Two geology professors built a 3D replica of Sardinia, and it worked so well (including providing a vital connection for lonely, isolated students to socialize) that one of the profs then “spent three weeks in the Scottish Highlands, driving around and taking loads of drone shots, which he used to recreate the landscape around the village of Kinlochleven, another pre-pandemic field trip destination. He made waterfalls, planted 30,000 trees, and (in an act of perhaps unnecessary fealty to reality) populated the hills with midges. His son Harry made the buildings—refuges from said midges.” – Atlas Obscura
Austin’s Arts Funding Down By A Staggering 93%
“Money for Austin’s municipal arts funding comes from the Hotel Occupancy Tax of which the arts receive 15% of the city’s allocation. Funding levels are set according to tax revenues from the previous fiscal year.” The pandemic wiped out revenue from that tax, so arts funding for the coming fiscal year is projected to be only $1 million, down from $13 million in FY2019. – Sightlines (Austin)
Juilliard’s “Slavery Saturday”: A Teaching Moment?
“For nearly seven decades, Juilliard has been a byword of rigor in the performing arts, with world-class music and dance divisions. The drama division has been no slouch either, educating a who’s who of name actors from Robin Williams to Oscar Isaac, Wendell Pierce to Viola Davis. But on top of the usual stresses of education in the theatre, Black artists who’ve trained there say they’ve faced the added burden of racist incidents both big and small, and have felt unsupported in their efforts to address them.” – American Theatre
How The Sackler Family Got Its Own Art Storage Gallery At The Metropolitan Museum
“[It was] a 600-square-foot gallery-cum-warehouse that Arthur Sackler had commandeered as his personal storage facility, a deal he wrangled by dangling the possibility of eventually gifting the trove to the museum. … The ‘enclave’ had all of the benefits of being in the museum, with climate control, security guards, and prime New York City real estate, as well as its own number. Sackler had the locks changed so that Met employees could not enter the room.” – Artnet
Saudi Arabia’s $15 Billion Scheme To Create A Global Cultural Capital Almost From Scratch
The site for the project is AlUla, a historical site with ancient rock-hewn buildings similar to those in Petra, Jordan. The plan is for five different cultural districts connected by a tram running along 12-mile greenway; attractions are to include museums and galleries, an archaeology and conservation center, an outdoor amphitheater, a nature park, and, of course, luxury hotels. The goal is to attract two million visitors annually. – Artnet
Layoffs Hit US’s Largest Public Radio Station
New York Public Radio, which includes news-talk outlets WNYC AM and FM and classical station WQXR as well as a podcast production unit and the local news website Gothamist, had been running a deficit even before the pandemic, which resulted in a decline of 27% in sponsorship revenue. Fourteen jobs, about 4% of the total, are being eliminated, including several senior positions in the newsroom. – Current
Music Festivals In The UK Say They’ll Have To Cancel Without Government Help
The main problem is an inability to get coronavirus cancellation insurance (perhaps understandable at this point). – BBC
Returning Moviegoers Are Ready For More
After being stuck at home, without movie cinemas, for well over a year, it’s time to break out the big bucks for all of the extras. “The expanding appetite for an enhanced theatrical experience has given the film and exhibition business a shot of confidence and a weapon against streamers amid devastation caused by the pandemic. Yet it also means theaters that don’t offer upscale sight and sound, plush seats and other amenities might struggle to lure customers.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Seven Stories Press Runs Indie Risks, Reaps A Nobel Prize Winner
Running an independent press isn’t easy in an era of consolidation – and in a pandemic. Seven Stories’ editor-in-chief: “As a business the time of greatest risk—and very possibly also of greatest reward—is right now, this year, next year. We’re on a growth curve, which has not always been the case. The marketplace for books actually grew in America last year, but at the same time it is much harder today for independent publishers to break out a book than it was even as recently as a decade ago. We just have no idea what things are going to be like really post-COVID.” – LitHub
The NY Phil Goes Traveling, In A Shipping Container
Last year it was a Ford F-250 pickup truck that saved the day, and the audiences around the city. “Bandwagon 2 will trade in the pickup truck for a 20-foot shipping container atop a semi truck, which will visit four parks around New York City for weekend-long residencies through May. … Tricked out with a foldout stage, video wall and integrated sound and lighting, the setup is now more arresting and theatrically attuned.” – The New York Times
