“[He] always insisted that the sculptures should, like poetry or music, be thought of as superb pieces of human artistic endeavour, and regretted the role they had come to play in what today is termed contested history. He devoted many hours of research to them, reconstructing their original arrangement. This was harder than might be thought, as only about half survive, and he was quietly pleased … that some of his ideas had been incorporated into the displays at the new Acropolis Museum in Athens.” – The Guardian
Facebook’s Doom Machine
The cycle of harm perpetuated by Facebook’s scale-at-any-cost business model is plain to see. Scale and engagement are valuable to Facebook because they’re valuable to advertisers. These incentives lead to design choices such as reaction buttons that encourage users to engage easily and often, which in turn encourage users to share ideas that will provoke a strong response. – The Atlantic
America’s First Fully-Staged Indoor Opera Performances Since COVID Arrived Are This Weekend
Opera Orlando is presenting Die Fledermaus on Thursday and Saturday (Dec. 17 and 19) at its regular home, the Walt Disney Theater at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. These days, that’s news. (Socially distanced seating and other safety measures will be in effect.) – Orlando Weekly
What Art Restoration Might Have To Teach Us About Repairing The Environment
“I discovered that there are important parallels between the theory and practice of repairing damaged art and that of repairing damaged nature. But there’s an important difference. The environmental sciences investigate processes of nature that have endured billions of years, and yet scientific thinking about the repair of ecosystems is but decades old. Artistic production is, on the other hand, of relatively recent origin, yet systematic thinking and writing about the repair of tarnished art is centuries old. It seems very likely that ecological restoration can learn a considerable amount from this senior literature.” – Aeon
The Double Bind For Writers Of Color
The writer of colour is thus trapped in a double bind. Racism must be investigated and challenged, but what does it mean if there is only one acceptable framework for addressing the issue? What does it mean if diversity initiatives laud only one kind of story? – The Walrus
A Historic Detroit Music Venue To Become An Amazon Factory?
“Amazon, you’re building a new $400-million, 3.8-million-square-foot distribution center on the old State Fair site. The area where the bandshell sits is slated to become a parking lot. The bandshell is an important piece of American music history, as well as Detroit music history. It would be a tragic loss if it were to end up, like so many historic Detroit buildings, as a parking lot. The music industry has suffered greatly in 2020 due to COVID-19 and we’re not out of the woods yet.” – Detroit Metro Times
NYC’s 4,500 Teaching Artists Are Out Of Luck
The Department of Education’s arts budget was $21.5 million in the last school year. The line item pays cultural organizations that find and pay artists to go into classrooms and teach kids how to dance, act, sing, paint, write, and learn all kinds of other creative skills. The arrangement works pretty well because New York City has two things in abundance: public school students and artists with both creative expertise and rent coming due. So business was booming for the city’s 4,500 teaching artists. Then Covid struck. – Gothamist
Giant, Centuries-Old Headless Buddha Discovered In Chinese City
“The 9m-high (30-foot) statue, with its head missing, was uncovered on a cliff between two high-rise residential buildings in the Nanan district of Chongqing. It is not clear when the statue was carved” — it’s believed to date to the Qing dynasty — “and local authorities are still investigating its cultural value.” – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
Frick Tricks: Reinvention to Convention, as Peripatetic Displays Move from Brutalist to Beaux Arts
While many museums are experimenting with quirky new ways of organizing their permanent-collection displays, the Frick Collection is going in the opposite direction: It will use its planned temporary occupation of the Breuer building to unveil a more conventionally coherent presentation of its holdings than was seen in its flagship building. – Lee Rosenbaum
Are Movie Studios Killing Theatres In Favor Of Streaming?
