“[Andi] McDaniel, 39, a [Chicago-area] native who spent the last five years as chief content officer at WAMU-FM, Washington’s NPR station, was set to take the helm at WBEZ Sept. 28. … During the interim, her former station was rocked by allegations of sexual harassment by a former reporter, and complaints about the station’s workplace culture.” – MSN (Chicago Tribune)
Month: September 2020
For First Time Since The 1980s Vinyl Outsells CDs
A report on the first half of 2020 across the recorded music industry reads: “Vinyl album revenues of $232m were 62% of total physical revenues, marking the first time vinyl exceeded CDs for such a period since the 1980s.” The report acknowledged that vinyl records accounted for only 4% of total recorded music revenue. – The Guardian
Playwright Michael Frayn On British Theatre And The State Of The UK
The European Union was a remarkable human artifact—still is. And for us to smash down our part in it is . . . I suppose you just have to expect that people can’t sustain positive actions for very long. Sooner or later, they just want to behave badly and do something very simple, kick something or hit someone. – The New Yorker
Hong Kong’s Cautionary Tale: How 40 Years Of Neo-Liberalism Fueled A Crisis
This blurring of the division between public and private finds governments overtly working on the behalf of capital to extenuate an economic system that favors global capital over labor, private corporations over society and social welfare, and economic concentration over economic democracy. It is a system that is perpetuated by the attenuation of politics and capital, whereby the rich purchase beneficial economic policies that further insulate their position and wealth. Through political influence they obtain lower taxes, larger deductions, fewer regulations, and corporate protections, among other things. – Boston Review
Historical Plague Thinking: What We Can Learn
The conditions that made the outbreak possible were thus directly connected to the new social relations flourishing in Europe, Central Asia, and the Far East in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was the booming trade in silks and luxury goods, as well as the growth of towns and cities with relatively stable sedentary populations, that laid the ground for the deadly pandemic. – Boston Review
Museum’s Plans To Sell Pollock To Diversify Trivializes An Important Issue
The museum’s origins date back more than a century, when it became the first to be dedicated specifically to American art. It’s shocking that the Everson has now chosen to sell off an irreplaceable artifact — a rare formative work by the first American painter with profound international impact. – Los Angeles Times
Museum Votes To Sell Prized Jackson Pollock To Fund Diversity
Its sale will fund acquisitions of work by artists of color, women artists, and other marginalized artists underrepresented in the museum’s collection. The early Pollock painting will be included in Christie’s New York Evening Sale of 20th and 21st Century Art on October 6 and is estimated to sell for between $12 and 18 million. – Hyperallergic
In Praise Of Essential Small Talk
Americans in particular are small-talk artists. They have to be. This is a wild country. The most tenuous filaments of consensus and cooperation attach one person to the next. So the Have a nice days, the Hot enough for yous, the How ’bout those Metses—they serve a vital purpose. – The Atlantic
Dvořák and the American Experience of Race — An Antidote to “Checkbox Diversity”
Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony may not have been the work of a Black composer. But Dvořák embraced the African-American experience to a degree that would be controversial today. – Joseph Horowitz
“Porgy” and Race — continued
On “the Porgy Exchange,” in which an ordinary woman changed, on the spot, the opinion of two prominent Black opera singers that white baritones should be able to take on the lead role in Gershwin’s opera. – Joseph Horowitz