If approved by the D.C. Council, Reginald Van Lee will lead an 18-member board that critics describe as dysfunctional, toxic and beset by cronyism and white supremacy, according to internal documents and reports and interviews with 14 people associated with the commission. A partner agency of the National Endowment of the Arts, the commission awarded 1,044 grants worth $29.9 million last year; this year’s grant budget is $33 million. – Washington Post
How Data Science Is Analyzing The Arts
“Computer scientists are writing algorithms to identify the emotional arcs of novels. Sociologists are building statistical models to analyze why certain works of visual art resonate more than others. Electrical engineers have scraped tens of thousands of book reviews from the online website Goodreads.com to parse why some types of stories drive readers to talk to each other, and what they talk about. Evolutionary biologists and cognitive scientists have adapted models from information retrieval to study tens of thousands of popular Western songs in order to understand cultural change and the evolution of cultural taste.” – Cultural Analytics
Why Modern Science Is Vulnerable To Science Deniers
Turns out this Science entity doesn’t have a single voice, and in many cases hearing what it has to say isn’t straightforward. As intellectual historian Andrew Jewett notes at the end of Science under Fire, “Such blanket injunctions to place our trust in science, or religion, or the humanities, or any other broad framework, offer remarkably little guidance on how to respond to the social possibilities raised by particular scientific or technical innovations.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
In Venice, Building A New System To Protect St. Mark’s From Ever-Increasing Floods
The repeated, record-setting acqua alta events of late 2019 caused an estimated €300 million in damage to the Byzantine-style landmark — and floods are expected to get more frequent and severe as sea level rises. What’s more, the long-delayed MOSE floodgates in the Venice lagoon aren’t enough to protect St. Mark’s, which lies at one of the lowest points in the city and takes on seawater at tide levels well below what triggers the gates to rise. So engineers and architects are working on a €3.5 million set of extra flood defenses for the church. – Atlas Obscura
Choreographer Cathy Marston, Making New Story Ballets Cool Again
The 46-year-old Briton, who has continued to work remotely even as her big U.S. premieres planned for last year (Of Mice and Men at the Joffrey, Mrs. Robinson at San Francisco ballet) have been postponed, talks to Zachary Whittenburg about what she looks for in a story to tell, the unlikely novel she really wants to stage, and what reviews not to read. – Dance Magazine
How Do We Structurally Change Theatre Criticism?
“The answer is not more diverse critics because what the fuck does that mean? More diverse critics and then they go where? More diverse critics writing for £25 an article. Is that going to change anything?” – The Stage
Canada’s Federal Budget Has More Than $800 Million In New Cultural Funding
“The budget earmarks $300-million over two years to Canadian Heritage to create a recovery fund to combat that drop in employment and support the recovery of those industries. … There’s an investment of $200-million through regional development agencies for major Canadian festivals, and an additional $200-million through Canadian Heritage for local festivals and cultural events, including outdoor theatre.” There’s also $70 million for musicians and music venues, $60 million for TV and film, and $40 million for the Canadian book industry. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Charlotte Plans To Overhaul Arts Funding, With 50% More Money — But Some Artists Are Suspicious
“Last week, City Manager Marcus Jones recommended that the city take over arts funding from the Arts & Science Council, which has managed the funding process for decades. Jones’s plan would see the arts and cultural groups receive $12 million per year from the public and private sectors — a 50% hike from a proposal the council has been considering. … [But a group of] over 130 artists and other community members on Tuesday demanded that they be included in [the process].” – The Charlotte Observer
Daily Mail Newspaper Sues Google For “Manipulating Search Results”
It alleges Google “punishes” publishers in its rankings if they don’t sell enough advertising space in its marketplace. Google called the claims “meritless”. Associated Newspapers’ concerns stem from its assessment that its coverage of the Royal Family in 2021 has been downplayed in search results. – BBC
How Public Ideas Evolved In The Cold War Era
What most comes across is the protean creativity of the period, the globe-spanning connections that promoted it, and Menand’s mastery of large slices of it. “People cared. Ideas mattered,” Louis Menand writes. “People believed in liberty, and thought it really meant something.” It would be silly to say that people no longer care about such things, but perhaps they no longer do with as much vigor and coherence. – American Scholar
Consider The Environmental Cost Of Making Music
Musicians addressing the environment head-on only represents one side of the music industry’s engagement with the climate crisis. The way we listen to music impacts the environment. Streaming music uses a significant amount of energy, even though the technology seems to make sound feel immaterial. Kyle Devine is author of Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music, which traces “the history of what recordings are made of, and what happens to those recordings when they are disposed of.” – New York Magazine
Netflix Is Spending $17 Billion On New Content
That’s a notable uptick from the streamer’s 2020 spend of $11.8 billion, as the pandemic prompted production delays across the industry, and a 2019 content spend of $13.9 billion. – Variety
Infrastructure For Creative Workers?
That view is to see the rise of Substack and podcasting and Bandcamp for musicians who want to escape the tyranny of the record labels and streaming platforms—supported and enabled by other services like Stripe and Patreon and Kickstarter—as a kind of Distributism for artists and knowledge workers. – Hedgehog Review
Harriet Tubman’s Lost Family Home Discovered In Maryland
The site, on land recently added to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on the Eastern Shore, includes ten acres that Tubman’s father, Ben Ross, was given when he was freed. What’s been discovered are the remains of Ross’s cabin, where he brought his wife (whose freedom he purchased) and sheltered Harriet, when she was aged 17 to 22, and several of her siblings who were still enslaved. – The Washington Post
Chicago Says It Will Spend $60 Million On Arts Throughout City
The initiative, called Arts 77 (referring to Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods), takes in multiple programs spread over several departments of the municipal government. Along with plans to bring performance and visual work to parks, libraries, and other neighborhood locations, Arts 77 will see the annual budget for public art rise from $100,000 to $3 million — with an extra $3.5 million dedicated to artworks for the international terminal under construction at O’Hare Airport. – Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)
Richard Wright, Who’s Been Dead For 60 Years, Has A New Novel Coming Out
“In July 1941, Richard Wright, then America’s leading Black author, began writing the novel he felt was his masterpiece. Written ‘at white heat,’ … The Man Who Lived Underground was drafted in just six frenzied months. … Following a crushing rejection from Wright’s publisher and a truncated publication as a short story, the novel was shelved for eighty years — until now.” – Esquire
Chiefs Of ‘The Gold Standard Of Art Film Studios’ Retire After 21 Years
Steve Gilula and Nancy Utley have been at the helm of Searchlight Pictures since the turn of the millennium, and one could argue that the films they’ve produced have (as Brooks Barnes puts it here) “shaped global culture.” They’ve won four Best Picture Oscars in the past dozen years (for Slumdog Millionaire, 12 Years a Slave, Birdman, and The Shape of Water); if Nomadland wins this Sunday, that will make five. – The New York Times
With The Castros Gone, Will The Arts In Cuba Be Any Freer?
Since Raúl Castro’s government had recently had another period of censoring art and arresting artists, there’s some hope — off the island, at least — that there might be a Khrushchev-style cultural thaw coming. In Cuba itself, not so much: “Nothing has changed,” says one artist, “nor does there seem to be a will for change within the new leadership.” – The Art Newspaper
Anthropology Museums Start Reckoning: What To Do With Bones Of Enslaved Africans In Their Collections?
It started last summer with the Morton Cranial Collection at Penn, spread to Harvard’s Peabody and Warren Museums, and, in recent weeks, has come to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Samuel Redman, a historian who’s made a serious study of the history of museums’ collecting of human bones, says the moves by those three institutions could be a “historical tipping point.” – The New York Times