The metaphor of a “marketplace of ideas,” where some sort of rational choice theory means the eventual selection of the best quality information, looks naive in an environment where junk news driven by bots and trolls and other forms of non-transparent amplification floods the web, spreading faster than any byte of truth. – The American Interest
Month: September 2019
Why Make Art In Times Of Disaster? The Point?
Michael Chabon: “Maybe the world in its violent turning is too strong for art. Maybe art is a kind of winning streak, a hot hand at the table, articulating a vision of truth and possibility that, while real, simply cannot endure. Over time, the odds grind you down, and in the end the house always wins. Or maybe the purpose of art, the blessing of art, has nothing to do with improvement, with amelioration, with making this heartbreaking world, this savage and dopey nation, a better place.” – The Paris Review
How Gallery Prices Impact Museum Diversity
This is a textbook example of how a narrow viewpoint and blind devotion to procedure can lead you to bad ends. It’s the permanent-collection equivalent of following a navigation app’s directions deeper and deeper into a known wildfire just because you know for certain the route happens to be free of traffic. – artnet
Olafur Eliasson Named As UN Special Ambassador On Climate Change
Eliasson is known for his environmentally-themed work, which includes the installation Ice Watch, displayed during the UN Climate Summit in 2015. He is the subject of a retrospective show currently on display at Tate Modern, London. – Arts Professional
A Need For A New Definition Of Museums
“We are used to seeing a museum as a building, a precinct, an institution and a collection. Museums are indeed spaces of particular kinds, but these kinds of international visits, exhibition loans and research projects suggest that, even more fundamentally, museums are networks.” – Apollo
A First: More Boys Than Girls Graduate National Ballet Of Canada School
The class of 2020 at the Toronto-based academy is comprised of 16 boys and 11 girls. – Newsweek
Theatre Ticket Prices Just Go Higher And Higher. Time Was, Folks Rioted Over That.
Back in 1809, the newly renovated Theatre at Covent Garden in London raised the cost of the cheapest tickets by half a shilling, and people fought in the streets over this for three months. (Twenty people died.) In 2019, prices have, in some cases, more than doubled in the past ten years as most people’s pay has remained stagnant — and folks do little more than grouse or stop going. Alice Saville argues that high prices warp audience expectations and, ultimately, the art itself. – Exeunt Magazine
Orange County’s South Coast Repertory Theatre Signals Change Of Direction
“I think things have changed. We’re getting a lot more story in 30 minutes or 30 seconds in today’s society. (Theater is) competing with a variety of mediums that deliver lot of entertainment instantly to your wrist or your desk or your home. For theater, that means we need to tell stories in compelling new ways.” – Voice of Orange County
Jazz Pianist Harold Mabern Dead At 83
“A pianist of percussive fire and boundless soul, with a language that pulled from hard bop, post-bop, Memphis soul and the blues, … Mabern had a strong yet supple attack at the piano, with a penchant for block chords that combined McCoy Tyner’s modal coloration with the ringing affirmations of the gospel church.” – WBGO (Newark, NJ)
Self-Help For Millennials Means Something Different
Millennials aren’t looking for lifehacks to win friends and influence people; they are looking for workable systems that will sanction and codify their behaviors. Luckily for them, philosophers have been working on doing just that for the past several thousand years. – LitHub