“These countries are tending not to prioritise the arts in national curriculums, assessments or in depictions of effective pedagogy. Given the extraordinary and immediate challenges they face in terms of pupil enrolment, teacher quality and learning outcomes, this may not be surprising but it may also be a missed opportunity.”
The Smithsonian Has Discovered The Magic Of Kickstarter, Raising $1 Million And Finding New Audiences
“We’re not only trying to fund the projects, we are reaching audiences that we might not reach through other channels,” said Scott Tennent, the Smithsonian’s director of advancement communications, noting that three-fourths of the Kickstarter backers are new to the Smithsonian. “We can raise awareness that the Smithsonian relies on public support. That’s something people don’t always realize.”
‘Meatballs’ – An Oral History Of The Movie That Changed Both Comedy And Summer Camp
“We sat down with several members of the Meatballs cast and crew” – including director Ivan Reitman and producer Dan Goldberg – “to talk about their experiences, both in front of and behind the camera, making the movie that still gives us goosebumps whenever we hear that child choir sing, ‘Are you ready for the summer?'”
Blouin Artinfo Laid Off Staff, Outsourced Editorial To India And Used Fake Bylines: Report
In late May, all the editorial staff of Artinfo and Louise Blouin’s other art puiblications (Modern Painters, Art + Auction) were given two weeks’ notice and told they could reapply as freelancers. Then, reports Page Six, “owner Louise Blouin outsourced the editorial to India. But to make it seem as if there were still a cosmopolitan staff, articles were given bylines with hilariously generic international names.”
Why Is Andrew Wyeth’s Reputation So Fragile?
“On July 12, Wyeth would have turned 100. Over the course of his life and into his death, his reputation has weathered a whiplash of ups and downs and polarized opinion. In 1977, when the art historian Robert Rosenblum was asked to name the most overrated and underrated American artists, he nominated Andrew Wyeth for both categories. How can we explain these dramatic shifts? And what do they say about how critics and artistic movements influence an artist’s legacy?”
Everyone Thought Small Independent Movie Theatres Would Die In The Streaming Age. Surprise! That Hasn’t Happened
“In the face of multiplex cinemas with dozens of screens and high street food and drink franchises, operated by the likes of Cineworld, Odeon and Vue, the smaller, independent cinema is not only surviving, but thriving.”
The Text On Historical Markers Has Become Another Front In The Culture Wars
“Stories of Pilgrims and Puritans, Founding Fathers, westward-bound settlers, and brave American soldiers dominated this consensus-driven picture of the nation’s past. The vast majority of historical markers reinforced these themes on a local level, pointing out important events or notable residents – most of them white and male – as travelers wound their way to their final destinations. … This [particular] consensus view of American history has not held up.” New historical markers – for example, one commemorating the KKK Greensboro Massacre of 1979 – now get fought over long and hard. (In that case, even the word “massacre” was contentious.) “Not surprisingly, no event has proved to be more controversial to recognize through historical markers than the American Civil War.”
Why Emojis Are An Important Addition To Our Language
“On one estimate, only 30-35 percent of the social dimensions of meaning, in our daily interactions with others, come from language, with up to a staggering 70 percent deriving from nonverbal cues. This includes visual cues such as the other person’s body language, facial expression, and gestures, as well as how close they stand to us—we’ve all experienced the discomfort of the individual who occupies too much of our personal space for comfort; our emotional response is, invariably, likely to be negative. We also respond to their physical appearance, their dress, and the environment in which we encounter them, which provides information about their occupation or mode of living.”
The Most Anthologized Short Stories Of All Time
Emily Temple compiles not just a list, but four sublists as well. Granted, they don’t really cover all time (let alone every place) – she surveyed 20 anthologies published in the U.S. between 1983 and 2017, not counting the yearly Best American anthologies or any themed collections (say, Best Ghost Stories or Best Love Stories).
Which Museum Landed The Fabled €500 Million Cerruti Collection Of Artworks?
“Turin’s Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art has obtained the legendary art collection of Francesco Federico Cerruti. … The iconic trove features 300 masterpieces from the Middle Ages to the 20th century accumulated by the enigmatic Italian collector. Extraordinary works by Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, and Amedeo Modigliani, as well as Pontormo, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, René Magritte, Andy Warhol, and Guilio Paolini feature in the jaw-dropping collection, alongside various furnishings and rare and ancient books.”
The Fyre Festival Disaster Has Made It Harder For All Big Festivals
“A Fyre-like calamity is the greatest fear of most festival organizers. The majority already seek to protect themselves by obtaining insurance, but it doesn’t come cheap, or easy. Insurers typically begin working with mega-festival organizers well in advance, determining exactly what kind of coverage they need. In some cases, risk and claim specialists will even tour facilities in advance and during the festival in an effort to mitigate any potential issues.”
