Grant Sanderson has a video explainer that shows you how machines are learning to learn. – Aeon
Mapping Where The Creative Class Wants To Live
The creative class has seen remarkable growth in the past decade, increasing from 44 million members in 2005 to more than 56 million in 2017, as virtually all large U.S. metros saw growth. The rate of creative class growth (27.2 percent) was more than double the growth rate of overall U.S. workforce (13.6 percent) over this period. – CityLab
The Christian Publishing Industry’s Biggest Scandal: The Boy Who Now Says He Didn’t Come Back From Heaven
In 2004, six-year-old Alex Malarkey’s skull and spine were separated in an automobile accident and he spent months in a coma. Six years later, his father (who was driving at the time) published, with himself and Alex listed as co-authors, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, an account of the visions of (Christian) heaven Alex had while in the coma and afterward, and it became a major bestseller. Six more years later, Alex (still a quadriplegic) turned 18, said that nothing in the book was true, and sued the publisher. Journalist Ruth Graham talks to Alex, both his parents, and others about the writing and publication of the book and the messy family history behind it. – Slate
Jewish Museums — What Are They For? Whom Should They Serve? And Who Should Or Shouldn’t Be Able To Run One?
“These questions are swirling around the future of the Jewish Museum Berlin, one of the city’s most popular visitor attractions, after the abrupt departure last month of its director, Peter Schäfer. He left after a string of controversies in which critics — including the Israeli government and the main organization representing Jews in Germany — said the institution had gone beyond its mission and become overly political.” – The New York Times
A Push To Create Immersive Virtual Reality Experiences In The Arts
UK digital minister Margot James described the initiative’s vision in an opening event. “Imagine being inside the world of a Shakespeare play, or in a video game as professional players battle it out for millions of dollars, or immersed in a national museum, solving a detective narrative involving dinosaurs and robots with fellow virtual museum-goers.” – Ludwig Van
Christopher Knight Takes Issue With Peter Zumthor’s Comments About How Museums Work
“Presumably you didn’t mean to insult these folks, who represent a core museum constituency. Every art museum serves two publics — an art public and a general public. After the affront, your interview puts a thumb on the scale for the latter.” – Los Angeles Times
Really Good Nature Documentaries ‘Are Great Art, Maybe The Greatest Art Of Our Time’
Sebastian Smee: “I realize the claim sounds odd. After all, they weren’t really intended as high art. They’re television documentaries. They were created primarily to educate and to entertain. And yet a lot of things we now display in our museums and think of as art were never intended as such. African carvings. Russian icons. Minoan ceramics. Egyptian statues. … The best nature documentaries … [are] great in this important sense, too: Like those Impressionist paintings, they are ahead of their time. We are not yet ready to see them from the perspective of the future. But soon we will be.” – The Washington Post
Hollywood Is Betting Big On Remakes. But New Study Suggests Audiences Aren’t Thrilled
The study found that fully 91 percent of remakes drew a less positive audience score than the original. Among critics, the remakes received a lower Metacritic score just slightly less frequently -— 87 percent of the time. – Washington Post
Hungary’s Government Building Huge, Multi-Million-Euro Cultural Complex In Budapest Park
“The so-called Liget project, initiated in 2011, aims to transform Budapest’s city park (Városliget) into a cultural hub, including the new National Gallery, Museum of Ethnography and House of Hungarian Music, alongside the existing thermal baths and an expanded city zoo. The project hit a major milestone in May, as the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán opened one of Europe’s largest museum collections centres on the nearby site of a former hospital.” – The Art Newspaper
Vivian Perlis, Who Founded And Ran Who Founded Yale’s Oral History Of American Music, Dead At 91
“[Her] oral history project includes some 3,000 recordings of interviews with composers and other major musical figures, from Aaron Copland to Elliott Carter, from Duke Ellington to John Adams. The eminent musicologist H. Wiley Hitchcock described it as an ‘incomparable resource.'” – The New York Times
The Company That Tailors Broadway Musicals For School Productions Now Creates Versions For Seniors
“Into the Woods Sr. and other musicals tailored to older casts are the brainchild of Freddie Gershon, [Music Theater International’s] co-chairman, who first developed similarly shortened ‘Junior’ productions more than 20 years ago for elementary and middle schools, earning him a Tony Awards honor.” Reporter Nancy Coleman looks in on a production of the senior-ized Sondheim show. – The New York Times
Is The Director Who Turned The Indianapolis Museum Of Art Into Newfields Democratizing It Or Destroying It?
“Critics have accused [Charles] Venable of dumbing down the museum with his crowd-pleasing, cost-conscious changes. But his program has also touched a nerve as institutions around the country confront a tough new calculus.” Andrew Russeth visits Newfields and does a deep dive on the changes there. – ARTnews
Actor Rip Torn, 88
“[He] was equally at home in the comedy of the Men in Black film series or TV’s The Larry Sanders Show (for which he won his Emmy) and in the drama of Sweet Bird of Youth or Anna Christie, to name two of the numerous classic works of theater in which he appeared. … Successful onstage, in films and on television, the actor nevertheless carried a sense of persecution,” which was made worse by “his tendency toward erratic behavior.” – Variety
Artist Thrown Out Of Show For Right-Wing Views, And Controversy Nearly Causes Show’s Cancellation
“It has been a turbulent year for the Leipzig Annual Exhibition — so much so that the show was even cancelled at one point because of an outcry over the inclusion, then exclusion, of an artist who sympathises with the far-right party AfD … It eventually went ahead — six days later than scheduled, and without the artist, Axel Krause.” – The Art Newspaper
Jack Renner, Co-Founder Of Telarc Records, 84
“I used to say that my recordings are made from the perspective of the best seat in the house,” he told Stereophile. “And immediately, of course, somebody says, ‘Well, who are you to say what’s the best seat in the house?’” – The New York Times
Cold, Dead White
Posset was a drink that, in the 16th century, solidified, a sheer nightmare with emollient richness I can only say is a spoonful of lacks — texture, diversity, surprise. On its face, raw tofu comes close — until you cut, taste, wake up. – Jeff Weinstein
BlogBack: A CultureGrrl Reader on Critic Douglas Crimp, Met Curator Douglas Eklund & “The Pictures Generation”
“We seem to be fighting similar battles,” wrote a CultureGrrl reader in response to my appreciation, posted Monday, of the critic/scholar, 74, whose pioneering work defined what became known as “The Pictures Generation.” – Lee Rosenbaum
What Our Behavior In Masses Means For Predicting The Future
Rapid progress in information technology has led to the ‘big data’ revolution, in which gigantic quantities of information can be obtained and processed. Patterns of human behaviour can be extracted from records of credit-card purchases, telephone calls and emails. Words suddenly becoming more common on social media, such as ‘demagogue’ during the 2016 US presidential election, can be clues to hot political issues. – Aeon