“There has long been concern over the ease with which suspect funds can be laundered through the buying and selling of art. Now, at last, we are seeing a concerted attempt to get to grips with the issue, which — even if welcomed by most — has sparked resentment and wariness. This almost unregulated sector doesn’t take easily or kindly to attempts to legislate it.” – Financial Times
Even Great Journalism Isn’t Enough To Fully Understand #MeToo. We Need Fiction.
“It’s a truism to say our society doesn’t do well when faced with competing stories about what happened; that’s what ‘he said/she said’ has become a shorthand for. … To overcome that reflex, … we need to practice on something with lower stakes than the literal lives of accusers and accused. We need Me Too fiction and metatexts that help us understand this problem outside of a news cycle. And recently, we’ve been getting them.” – Slate
The Globally Networked Museum – Could It Be The Museum Model For The 21st Century?
Greece and Britain have the opportunity to renew their respective stories by leading the way in creating a museum for the 21st century. How it would be organised would be open to discussions. But at a minimum, it would be a consortium of museums from around the world prepared to contribute works from their own collections to tell the story of human history. The exhibits would depict the way that past thought, religion, politics, art and history has formed a platform for each stage of human development. – The Guardian
Construction Of Trump’s Border Wall Is Endangering Ancient Heritage
“This turn of events has been both somehow shocking and predictable. In June of 2019, archaeologists surveyed some of the area awaiting construction, which would include replacing existing fencing erected under the Obama Administration with a 30-foot-tall steel palisade, roadwork, and surveillance equipment. The team spent five days walking just a portion of the construction area. ‘Numerous previously unrecorded archaeological resources were identified, plotted, and evaluated,’ the survey report summarised. ‘These include 35 isolated [artefacts], 20 isolated features, and five archaeological sites.’ ” – Apollo
Behind The US Government’s Algorithm That Denied Forensic Architecture’s Eyal Weizman A Visa To Enter
Two days before Weizman, a professor at London’s Goldsmiths College, was due to fly to the US from Britain, he received an email from the US Embassy telling him that the visa waiver on his British passport had been revoked. When he went to the embassy in London last week, an official would only tell him that an algorithm had identified a related “security threat. That association could involve any aspect of his work with Forensic Architecture, which painstakingly pieces together evidence from a variety of sources when investigating human-rights violations and miscarriages of justice, often challenging the official versions of fatal events. – Artnet
Warning: Post-Brexit Border Policies Could Be “Disaster” For Creative Industries
“Although it is theoretically ‘points-based’, the reality is that it will be impossible to accrue enough points with a salary below £25,600 (without a PhD) unless the role is on the shortage occupation list; a list which excludes many highly-valued creative professions. In our sector, high skill levels do not always equate to high salaries. There must be recognition of sector-specific means of assessment including auditions, work experience and portfolios.” – The Stage
Artist Bans Critics Who Are Not “Indigenous, Black Or People Of Color”
“This choice might immediately strike some as counterintuitive; it certainly runs against the dominant conventions of criticism, in which theatres offer free tickets to all critics actively reviewing in their market, in exchange for reviews of their shows. Those reviews serve a number of functions including critical evaluation, historical record and support for future funding applications and, more immediately, they help get word out that the shows are happening.” – Toronto Star
How Language Mutates In The Corporate World
“No matter where I’ve worked, it has always been obvious that if everyone agreed to use language in the way that it is normally used, which is to communicate, the workday would be two hours shorter.” – New York Magazine
How Pianist Igor Levit Hacked The Attention Economy And Made Himself Into A ‘Thought Leader’
“Levit’s career is a stark demonstration of the dissolving boundaries between art and commerce, journalism and public relations, particularly in Germany. … He is a friend to media personalities and politicians. Journalists ask his opinion on climate change, the rise of the far right, books, the ideal body weight. He works with artists and comedians, performs at the Bundestag in Berlin and for the Greens. In England, he’s enraged Brexiteers; in the U.S., he’s ‘The Pianist of the Resistance.'” His media presence has reached the critical mass at which coverage leads inexorably to more coverage.” – Van
Study: Freedom Of Expression… Except For Arts Workers
More than eight out of ten survey respondents agreed that “workers in the arts and cultural sector who share controversial opinions risk being professionally ostracised”. The overwhelming message that comes across from more than 1,000 free text comments – running to 60,000 words – is neatly summed up by one person, who said “I often feel pressured to self-censor for fear of being ‘cancelled’ or bullied for not conforming to the orthodoxy”. – Arts Professional
Can A Sitcom About Gentrification Actually Be Funny?
