In what seems to be the first, and surely won’t be the last, incidence of life imitating this particular piece of art, “members of the Justice 4 Grenfell group paraded billboards emblazoned with the words ’71 dead’, ‘And still no arrests?’, ‘How Come?’ around central London locations in an attempt to keep victims of last June’s tower block blaze ‘in the national conscience’.”
Month: February 2018
2,000-Year-Old Rock Sculptures Of Camels Found In Saudi Desert
“About a dozen life-sized stone sculptures and reliefs of camels have been found in a markedly inhospitable site in northern Saudi Arabia. While camelid art has existed in the region going back millennia, nothing quite like this has been found before.”
Abu Dhabi’s National Orchestra To Close, Evidently Due To Foreign Competition
Enough touring orchestras and soloists are now stopping to perform in the United Arab Emirates that, said NSO Symphony Orchestra founder and CEO Janet Hassouneh, “I feel it’s the right time to pass on the baton to these new purveyors, so that audiences can enjoy ever-more outstanding musical experiences.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.15.18
Pianist Menahem Pressler at age 94: Fragile, fallible but still a credit to his legacy?
Human beings are living longer – and so are performing artists. The question of when they retire gracefully isn’t going away, and if anything, will only require more finesse as musical legends have increasingly few reasons to retire. … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2018-02-15
Obama Drama: Unveiled, Hung and Exiled (with video)
“It’s kind of amazing to think that [the Obama portraits] will be living next to the other portraits of all of the other presidents and first ladies,” Rujeko Hockley, assistant curator at the Whitney Museum, gushed about the latest presidential commissions by the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery. Sad to say, Ru, Barack Obama is not actually “next to the other portraits” of the U.S. Presidents. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-02-15
Audiences Are Livestreaming Theatre. What Could Be Wrong With That?
You can understand the confusion that could arise in an audience member who, aware that theatre performances are now broadcast live to cinemas via NT Live and the like, thinks they are entitled to act as a private broadcast channel to their friends at home. Theatre invites you to be uniquely ‘in the moment’ but, for many, it’s now important also to capture it so that you own it forever.
How To Read Better In The Age Of Digital Disconnect
As the art of close reading—a finely grained analysis of a text—has declined, a cohort of experts has emerged to reverse the trend and encourage stronger reading habits. Their solution has a kind of old-school simplicity to it: We need to allow the physicality of the book itself to lure us back into the pleasures of reading.
Investigation Concludes Former Queens Museum Director Misled Board
An independent investigation by the Queens Museum’s board into the handling of an event sponsored by the Israeli government has concluded that “the president and executive director of the museum, Laura Raicovich, and deputy director of the museum, David Strauss, exercised poor judgment,” adding that they “knowingly misled the board, and otherwise failed to comport themselves with the standards consistent with their positions.”
How Bloomberg Philanthropies Invested In Public Art That Earned Millions
“According to Bloomberg’s math, the four winning projects based in Los Angeles; Gary, Indiana; Spartanburg, South Carolina; and a triumvirate of Albany, Schenectady, and Troy in New York generated $13 million for those four places, both in terms of new jobs, related neighborhood investments, and visitor spending. More than 10 million people are estimated to have viewed those works, which not so subtly encouraged water conservation, culinary job training, better-lit public spaces, and improvement to blighted buildings, respectively.”
Silicon Valley Is Great At Tech, Not So Much On Social Theory
“Silicon Valley tech companies draw on innovative technical theory but have yet to really incorporate advances in social theory. The inattention to such knowledge becomes all too apparent when algorithms fail in their real-life applications – from automated soap-dispensers that fail to turn on when a user has dark brown skin, to the new iPhone X’s inability to distinguish among different Asian women.”
Berkshire Museum Members Vow To Fight On After Settlement On Deaccessioning
“This agreement effectively allows the museum to do what it always wanted to do,” Nicholas M. O’Donnell, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said by today by phone. “My clients are stunned at the complete reversal by the Attorney General’s office in barely two weeks,” he added in a statement, in reference to an earlier AGO filing that suggested the museum’s “failure to select the less harmful, reasonably practicable, alternative mode of action” could be a breach of fiduciary duty.