“In the first major restructuring move of Byron Allen‘s ownership tenure, … some 180 staffers (are) to be given pink slips companywide. ... BuzzFeed, across all its units, had approximately 510 employees prior to the cuts. The company said it expects to see $29 million to $32 million in annualized savings.” - The Hollywood Reporter
“Cathleen Chaffee, who currently serves as … Chief Curator, is the museum’s incoming artistic director, while Jillian Jones, AKG’s deputy director, will become executive director. Under a new co-leadership structure, Chaffee will oversee the museum’s exhibitions and public-facing programs. Jones will guide overall strategy, operations and finances.” - Buffalo Toronto Public Media
“(She) transformed collections of bigoted bric-a-brac — Sambo dolls, ceramic mammies and crude renderings of pickaninnies — into potent works of assemblage that mined the searing history of race in the United States,” most famously in her 1972 piece The Liberation of Aunt Jemima. - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
“It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.” - London Review of Books
On social media, fans don’t just follow an era – they help bring it to life. Through videos, memes, fashion, conversations and creative interpretations, they shape the meanings that come to define a project and extend an album beyond the music itself. - The Conversation
I don’t want to totally wave away the issues these pieces are gesturing towards, but I’d argue the fear that we’re sliding into a post-literate society rests on a category error that feels endemic at this point. - Becoming Literary
For anyone with an Internet connection and a little discretionary income, the contemporary moment offers a superabundance of seductive distractions. Why then the pervasive mood of emptiness? Why are so many at once overstimulated and bored? - The Guardian
Visitors who pass these signs on the way into the museum may find them concerning; when they pass them on the way out, they will probably find them laughably at odds with what they have just experienced. - Washington Post
A coalition of 32 performing arts organizations has unveiled an ambitious vision to create four new and/or substantially renovated performance venues in Downtown Vancouver, with four possible location options identified. - Daily Hive
Perhaps the biggest opportunity created by detailed data is the ability to provide personalized recommendations. Supplementing traditional curation with analytical methods, more recently including machine learning and artificial intelligence, has become more common. - Ars Technica
Before we ask our students to read difficult material, those of us who teach in college owe it to all of them to explain that reading books in their entirety matters. If we won’t, or can’t, then higher education will have a bleak future. - The Conversation
Once focused on helping libraries, distributors, and book shops find and sell books, ISBNdb now helps AI companies bulk-buy anywhere between 1,000 to one million books per order, according to 404. - Futurism
A 12-year saga of destruction, rebuilding and yet more destruction, all underscored by an unedifying seam of political and institutional wrangling, reached an apologetic conclusion of sorts, with the recent announcement that Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s exquisite art nouveau creation is unlikely to be rebuilt in its original form because of stratospheric cost. - The Guardian
“After her Hayward show in 1993, Britain’s male critics unleashed a torrent of dismissive reviews. She was called a ‘commercial illustrator,’ ‘irredeemably amateur,’ an artist who ‘made good monthly images on calendars’ and ‘grossly overrated.’” - The Guardian (UK)
“A Chorus Line celebrates artists’ commitment while demonstrating — both at the story level and in the way the script itself was assembled — how easy it is to bully or exploit them.” - The New York Times
