“We need to learn how to construct plural truths and yet manage consistent ethics. We need to move away from monotheism. The different communities engaged with art have a potentially revolutionary role to play in this, especially if they again elide its old claim to autonomous action within the artistic field, with a real stake in a change in thinking about and acting in society.”
Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk Has A Manifesto For Museums: Think Small (And Avoid Governments)
“The aim of the great state-sponsored museums is to represent a state and that is neither a good nor innocent aim. … It is imperative that museums become smaller, more orientated towards the individual and more economical. This is the only way that they can ever tell stories on a human scale. The great museums invite us to forget our humanity and to accept the state and its human masses. This is why there are millions, outside the West, who are frightened by museums. This is why museums are associated with governments.”
Gallerist Sues Ex-Colleagues For Selling Him Forged Monets And Picassos
“In lawsuits obtained by Page Six,” Alex Komolov, owner of the Alskom Gallery “claims David Segal and Mohamed Serry tricked him into buying $30 million worth of fraudulent Monet, Vlaminck, Picasso and Manet paintings, among other antiques, between 2007 and 2009.”
How To Figure Out When The Widsom Of Crowds Isn’t So Wise
“Metaknowledge functions as a powerful bullshit detector. It can separate crowd members who actually know something from those who are guessing wildly or just parroting what everyone else says.” It can also function, writes George Musser, as a “lie detector” and/or a “truth serum.”
Scientists Fed 1,700 Novels Into Their Computers And Boiled Down Our Literature Into Six Basic Story Arcs
“Their method is straightforward. The idea behind sentiment analysis is that words have a positive or negative emotional impact. So words can be a measure of the emotional valence of the text and how it changes from moment to moment. So measuring the shape of the story arc is simply a question of assessing the emotional polarity of a story at each instant and how it changes.”
So, Is Brexit – Is Almost Everything Going On Right Now – A Symptom Of Future Shock?
“In many large ways, it’s almost as if we have collectively stopped planning for the future. Instead, we all just sort of bounce along in the present, caught in the headlights of a tomorrow pushed by a few large corporations and shaped by the inescapable logic of hyper-efficiency — a future heading straight for us.”
The Woman Who Put L.A. On The Art Map
“The events helped fuse a young and geographically disconnected L.A. art scene. And debauchery unfurled on a grand scale. Guests would stream out to their cars the next day, wincing in the early-morning sunlight; others would stay for weeks on end, until the next party blossomed.”
Brooklyn Is Booming, So How Do You Keep It Artistic? A Plan, Of Course…
“We don’t want it to feel like Anywhere U.S.A.. We want it to be chaotic. “Culture Forward” seeks to build on the area’s history as an arts hub by making it more hospitable to its creative population.”
Rome’ Alternative Arts Spaces Are Closing As City Politics Roil
These closures have left a gap in Rome’s artistic life, demonstrating that occupied and alternative spaces are vital to the city’s cultural wellbeing.
A First: Audio Streaming Exceeds Video Streams
“Services like Apple Music and Spotify delivered 114 billion streams in the first six months of 2016, with video platforms on 95 billion. Overall, the streaming market increased by 58% year-on-year.”
The WPA Collection Of Ex-Slaves’ Narratives Is A Valuable Resource, But How Much Can We Trust It?
“It mattered – a lot – who the interviewers were and who was editing the text they produced.” The testimonies collected by the relatively small number of black interviewers read very differently from the tales told to visiting whites – some of whom came from slaveholding families.
A Novel Fundraising Approach: “Our Downtown Has Become Hostile To The Arts”
“Our longtime home at 6th and Hennepin in downtown Minneapolis … has now become an environment that is hostile to the arts,” said the fundraising letter, signed by founding artistic director Linda Z. Andrews. “Many factors have contributed to this change, including the recent development of downtown sports centers with escalating parking fees; ongoing street construction right outside our door; and social unrest on Hennepin Avenue.”
Why Most Fiction Is Being Marketed To Women
“Most readers of fiction in North America are, by a wide margin, women. The books are being marketed to them. I am perfectly happy with this. I know where my bread is buttered.”
Oslo’s Opera House In Financial Crisis
“Playing out behind the sleek, elegant lines of Oslo’s Opera House is a financial crisis so dramatic that it prompted Opera management to close the publicly owned building to the public itself last weekend, in order to rent it out for a ‘considerable’ sum for a private wedding. Now that’s stirring additional drama as well.”
