away. - Bloomberg CityLab
"'I'm going to kind of make it up as I go along, but I have some starting points,' he says. Aside from the novella, it will feature short stories, literary gossip ('as long as it's not defamatory') and writing about books – and film." - The Guardian
As of Sept. 1, any adult in Texas may carry a gun in public, concealed or not, without any license. Private businesses and venues may still ban guns and use metal detectors, but staffers worry that communicating this to some patrons will be, er, challenging. - KERA (Dallas)
With the post-Katrina levees and fortifications having done their job, the city's art institutions suffered no flood damage. The worry is how long the collections can tolerate Louisiana heat and humidity without electricity to run the climate control systems. - Artnet
"The suspension is the latest salvo in a months-long joust between TV networks and the company that has long tabulated (their) viewership, … (as the) industry (seeks) a new yardstick as its audiences light out for new digital territory." - Variety
"He was known outside Greece for the remarkable scope of his talent — a catalogue of more than 1,000 songs, film scores, symphonies, operas and other works — but he also was widely viewed in his homeland as the conscience of political resistance." - The Washington Post
With pandemic restrictions (excepting some audience capacity limits) lifted just around opening day, 520,000 tickets were sold for events at the International, Book, Film, and Fringe Festivals. The great majority of those, 400,000, were for Fringe events, and another 350,000 people watched Fringe shows online. - The Scotsman
The modern online public sphere, a place of rapid conclusions, rigid ideological prisms, and arguments of 280 characters, favors neither nuance nor ambiguity. - The Atlantic
The piece did enough to convince a buyer – confusingly named Pranksy – to pay the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of pounds only to have the currency returned after what appeared to be an elaborate hoax by a scammer. - The Guardian
Basquiat died in 1988 at 27, but in the last few days all sorts of people with various relationships to both him and his work have come out with their own theories on the painting’s origin story. - The New York Times
Romance Writers of America, which earlier this month rescinded an award given to the 2020 novel “At Love’s Command” over complaints that it “romanticized genocide” against Native Americans. - The New York Times
Wikipedia leaders presented a new initiative that could theoretically unify the information presented by all of the other Wikipedias, a proposed language-independent encyclopedia that has been generating buzz... - Slate
Her mother, Denise Jefferson, directed the Ailey School from 1984 until her death in 2010. Harper didn’t just attend dance classes at the school; she practically grew up there. - The New York Times
A longtime banking professional in both the private and government sectors and the first woman to chair the board of directors in the company's history, says that City Ballet has remained in "pretty good shape" financially through the pandemic. - The New York Times