The Wall Street imperative now is too strong to resist. The conglomerates are sacrificing the future of moviegoing for the pandemically friendly practice of moviestaying. We were heading that way before COVID. Now we’re there. Outside the river of streaming content, for most studios the rest is just sentiment and small potatoes. – Chicago Tribune
Calls Grow For Americans For The Arts’ CEO To Resign
Volunteer members of an AFTA advisory council on Friday publicly called for Robert Lynch and his senior executives to resign, saying that after three months of working behind the scenes for reform, they realize AFTA is an “organization with no desire to change.” At the same time, current and former staff have alleged that senior leaders “created and condoned a hostile work environment . . . rife with bullying, intimidation, retaliation, and harassment.” – Washington Post
The Birth Of America’s Penny Press
“When Benjamin Day came up with the plan of selling newspapers to the poor in 1833, he did so with the ravenous maw of poverty threatening to swallow him up…. Within four months [of its first issue on September 3, 1833], The Sun‘s circulation was 5,000; within a year, 10,000. In two years, 19,000 copies of The Sun were sold every day, making it the best-selling newspaper in the world.” – The New York Review of Books
Discovered: Earliest Known English Church Anthem Composed By A Woman
This setting of the Christmas hymn “Whilst Shepherds watch’d their flocks by night” for unison girls’ voices and organ was written ca. 1785 by Jane Savage, a composer and the daughter of one of Handel’s bass soloists, himself a composer and church musician. She created the piece for the choir of London’s Asylum for Female Orphans; as in Venice at the same time, the English capital in the 18th century had a number of institutions for abandoned or orphaned girls which became fashionable places to worship because the young ladies sang so well. – The Guardian
All Hollywood Is Furious At Warner Bros. (Nobody Blames The Streamers)
“In the aftermath of WarnerMedia’s decision to put its entire 2021 slate of films on its HBO Max streaming service the same day the titles open in theaters, the AT&T division seems to recognize the need for damage control — but not quite how to go about it.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Yves Tanguy Painting Rescued From Airport Dumpster
An anonymous businessman had been planning to bring the surrealist work, worth an estimated $340,000, with him from Düsseldorf to Tel Aviv last week — but he mistakenly left the painting behind at the airport, where cleaners saw the cardboard carton containing the painting and put it in the recycling bin. And that is where the piece was found the following day. – Smithsonian Magazine
French Arts Workers March Against Extension Of COVID Restrictions
“Cinemas, theatres, museums and concert halls had been set to reopen, but days in advance Prime Minister Jean Castex announced a change of heart in response to France’s stubbornly high infection rate. No reopening will take place now until at least 7 January. … Holding slogans like ‘we’re going to die, and not even on stage’, some of the demonstrators told the BBC of their anger and distress at the lockdown.” – BBC
Ballet Company Ordered To Reinstate Dancer Fired For Breaking Quarantine
In February, the Korea National Ballet was on tour in the city of Daegu when a major coronavirus outbreak arose; the company cancelled the remaining performances and ordered its dancers to self-isolate. Na Dae-han, a corps dancer who had achieved some fame on Korean reality TV, skipped off to Japan with his girlfriend instead, and he was sacked. Now the National Labour Relations Commission has ruled Na’s dismissal unfair and told the KNB to take him back. – Gramilano (Milan)
Bruk Up: A Street Dancer Talks About Moving In Pieces
Jamal Sterrett, 24, from St Ann’s in Nottingham, performs a style known as bruk up, which originates from Jamaica. It means thinking about your body broken up in pieces. BBC
How Country Music Obscured Its Black Roots
“Much of the history of country music has been displaced by convenient myths created during the genre’s commercialisation in the early 20th century. Travelling the American South in the 1920s looking for white performers and songs, Ralph Peers, a white record executive, played an important role in obscuring the Black roots of the genre.” – The Conversation
Black Student Expelled From Elite Private School After Mother Objects To ‘Fences’ Too Strongly
August Wilson’s prize-winning play includes heavy use of the N-word by its Black characters, and when Faith Fox found out that her 14-year-old’s class would be studying Fences, she protested to the school repeatedly. (“It wasn’t something that I thought was appropriate for a roomful of elite, affluent white children.”) She says her son was expelled in retaliation for her standing up for what’s right; the school says it was a “termination of enrollment” due to “bullying, harassment and … slanderous accusations towards the school itself” by Ms. Fox. – The New York Times