Motherhood Can Be Radical
Just ask Adrienne Rich. “Rich’s predicament, as a mother who was also an artist, remains a predicament today. And what she did with that predicament, what she did with her rage and frustration, remains deeply instructive. Of Woman Born lays bare the cultural and medical and economic practices that define motherhood, and exposes how our everyday experience of mothering is shaped by this enduring institution.” – LitHub
MoMA Blocks Demonstrators From Entering Museum
“‘We want to take over these institutions; they do not belong to the oligarchs,’ Amin Husain, one of the demonstration’s organizers, told a crowd of about 40 activists before marching from Columbus Circle to the museum.” The institution, and the NYPD, disagree. – The New York Times
The Grim, Open Secret Of College Bone Collections
In recent weeks, revelations that both Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania used the bones of teenaged victims of the city of Philadelphia’s bombing of a house in 1985 have shook the world outside of college forensic anthropology. But inside those worlds? It’s not a surprise that the bones of Black children would be used for teaching. “Museums and universities’ brutal habit of collecting human remains without family consent, proper identification, or public knowledge is far from a relic of the 19th century.” – Slate
Eli Broad, Who Spent Billions To Reshape Los Angeles’ Art, Architecture, And Education, 87
Broad, whose money came from homebuilding and insurance empires, truly changed L.A. “Dogged, determined and often unyielding, he helped push and prod majestic institutions such as Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art into existence, and then, that done, he created his own namesake museum in the heart of Los Angeles.” – Los Angeles Times
Canada Post Issues Two Commemorative Stamps Honoring Dancers
“Each Permanent domestic stamp, designed by Stéphane Huot, features a dynamic image of its subject in performance. Karen Kain almost breaches the borders of the three-by-four-centimetre stamp as she flies through the air as the Black Swan in a 1977 photograph by Andrew Oxenham. Fernand Nault is equally airborne in a 1947 outdoor photo shoot on Montreal’s Île Sainte-Hélène.” – Toronto Star
LA Dance Studios Struggle To Survive
“Some factors that helped the studio persevere? A landlord who is postponing the studio’s $22,000 monthly rent payments, PPP loans totaling more than $110,000, the launch of a subscription-based platform for dance tutorials, and the studio’s nearly 30-year legacy and global brand with franchises in cities including Las Vegas, Nashville and Shanghai.” – Los Angeles Times
Amazon Earnings Soar, Streaming Up 70 Percent
Video streaming — sometimes a throwaway in the company’s earnings announcements — was this time a centerpiece. Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who is shifting to executive chairman this summer, noted that streaming has risen 70% compared with the same time a year ago. Prime Video, which has recently marked its 10th anniversary, served film or TV titles to some 175 million global members. – Deadline
The Expert Problem — What We Need To Trust Science
“Complete rejection of expertise not only makes little epistemic sense (for there is no doubt that expertise exists); the complexities of the modern state make trust in others’ expertise indispensable. On the other hand, unqualified deference to those in positions of power and privilege vitiates the basic principles of democracy.” – Boston Review
Why Publishing Consolidation Suggests A Bleak Future For Books
“Canadian authors will have fewer houses to present their manuscripts to,” explained executive director Kate Edwards. “A culture of ‘blockbuster’ publishing will become more entrenched. All of this will increase pressure on independent presses who already struggle to compete in a concentrated market dominated by large global companies.” – The Walrus
Machines Are Getting Pretty Damn Good At Writing
In July of 2019, Microsoft invested a billion dollars, which allowed OpenAI to create a supercomputer with two hundred and eighty-five thousand C.P.U. cores, ten thousand G.P.U.s, and four hundred gigabits per second of network connectivity per server. Microsoft claims that it ranks in the top five supercomputers in the world, processing more than twenty-three thousand teraflops per second. The power of the supercomputer has been transformative. GPT-2, which John Seabrook took for a test drive in 2019, asking it to write an article for The New Yorker, had 1.5 billion parameters. GPT-3 has a hundred and seventy-five billion. – The New Yorker