“[The package of changes] includes adding 1,000 new members to its committee and limiting the amount that studios can spend campaigning for nominations, in a bid to recognise more diverse talent. The wide-ranging changes … are the result of a seven-month review process, which was triggered by heavy criticism over the lack of diversity in its major awards earlier this year.” – The Guardian
Month: September 2020
Uffizi Gallery Says TikTok Has Doubled The Number Of Its Young Visitors
“Since moving onto multiple social media channels, including TikTok, during the lockdown, the Uffizi’s online presence has exploded. In an apparently related trend, young visitors (as a proportion of the total) have nearly doubled since the museum [in Florence] reopened over the summer.” – The Art Newspaper
At 86, Sophia Loren Is Returning To The Screen
“[She] stars in upcoming Netflix drama The Life Ahead, which is directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti. In the film, Loren plays Madame Rosa, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who helps raise the children of deceased sex workers with whom she once walked the streets. She then strikes up an enduring friendship with Momo, a 12-year-old Senegalese orphan who tries to steal her candlesticks.” – The Guardian
Ford Foundation: Record $160 Million Lifeline For The Arts
The Ford Foundation this week is announcing an unprecedented $160 million-and-growing initiative called America’s Cultural Treasures, with substantial grants going to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) organizations across the country. The grants are, in most cases, the largest ever for the 20 recipients in the first round. – Washington Post
The Pervasive Toxicity Of Online Misinformation
Today, those wishing to sow discord don’t need bots to post and spread their falsehoods and distortions. They have plenty of unwitting people to do that, their beliefs and actions warped by a “behavioral modification system. That mistrust has destabilized democracy around the world. – Wired
This Fall’s University Enrollments Are Down
Although the enrollment declines were steepest at community colleges (-7.5 percent), undergraduate enrollment fell at all types of colleges, including private nonprofit four-year colleges (-3.8 percent) and private for-profit four-year colleges (-1.9 percent). The decline was more modest at public four-year colleges (-0.4 percent), although there were differences across public four-year institutions according to location, with rural institutions seeing the biggest decline (-4 percent) and urban institutions seeing slight gains (+0.5 percent). – Inside Higher Ed
Christgau: Remembering The Volatile Stanley Crouch
“Crouch was a fervent American who was an even more fervent African American. He loved to perturb all comers by arguing that in the end the Middle Passage was good for Africans, but nowhere near as much as he loved to praise the richness and diversity of the Black cultures that the horrors of slavery made possible. For him, the peak of these cultures was jazz — from Armstrong to bebop, please, post-’60s not so much.” – Los Angeles Times
Behind Americans’ Addiction To Crap
It’s not just that these goods are shoddily constructed and add to the world’s clutter. Often, they’re actively harmful. The labor exploitation crap relies on dates back as far as crap itself. Many of the “decorative knickknacks” we consumed in the nineteenth century, for example, were produced in British factories where thousands of people, including young boys, worked with materials that contained lead and arsenic for a couple of shillings a week. – The Baffler
The Hidden Environmental Costs Of Streaming Music
Kyle Devine writes, “The environmental cost of music is now greater than at any time during recorded music’s previous eras.” He supports that claim with a chart of his own devising, using data culled from various sources, which suggests that, in 2016, streaming and downloading music generated around a hundred and ninety-four million kilograms of greenhouse-gas emissions—some forty million more than the emissions associated with all music formats in 2000.” – The New Yorker
Fort Worth Opera Names New General Director, Its Third In Four Years
Afton Battle, a native Texan with degrees in voice from the University of Houston and Westminster Choir College, “previously worked in development and consulting for the Joffrey Ballet, New York Theatre Workshop, Red Clay Dance Company, the National Black Theatre, and the African American Policy Forum. [She] is also one of the founders of the recently announced Black Theatre Coalition, [which] has a mission to increase employment opportunities for black theater professionals and eliminate systemic racism in American theater. Battle’s commitment to diversity informs her plans for FWO.” – Fort Worth Star-Telegram