Unknown Maurice Sendak Discovered (And At The Publisher)
“Lynn Caponera, president of the Maurice Sendak Foundation, was going through the late artist’s files last year … when she found a typewritten manuscript titled Presto and Zesto in Limboland, co-authored by Sendak and his frequent collaborator, Arthur Yorinks. … Not only is the manuscript complete, so, too, are the illustrations.”
Why “Smart” Cities Aren’t Just About Tech
Jason Schupbach: “I think what tech misses a lot is the culture of place. One of the biggest problems that happens in city development is that people are saying you can use the same solution everywhere without really understanding how a society works or what the culture of a place is. Just slap on this tech thing and it’ll just work, everybody will adopt it, why not, it’s awesome. So I feel like one of the things that creative placemaking can do really well, or that an artist can do really well, is to help be that bridge between the community and the tech company, or whoever’s trying to come in and do something.”
NRA Puts Millennium Park, Disney Hall In Ad Against The “Bad Guys”
At this point, we’re only 14 seconds in and it’s immediately clear who “they” is meant to refer to: urbanites, writers and artists, which is to say also the foreign-born, the gay, the nonwhite, the Jewish, the Muslim. The nonbelievers. The pacifists on the Pacific.
Jane Austen Had The Best Words
There’s a reason her work has thrived since it was published. “Her novels, reasonably successful in their day, were innovative, even revolutionary, in ways her contemporaries did not fully recognize. Some of the techniques she introduced — or used more effectively than anyone before — have been so incorporated into how we think about fiction that they seem to have always been there.” Also, ask the data!
Are We In A Time Of ‘Post-Horror’ Movies?
Never mind the jump cuts; it’s time for existential dread (what, the news isn’t bringing that on enough, movie-makers?!).
Empathy May Be Overrated
That’s right, we need to understand irreducible alterity – a philosophical concept developed by a Holocaust survivor. “What if instead of sameness it were otherness that was the foundation for ethical action? What if being confronted by someone utterly different from you — someone you are opposed to, confused by, scared of, someone you can’t understand — was the urgent signal that there was a life in need of your protection?”
The 3 Million Dollar Hobby Lobby Illegal Smuggling Case Casts A Pall Over The Museum Of The Bible
Not good, and Biblical scholars are taking note. (Also, wow: “The company never met the dealer, and wired payments to seven different bank accounts. The items arrived in 10 packages at three different Hobby Lobby addresses, labeled only ‘ceramic tiles’ and ‘clay tiles (sample).'”)
The Wage Gap For Actors Of Color Is Real, As The Hawaii Five-0 Mess Shows All Too Clearly
The fact that CBS wasn’t paying Asian American cast members anywhere near what white cast members were making is all too normal, the numbers say, including in TV dramas and comedies – and, obviously, cop shows.
The Internet Killed (Almost) All Of Los Angeles’ Seedy Porn Palace Movie Theatres
L.A. used to have dozens of porn movie theaters. “Now only two remain: the Studs and the Tiki. They sit at opposite ends of Santa Monica Boulevard — the former in West Hollywood, the latter in East Hollywood, framing the city in an unseen porno-magnetic field.”
The Women Who Built New York’s Art World
“During this period, other women—like Peggy Guggenheim, Grace Nail Johnson, and Florine Stettheimer—also helped carve out the New York art landscape by establishing influential galleries and salons that fostered avant-garde art. Rarely, however, are these women heralded as the pioneers they were.”
Turning The Famous Psychology Experiments Of History Into A Theatre Piece
Eric Grode talks to members of the company Improbable about how they put together Opening Skinner’s Box, an adaptation of the controversial book by Lauren Slater about studies such as Stanley Milgram’s infamous experiment with obedience (where subjects were told to administer electric shocks) and Elizabeth Loftus’s work on how memories can be shaped and altered.
The Finn Who Shaped American Midcentury Modernism
Yes, it was a Saarinen, but probably not the one you’re thinking of – and his influence was less through his own design than through the educational institution he founded.
Have Journalists Forgotten How To Write For Regular People?
“Despite the increasingly complex and crucial stories dotting the national landscape—health insurance policy, North Korea, immigration, Syria—many daily newspapers and wire services are failing to include even a sentence of background early in their stories to give readers the tools to slide further into a complicated issue… I’m not talking about “dumbing down” the news as much as making it more user-friendly, and journalists who fail to do the latter are squandering their brief but real chances to invest new readers.”
How The World’s Greatest Performance-Capture Actor Creates His Roles
Reporter Roslyn Sulcas talks to Andy Serkis, whose performances as (among others) Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Caesar in the current Planet of the Apes series are so widely admired that fans have been agitating for him to be nominated for an Oscar.