Sans Forgetica is purposefully hard to decipher, forcing the reader to focus. One study found that students recalled 57 percent of what they read in Sans Forgetica, compared with 50 percent of the material in Arial, a significant difference. No word yet on the retention rate of Comic Sans. – Wired
Edward Gorey And Frank O’Hara Were The Lucy And Ethel Of Harvard’s Postwar Gay Underground
“Insatiable in his cultural cravings, all-embracing in his tastes, unreserved in his opinions, O’Hara was in many ways Gorey’s intellectual double, down to the fanatical balletomania. … They made a Mutt-and-Jeff pair on campus, O’Hara with his domed forehead and bent, aquiline nose, broken by a childhood bully, walking on his toes and stretching his neck to add an inch or two to his five-foot-seven height, Gorey towering over him at six two.” — Literary Hub
The Year In Socially Conscious Art (Oregon)
More and more artists across all media are addressing pressing social issues in their work. “What struck me in compiling this year-end reading list on socially engaged art in Oregon is the extent to which artists strove not simply to see and interpret, but to peel back layers, to reveal what is largely hidden — either by design or by accident — by institutions, by geography, and even by the telling of history.”
Ex-Banker Starts Up Investment Fund Based On Rare Old String Instruments
Frankfurt financier Christian Reister and violin dealer Jost Thoene have founded Violin Assets GmbH as a fund that treats Strads, Guarneris, Amatis, and the like as an “alternative asset class” — one that, Reister observes, can appreciate at the rate of 8% a year or more. — Bloomberg
Is There Any Point, Really, In Pondering The ‘Big Questions’? (Maybe.)
“Kant put his finger on the problem when he observed in the Critique of Pure Reason that human reason is driven by its very nature to ask itself questions that it is unable to answer. … Should we, then, set aside the Big Questions, and train ourselves only to pose questions that are sufficiently well-defined and empirically grounded as to guarantee the possibility of a definite answer? This is, by and large, the scientific mindset.” Even so, argues Emrys Westacott, “an inclination toward the Big Questions should not be despised.” — 3 Quarks Daily
The Problem With Trying To Be Morally Perfect
Can the moral saint, if perfect, ‘waste’ time watching films and television? How about spending any money on fine food or travel? Or expending energy on sport rather than seriously important causes? Or going birdwatching or hiking? No time either for theatre or the pleasures of curling up with a good book. The problem with extreme altruism, as Oscar Wilde is reported to have said about socialism, is that it takes up too many evenings. – Aeon
Why There Are So Many Of Those Cheesy Christmas Movies
This, when uttered in the context of a Hallmark holiday movie, is a beacon to the Christmas spirits, who know one thing, and pretty much one thing only: No one should simply muddle through the holidays. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not — however you find meaning in the time of year that these movies shorthand as “the season” — the ideal, these films insist, is unmitigated joy. — The Atlantic
Women-Only Music Festival In Sweden Found Guilty Of Gender Discrimination
A new ruling said that although festival organisers did not enforce the “man-free” rule, since “no differentiation based on sex was made between visitors at entry”, the statements the company issued prior to the event “discouraged a certain group from attending the event”, breaching a law banning gender discrimination. – Irish Times
A Philosopher Asks: Would It Be So Bad If Humans Went Extinct?
What I am asking here is simply whether it would be a tragedy if the planet no longer contained human beings. And the answer I am going to give might seem puzzling at first. I want to suggest, at least tentatively, both that it would be a tragedy and that it might just be a good thing. – The New York Times
L.A. Backs Off Plan To Paint Over Mural
The mural of Ava Gardner on the wall of a public school campus in Koreatown recently drew objections from a Korean group that argued the sunburst in the background looks too much like the World War II-era Japanese imperial flag. After the LA Unified School District agreed to paint over the mural, Shepard Fairey warned that he’d cover his own mural on the same campus if the district went through with its plan. — Los Angeles Times
Brazil’s National Museum Ends Its Worst Year Ever With Some Good News, Thanks To Google And The Smithsonian
Google Arts & Culture has just opened a virtual recreation of the pre-fire museum, which was completely destroyed in a fire in September. In addition, the Smithsonian has launched a program that will let 14 displaced researchers continue their work with residencies at the National Museum of Natural History and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. — The Art Newspaper
America’s Oldest University Museum Is Also One Of Its Fastest-Growing
About 36,000 additional three-dimension objects belonging to the art gallery are already on display at the West Campus at its recently opened Wurtele Study Center. This is all on top of a $135m renovation of the main building that opened in 2012, doubling the museum’s size through the imaginative reuse of two adjacent existing buildings. Few if any museums in America have undergone a more dramatic transformation, and for the better. – The Art Newspaper
Prominent Artists Protest Appointment At France’s National Arts Academy: Too Conservative?
