“I was inspired by the news that Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, and subsequently saddened by the news that the Trump administration was walking back that plan. So I created a stamp to convert Jacksons into Tubmans myself. I have been stamping $20 bills and entering them into circulation for the last year, and gifting stamps to friends to do the same.” – Hyperallergic
This Is Why Columbus Dance Theatre’s Founding Director ‘Resigned’ Last Fall
Veach, who founded CDT in 1998, quietly stepped down in October, and he told the press in January that the reason was health-related. In fact, he was accused of “improper behavior” with two underage dance students and was formally charged by police with (and subsequently convicted of) serving alcohol to a minor. – The Columbus Dispatch
Framing A Debate On The Purpose Of Museums In Contemporary Culture
In recent years, we have witnessed public calls to decolonize the museum space: the return of objects taken from other cultures, fierce debates about who has the right to tell whose story, exhibitions of alleged #MeToo offenders deferred or canceled, and artworks memorializing nations’ racist pasts taken down and/or recontextualized. Artists and activists, including hundreds of museum staff, have urged organizational leaders to disavow patrons involved in socially irresponsible investments that perpetuate violence and addiction. These events have shaped contemporary museum culture, motivating a profound questioning of the ongoing relevance and purpose of museums. – American Alliance of Museums
How Did Our Interactions With Historians Get So Pedantic?
Graduate students in the humanities can hardly escape reading Adorno and Foucault, and if they miss out on White, they absorb his arguments indirectly. So it is odd that, as scholars unite around the idea that historical writing constructs the past that it studies, they should at the same time turn to literalism as their favored mode of public engagement. – Chronicle of Higher Education
The Musical That’s ‘Too Dark To Live’: ‘Lolita, My Love,’ Lerner’s Worst Disaster
Troy Patterson: “Its first act is weird and perfect; the second indicates the limits of this salvage operation. In The Complete Lyrics of Alan Jay Lerner, the editors ask, in a headnote, ‘How could songs and laughter be woven into a sinister story of a murderous pedophile?’ In other words, how do you solve a problem like Lolita? You don’t, not entirely, but the attempt offers a rare view of a masterpiece.” – The New Yorker
In US, Demand For Foreign Literature In Translation Grows, But Number Of Translated Books Published Declines
As one publisher put it, “Translated literature has found recent mainstream success partly because books coverage, like Congress, is catching up to the changing culture of America.” Yet for two years running, the number of translations published here has fallen. – Publishers Weekly
The Future Of Crowdfunding For Theatre Artists Of Color: An Online Conference
Inspired from a conversation with The Movement Theatre Company after their historic #25kin25days campaign for Aleshea Harris’ What To Send Up When It Goes Down, Advancing Arts Forward teamed up with HowlRound Theatre Commons for a panel on the future crowdfunding in the theatre. The panel included a staff member who works with arts projects at Kickstarter and theatre artists/producers who crowdfund using other platforms such Drip and Patreon. With a panel of theatremakers of color, we also held space to discuss new opportunities that crowdfunding may offer along with what it means to be fundraising for the arts as a person of color. (video of 90-minute discussion) – HowlRound
At Last, Académie Française Allows Feminine Forms Of Job Titles
At least they agree on something. “Female researchers, authors and firefighters in France could soon be known as chercheuses, autrices and sapeuses-pompières after the conservative Académie Française abandoned years of opposition to the feminisation of job titles.” – The Guardian
Signs Are Pointing To A Big Slowdown In Charitable Giving
Signs of an impending slowdown in charitable giving are emerging from multiple studies examining contributions last year, particularly those from donors of modest means. For example, a new analysis of giving to more than 4,500 charities released by the Association of Fundraising Professionals this week found that overall donations in 2018 were up by only 1.6 percent, lower than the rate of inflation. – Inside Philanthropy
Congressman Writes Jeff Bezos, And Five Anti-Vaxxer Docs Get Pulled From Amazon Prime Video
“The anti-vax documentaries had been available in the U.S. as part of Prime Video but as of Friday afternoon were not available to stream. … The move came just hours after U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) publicly announced that he’d sent a letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos expressing concern that Amazon is ‘surfacing and recommending products and content that discourage parents from vaccinating their children.'” – Variety
UK Panel Rules National Gallery’s Laid-Off Educators Should Have Rights As Workers, Not Freelancers
Mind you, the tribunal didn’t find that the 27 plaintiffs were unfairly sacked; neither did it say they should have all the rights of Gallery employees (not the same thing as “workers” under English employment law). But the ruling did say that the group, mostly lecturers and docents, must “enjoy benefits such as minimum wage, holiday pay, and protection from dismissal, which self-employed contractors do not” — a finding with major implications for how freelancers are treated in Britain. – Hyperallergic
It’s Cold In Minnesota. Dogs (And Their Humans) Need A Place To Walk. Enter The Shopping Mall
“That first weekend there were probably 300 dogs. The area has a huge dog community, and it spread like wildfire.” With stores closed and escalators stopped, the two-story shopping center quickly teemed with dogs and their people, flowing along the perimeter of the mall like the classic image of early-morning mall walkers. What was intended to be a once-a-month winter event turned into a year-round weekly walking bonanza, save for the holiday season, when dog-walking was paused for a few weeks to accommodate extended shopping hours. – CityLab
Behind Steven Spielberg’s Campaign To Exclude Netflix
The studio complaints about Netflix break down into a few simple categories. The first is that they spent way more money on Oscars marketing this year than anybody else—reported numbers range as high as $50 million, although even the more conservative $25 million would be five times what Universal spent for Green Book. And second, there’s the whole “they don’t run their films in theaters unless we make them” thing. – AV Club
Fake Images: Can You Tell Which Of These Faces Is Real And Which Has Been Created By AI? (It’s Difficult)
“When a new technology like this comes along, the most dangerous period is when the technology is out there but the public isn’t aware of it,” Bergstrom tells The Verge. “That’s when it can be used most effectively.” – The Verge
Meet Dr. Legato, The Bay Area’s Preeminent Sax Player
As one fan puts it, he’s the “ghost of Lester Young.” The irony is that he’s not that well known outside the jazz world. Nevertheless, he has hundreds of fans in social media, particularly on YouTube. He’s the saxman’s saxman, particularly for aficionados of Bebop. Moreover, he’s playing somewhere most nights; at the Seahorse in Sausalito; in the city, at Bird and Beckett in Glen Park, or the Deluxe in the Haight; or the Backroom in Berkeley, or the Sound Room in Oakland.
