“This is yet one more powerful reason why museums should not be in the business of showing private collections that haven’t been given to them. The Museum of African Art would have a great deal more freedom to distance itself from Cosby if it owned or were certain to own the art rather than having it on loan.”
Month: November 2014
As Art Schools Have Become More Elitist Are They Losing Out On The Most Creative Students?
“Art schools used to be havens for students who, for whatever reason, had not found their niche in the traditional academic system. Now prospective art students very often have to prove their academic credentials to compete for a place at the most prestigious colleges.”
Increasingly Problematic: TV Ratings Are Failing To Count More Of The Audience
“Nielsen’s metric doesn’t include those who watched the episode on streaming sites like Hulu or Fox’s own website, nor does it count those who watch via video-on-demand more than four days after the original airing. That’s an issue for networks that want to use those viewership totals with advertisers.”
A Better Case For Corporate Support For The Arts
“More than half of all Canadians listen to music daily, read fiction several times a month or more and have visited a museum or art gallery in the last year. The numbers who go to concerts and plays are smaller, but when asked what kind of event they like to attend outside the home, 34 per cent of Canadians chose the arts while 29 per cent chose sports. That last stat contains a big message for business sponsors who sometimes prefer to lend their names to sporting events because they judge them to be more popular – and more populist.”
Should We Care About The Disappearance Of Marginalia With Digital Books?
“Kindle did launch a public notes feature in 2011, which allows people to make their notes and highlights available to others, but some still worry digital marginalia won’t be preserved as technology advances, leaving future historians without the kind of marginalia penned by people like Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen, and other historical figures. Others wonder whether there’s a point in trying to preserve marginalia at all.”
Art And The Tyranny Of Forcing You To Watch
“More and more artworks define and dictate the time their audience must give them. Too many videos are made like feature films, with a start and finish, and the clear message that you need to watch the whole thing to understand it. Performances too can be like plays, with a defined start and end. This is so wrong – like those weird old photos of 1960s audiences primly watching happenings.”
$600 Million Expansion Of Colonial Williamsburg
“The campaign, which officially starts Saturday, includes a $40-million upgrade to the Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, adding 8,000 square feet of new gallery space to the building that houses the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum and the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum.”
Hiding Behind Falsifiability
“Basically, it refers to whether or not a belief can be proven wrong. If I tell you that I weigh 70 pounds, this is a claim that can be easily tested and promptly thrown out by bringing me to a scale — that is, it’s falsifiable. If, on the other hand, I tell you that everything in the universe is controlled by an invisible astral monkey with a million arms, then there’s little you can do to prove, empirically, that this is a zany notion.”
How Paperback Books Helped Win World War II And Create New Demand For Books
“By the end of the war, the Armed Services Editions had ushered in a new era for the publishing industry, which had previously balked at printing paperbacks. The experiment showed that if books could be printed in an affordable way, publishers could reach a new audience.”
Secrets And Suicide At The 92nd Street Y
“Sol Adler devoted his life to the 92nd Street Y, courting its billionaires and burnishing its cultural power. But when he brought scandal to its doorstep, the institution kicked him to the curb. And that, his family says, is what killed him.”