Toronto’s MoCA Hires City’s Ex-Culture Director As Temporary CEO
Announcing his retirement from the city in April this year, Terry Nicholson said he thought he’d probably do some consulting and keep his hand in what he called “his passion projects,” the Museum of Contemporary Art being one of them. “But [the vision] was nothing as extensive as this,” he said with a laugh during an interview Wednesday.
Too Darn Hot: Why White-Hero-In-The-Jungle Movies Just Won’t Go Away (It’s Not Only About Colonialist Myth)
“Jungle films have never really toed the ideological line of these colonial creation myths, however. They’ve always been more interested in getting bums on seats – and on screens, if possible. When pondering Tarzan’s enduring screen popularity, the potential for depicting male beefcake cannot be discounted. Acting skills are a bonus for the role; a great physique is non-negotiable.”
‘In The Zone’: When ADHD Becomes ‘Flow
“Writers, entrepreneurs, and creative leaders of all types know that intense focus that happens when you’re ‘in the zone’: You’re feeling empowered, productive, and engaged. Psychologists might call this flow, the experience of zeroing in so closely on some activity that you lose yourself in it. And this immersive state, as it turns out, also happens to be something that some adults with ADHD commonly experience.”
How Can The Arts Respond To Brexit? Five Artists Discuss The Issues
Novelists Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), Zia Haider Rahman (In the Light of What We Know), and Elif Shahak (The Bastard of Istanbul); playwright/screenwriter Mike Bartlett (King Charles III); and stage director Marianne Elliott (War Horse and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) join in a virtual panel discussion on their reactions to the vote, how it’s changed the way they see Britain as a place to make their homes, and when is too early for artworks to address the historic moment.
Man Cuts Off His Ballet Teacher’s Thumb Because She Threw Him Out Of Class For Being Disruptive
No, this did not happen in Florida.
Why So Many Ph.D. Students Drop Out
It’s not (or not just) because it’ll be hard to find a job in your field.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.06.16
Dancers and Puppets Rebirth the World
Fantasque by John Heginbotham and Amy Trompetter opens Bard Summerscape 2016. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-07-06
They don’t expect results
What’s in this post:
- A Boston Symphony concert poster, just as ineffective as most classical music press releases
- A theory: that these materials are ineffective because no one really expects them to do very much.
- And then, at the end, this thought: … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-07-06
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Iraqi Dancer Among Those Killed In ISIS Bombing This Week
“Adil Faraj bucked conservative Iraqi culture to teach himself how to dance via YouTube and Skype, inspired by a Michael Jackson performance he watched on DVD. He danced to videos in his cramped family home — hiding from a society scornful of the art form and from the chaos that engulfed Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Then, he was discovered by the Manhattan-based Battery Dance Company and brought to Jordan to train professionally and perform for the first time on stage.”
Appointment Of New Director At Berlin’s Volksbühne Has Some People Panicking About The Entire Direction Of The City
The city government’s choice of Tate Modern art msueum director Chris Dercon for the job “has laid bare long-simmering worries about the direction of Berlin’s arts scene. … Critics say that officials are forsaking an artistic tradition of locally produced, politically and aesthetically unconventional programming. Instead, they see an effort to redraw the theater’s mission to make Berlin a more attractive and marketable destination for tourists and for the internationally minded millennials who have moved into many of that city’s trendiest districts.”
Yves Bonnefoy, 93, France’s Great Modern Poet And Translator Of Shakespeare
“By 1978, when his collected poems were published, Mr. Bonnefoy’s position as France’s most important poet, and one if its most influential men of letters, was secure.” In addition, “over the years, he translated 15 of [Shakespeare’s] plays, all of the sonnets, and wrote extensively on Shakespeare’s poetics. His translations of Yeats are equally well known in France.”
Should We Archive The Tweets And Social-Media Profiles Of Famous Artists For Posterity, The Way We Save Their Letters And Diaries?
“If journals, sketchbooks, letters, and scribbled-on napkins are venerated and kept for insights into great minds, there seems to be a case that tweets should be held onto, too. Then again, publicly accessible 140-character bursts can be so frivolous – and based so much on maintaining appearances – that they might seem like they don’t offer anything worth preserving.”