The artists Mai-Thu Perret and Lili Reynaud-Dewar, along with the curator Chus Martinez, signed the petition statement published on the Mediapart news website in early November, saying that Jean De Loisy is “near retirement… and the symbol of a hegemony”, adding: “We ask that our voices are heard, denouncing the hold that conservative [views] still exert on the cultural policy of France today, despite a desire for renewal.” – The Art Newspaper
So Just How Dependent Are Ballet Companies On ‘Nutcracker’ These Days?
“[Dance/USA] just reported on the state of The Nutcracker for the first time since 2008, and the data shows just how much the ballet’s prevalence has grown in the past 10 years — and how much companies have come to rely on it as a revenue source.” — Dance Magazine
Accountant Whose Theft Destroyed Literary Agency Gets Only Two Years In Prison
“Darin Webb, the bookkeeper who stole more than $3.4 million over eight years from venerable New York literary agency Donadio & Olson, was sentenced to two years in prison on Monday, less than half the 51-63 month term the government had recommended.” The judge’s reason? That Webb didn’t steal the money for himself. — Publishers Weekly
Alice Walker Under Fire For Recommending In NY Times Book Seen As Anti-Semitic
For the Times Book Review‘s “By the Book” feature, Walker cited among the books on her nightstand David Icke’s And the Truth Shall Set You Free, which allegedly cites The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Leading the criticism of Walker was Tablet magazine’s Yair Rosenberg: “The book is an unhinged antisemitic conspiracy tract written by one of Britain’s most notorious antisemites.” — The Guardian
‘Seismic’: English National Opera To Give Under-18s Free Tickets To Saturday Night Shows
Said company CEO Stuart Murphy, “We were founded on the belief that opera is for everyone. Removing cost as a barrier to entry for under-18s is a seismic leap forward for ENO and for opera as a whole.” There are two hitches, though … — The Guardian
Play Publisher Samuel French Has New Owner
“Concord Music, which started as a jazz label but now owns song catalogs from classical to metal, said Monday that it would establish a new division, Concord Theatricals, to oversee its stage-related holdings, which now include Samuel French.” — The New York Times
Early TV-Age Media Theorists Understood A Lot About Our Current Age
These observers captured the moment when civilization turned from typographic culture—itself a massive break from the largely oral culture that preceded it—to electronic media. They’re the metaphorical physicians who noted the first symptoms of a worsening malaise we’re seeing now. In other words, our internet-and-smartphone-driven age does not represent, as we might think, its own huge shift from the Enlightenment tradition, but rather the most recent stages of a shift that started with disembodied voices and faces streaming out of clunky boxes. – Wired
Canadian Radio Banned “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” Then Reversed The Decision; Is This Progress?
Outrage — the hallmark of 21st-century discourse — still exists, but the radio flip-flop on banning indicates the paradigm may be shifting toward a reasonable middle ground, with space for the sorts of varied responses one hopes for in a debate that is in theory black and white but, in practicality, is filled with shades of grey. – Toronto Star
A Debate About “After” Poems: Homage Or Theft?
There’s nothing straightforward about the debate, and nothing particularly new about the “after” convention. Poetry is a medium in which sampling, allusion, and conversation have always been part of the game. – New York Magazine
A First: In LA This Year More Women Artists Than Men Had Solo Shows
The tally comes from adding up exhibitions, both major and minor, that opened since January at the J. Paul Getty Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art; UCLA Hammer and Fowler museums; Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Craft and Folk Art Museum; California African American Museum; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (With zero, LACMA was the unfortunate outlier.) That’s impressive. – Los Angeles Times
Mark-Anthony Turnage’s ‘Greek’ is back after 30 years — and its tattoos still aren’t smeared
Mark-Anthony Turnage redefined British opera with Greek. But that was in a different world: 1988. When the piece arrived at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this month, I imagined it like some seriously aging hipster whose many once-edgy tattoos are turning to mud. I was throughly, and ecstatically, wrong. — David Patrick Stearns
According To Uber Data: The World’s Top (Car-Accessible) Destinations
Merriam-Webster’s Word Of 2018: Justice
Searches for “justice” throughout the year, when compared to 2017, were up 74 percent on the site that has more than 100 million page views a month and nearly half a million entries. – USA Today