“At its core, gentrification is about what it means to belong. And few places in Los Angeles are more hotly contested in those terms than Boyle Heights,” the Los Angeles neighborhood where the bilingual Netflix series Gentefied is set. – The New York Times
Study: Arts Sector Digital Efforts Stall In Trying To Attract Audiences
Research from Arts Council England (ACE) and innovation foundation Nesta has revealed “a widening gulf” between large and small organisations’ capacity and capability to adopt – let alone maximise the potential of – digital technologies ranging from cameras and phones to distribution software and digital art. Some organisations may already feel “too far behind the adoption curve” to test new technologies, the authors say. – Arts Professional
UK Venue Demands Theatre Companies Guarantee Their Shows Won’t Offend Patrons Or Face Fine
“The management may demand in respect to its right to object to any song, speech, dialogue, business, costume or gesture that forms part of the production, that may offend the ticket buyer; which the management may represent. If withdrawal or alteration is not so made, the management reserves the right to refund ticket money at its discretion and to deduct the amount refunded from the settlement figure.”
Should LACMA Start A New Building When It’s Already $443 Million In Debt?
According to the museum’s most recent 990 tax forms, filed in 2018, LACMA is carrying $331 million in county bond debt that was used to pay for construction of the Resnick Pavilion, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, the Pritzker Parking Garage and other projects. In addition to that debt, the museum has $112 million in other liabilities, such as accounts payable and accrued expenses. This brings LACMA’s total debt to almost $443 million. – Los Angeles Times
Inventor Of Computers’ Cut-Copy-And-Paste Functions, Larry Tesler, Dead At 74
A researcher and executive over the years at Xerox, Apple, Yahoo, and Amazon, Tesler had enormous influence over the experience most people have when using a personal computer today: in addition to cut-copy-and-paste, he developed such basics as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get, meaning what you print out should look like what was on your screen), double-clicking, and how hard you need to press a mouse button. Indeed, he was a pioneer in simply asking regular users, as opposed to programmers, how they wanted their computers to work. – The Washington Post
Major New Alexander Calder Museum Planned For Philadelphia
“A little more than two decades after a Calder museum was first proposed for the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the long-dormant idea has blossomed again, funding has materialized, and backers say that, by spring 2021, construction should get underway between 21st and 22nd Streets across from the Barnes Foundation and the Rodin Museum.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Nearly 100 Luminaries Sign Letter Threatening Boycott Over Ballet Director’s Firing — But Some Of Them Say They Never Agreed To Sign
The open letter, published in the French newspaper Libération and originated by choreographer Maguy Marin and theatre director Ariane Mnouchkine, threatens to withhold rights to all signatories’ work from the Lyon Opera Ballet unless it reinstates ousted director Yorgos Loukos. But several individuals whose names are on the letter, including choreographers William Forsythe and Benjamin Millepied and former Paris Opera Ballet director Brigitte Lefèvre, say they did not agree to sign it. (This, by the way, is the second scandal Libération has been involved with this month.) – The New York Times
The Whitney Houston Hologram In Concert Is… Kinda Creepy
The result, at least in what producers were careful to call a dress rehearsal, is intermittently convincing. The hologram gets some of Houston’s physical tics right, and the lip-syncing — if that’s the right word for it — looks pretty real; detailed visual touches like that rippling fringe aid in the suspension of your disbelief. It certainly helps too that the live band cooks. But… – Los Angeles Times
LAMA’s Plan To Remake Its Museum Home Starts With A False Premise?
Zumthor’s single, integrated composition (now tan instead of black!), raised high above the grime of the city, is just a building. The strength of LACMA as it stands now is its complexity; it’s more like a city, and a vibrantly messy one at that. It’s connected to the street, the neighborhood and its varied parts, encouraging movement between structures, levels and plazas, whether you’re in the museum or not. It’s one of the few major destinations in L.A. that feels like a true urban environment, not a newly manufactured one. – Los Angeles Times
Mutiny on the Bounty: Marron Estate’s Rich Art Trove to Be Dispersed by Dealers, Not Auction Houses
The late Donald Marron was a class act, so it struck me as fitting (not to mention smart) that his estate’s holdings of modern and contemporary art are not going to be hocked on the block at Sotheby’s or Christie’s — the usual fate of large collections that are put on the market. – Lee Rosenbaum
From Belgium to New York
When I think about the works by the brilliant Belgium-based choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker that I’ve seen over the years, I realize how the different New York spaces in which they were performed affected not just my eyesight, but my feelings. – Deborah Jowitt
Podcasts are Wildly Popular Right Now. Do We Care If They’re Accurate?
Podcasts rich in detail and narrative are finding big audiences. But many of the stories they tell are misleading or inaccurate. How do we know? How do we vet? – Harper’s