Stories

The Best Thing About LACMA’s New Building

In a startling and largely gratifying way, LACMA has done what the poet Audre Lorde, alluding to a different but not unrelated aspect of patriarchal dominance, deemed impossible: used the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. The change goes far beyond a remodel. It’s a reinvention, a recalibration, a revisionist fever dream. - Los Angeles Times

The Independent Philanthropist Changing The Future Of Brazilian Filmmaking

The Brazilian film industry has plenty of infrastructure for film production, but there was almost none for the early stages of development. So Olga Rabinovich founded, and singlehandedly funds, Projeto Paradiso to provide that support. During the Bolsonaro years, however, Rabinovich had to expand Projeto Paradiso’s remit. - Variety

Needed: A NATO Alliance For American Universities

“We need a NATO for universities,” said Lee Bollinger, president emeritus of Columbia University. “When one university is attacked, everyone commits to coming to their defense. We need less capacity of individual institutions to make decisions about where we should go in defending universities and more power in a system.” - InsideHigherEd

What’s Really Wrong With Trump’s Arch: A Symbol Of Autocracy

What’s really wrong with Trump’s arch isn’t something that is always wrong with victory arches but, rather, something that is always wrong with all the architecture of autocracy. - The New Yorker

FCC Opens Investigation Into TV Ratings System

The FCC has launched a new inquiry into the TV ratings system, including whether issues of gender identity are being included in children’s programming without flagging that content to parents. - Deadline

What, Really, Will Result In The Ticketmaster/LiveNation Verdict?

“I can’t wait for the judge to get hit with a $45 ‘Verdict Convenience Fee,’ a $30 ‘Gavel Processing Fee,’ and an $80 ‘Digital Print-at-Home Ruling Surcharge,” a Reddit user cracked. (After the verdict, Live Nation said in a statement, “The jury’s verdict is not the last word on this matter.") - The New Yorker

“A River Runs Through It” At 50

“In getting to its exalted place, the book had to navigate a tricky set of rapids. Though it sailed through them, a question lingers. ... Would a book like this, with its regional setting and its male and outdoorsy focus, face different challenges in today’s publishing world?” - The New York Times

San Diego Proposes To Cut Its Arts Budget. A Big Mistake

While this may be framed as fiscal discipline, cutting arts and culture is not a serious long-term economic strategy. It is a short-term fix that reduces foot traffic, weakens neighborhood business districts, and chips away at the culture that makes people want to live, work, visit, and invest here in the first place. - San Diego Magazine

Book Slop By Any Other Name (Or “Blake Whiting”)

Using AI tools and a pseudonym, unknown culprits are now profiting from my work and that of my colleagues. Worse, they are limiting what we can write about in the future. What publisher wants to publish a second book on an archaeological discovery, no matter how significant? - The American Scholar

John Luther Adams On The Sound Of The World

For me, the subject of music is its sound. And in my music, I want to be in touch with sound that I haven't heard before, that feels somehow elemental, inevitable. One of the ways I've gone about it is, I use mathematics. - NPR

A Visit To Africa’s Number-One Dance Training Center

“The main studio of the École des Sables (in) Senegal defies every convention of what a professional dance space should be. It has no sprung floor, no mirrored walls, ... no walls at all. The dancers work outdoors, under a large, tented canopy. … The floor is unusually treacherous: It’s sand.” - The New York Times

How Books Reinforced A Colonialist Mindset

The book became a dominant symbol of the age of development through the efforts of the new international institutions, and the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in particular. - The Conversation

Grappling With What A Soul Is

This soul of yours has obviously come into existence with your body. Yet equally obviously it’s not made of bodily stuff. It lasts through the night when your body sleeps. It wanders off and leaves your body when you dream. - Aeon

What Does It Mean That Some Respected Creatives In Hollywood Are Okay With AI?

“It may not be realistic to expect lockstep agreement with Guillermo del Toro’s perspective that he would ‘rather die’ than use AI on his films. … But it does prompt questions about determining the right amount of support (or at least agnosticism) that anti-AI advocates can tolerate in their creative heroes.” - The Guardian

Turns Out Florence Price Wasn’t The Only Black Female Composer The Vienna Phil Slighted Last New Year’s

The arrangement of Price’s Rainbow Waltz the Vienna Philharmonic played at its New Year’s concert in January has been criticized for bearing almost no resemblance to the original. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin says he commissioned an arrangement from composer Valerie Coleman; the Viennese rejected it as unsuitable. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (MSN)

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