What To Do With Mexico City’s Massive Public Murals That Sit On A Crumbling Complex Of Earthquake-Damaged Buildings?
The Centro SCOP’s murals were created with pride and hope in the 1950s, but two earthquakes, and the vagaries of politics, may consign them to rubble – or to be moved, as some recently have been, without much regard for preservation. “The buildings harbor a uniquely Mexican form of mural making, in which colored stones from different regions are embedded in concrete panels (sturdy materials that can withstand all manner of urban elements). In addition, the scale at which they were deployed at Centro SCOP is unprecedented.” – Los Angeles Times
André Previn And The Houston Symphony Were Not A Match Made In Heaven
The year was 1966. “It seemed full of promise. Houston, the vibrant, growing city that had become the center of manned spaceflight and medicine, and André Previn, the wunderkind Oscar winner who toiled in the world of jazz and classical music.” Then came the drop in ticket sales, and the disastrous tour. – Houston Chronicle
A New, Ruff Player In ‘There’s A Museum For Everything’
Perk those ears up, sniff the wind, and trot on over to, yes, a new museum for humans’ best friend. When you enter New York’s Museum of the Dog, “right away, you’ll stand before a large screen that invites you to find out what breed of dog you, a human, are — like a BuzzFeed quiz in real life. The screen will take your picture, analyze it and show you the dog you most resemble.” (And no, it’s not a pop-up Instagram-bait museum, despite that entry.) – The Washington Post
Historian Li Xueqin, Who Helped China Embrace Antiquity, Has Died At 85
Li, who wrote more than 40 books and 1000 articles, had to walk the line, including attacking his mentor both personally and professionally during the Cultural Revolution. But inside China, “Li was better known as the country’s leading historian. He participated in some of the most important Chinese archaeological digs of the 20th century, like one at Mawangdui, which yielded texts that helped reshape scholarly understanding of ancient China.” – The New York Times
Saying ‘Ciao’ To The Met’s Too-Much-Is-Never-Enough ‘Aida’
Unbelievably, the run of Sonja Frisell’s grand, gaudy, beloved (and reviled for its length) Aida is coming to an end this week as the Met updates Aida to be sleeker and, yes, shorter. Zachary Woolfe of The New York Times is going to miss the old one: “I love the ridiculous too-much-ness of that moment, with extras circling back into the parade again and again in different costumes, trying to convince us that this really is a cast of thousands. I love the flickering torchlight emanating from the chamber where the priests judge Radamès. I love the starlit Nile Scene, and I love the smoky temple rituals.” – The New York Times
Britain’s National Theatre Archive Gets A Quarter-Century Celebration
Some contributions to the celebratory exhibit are slightly more elaborate than others: “The security guard at the NT Archive, Slav Kirichok, who also happens to be a talented photographer and film-maker, has created a short video in tribute to Danny Boyle’s 2011 production of Frankenstein.” – The Stage (UK)
Azerbaijan And The ‘Worst Cultural Genocide Of The 21st Century’
For 30 years, the country of Azerbaijan has “been engaging in a systematic erasure of the country’s historic Armenian heritage,” including a necropolis dating back to the 6th century. A new report (for Hyperallergic) says the erasure of the necropolis “marked the final stage of a broader campaign to denude Nakhichevan of its indigenous Armenian Christian past.” – The Guardian (UK)
Using Fiction To Reshape Our Understandings Of Los Angeles
Nikki Darling, author of Fade Into You, about her book and LA: “When communities of color are shown, it’s usually associated with violence and turmoil. In my lived experience, all sections of the city contain a swirled variance of different lived realities, histories, and ancestries. People have lived here long before Mulholland Drive and Raymond Chandler. Los Angeles is as old as the fault lines that run beneath it. I wanted to shake the city loose from its static image.” – LitHub
Two Centuries Of Incorrect Labeling Made Us Think Gilbert Stuart Painted A Portrait Of George Washington’s Enslaved Chef
So the painting isn’t a Stuart, and it’s definitely not a portrait of a chef (and certainly not Hercules), say experts. What the heck? Errors of interpretation. “‘No American cook in the colonies dressed like that,’ said Evans, noting that the now-familiar chef’s toque did not appear until the 1820s. ‘It’s a fantasized image of what people want, because people want to have an image of Hercules. And people see the things they want to see.'” – Philadelphia Inquirer
Bombing the Culture
Has any artistic movement since been as all-encompassing as the counterculture of the 1960s? – Jan Herman