Month: September 2020

On Aesthetics, Ethics, Economics, and Consequential Decisions of Cultural Leaders in the Long Now

Missions are squishy; buildings and bottom lines are not. Judgments about art are subjective. Human beings are often self-interested. The nonprofit form lends itself to manipulation and to serving the interests of a few rather than the general public. Arts organizations need to be aware of these dynamics and can’t hang their hats on mission statements and values statements as enough to keep them moored to their purposes. – Diane Ragsdale

Why Spotify Has Successful Artists Named ‘White Noise Baby Sleep’ And ‘Jazz Therapy For Cats’

“You’ve probably never heard of them, but Relaxing Music Therapy has had a pretty damn successful music career. At least, on Spotify. This ‘artist’ has more than 500,000 monthly listeners on the platform, all thanks to One Simple Trick: optimizing their name to show up prominently in Spotify’s search results.” – OneZero

How America’s Literary Programs Made The World Smaller

Even today, the institutions of creative writing in the United States reflect their origins in the Cold War. In the 1940s and 1950s, early advocates for such programs, including Paul Engle at Iowa and Wallace Stegner at Stanford, shared a common vision for American culture with the internationalists of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations and influential philanthropic foundations. – Chronicle of Higher Education

Artemisia Gentileschi’s Life Story Is So Much More Than The Rape Everyone Focuses On Today

“The turmoil of Artemisia’s early life — and the remarkable evidence of it that survives — has inevitably overshadowed the less sensational, and less documented, narrative of what followed. Nevertheless, her later career was extraordinary, and it is reasonable to conclude that the fact of having been raped was less significant to Artemisia’s sense of self than some of her modern champions have suggested.” – The New Yorker

The Flaws And Blemishes Of Thinking Scientifically

Philosophers of science tend to irritate practicing scientists, to whom science already makes complete sense. It doesn’t make sense to Michael Strevens. “Science is an alien thought form,” he writes; that’s why so many civilizations rose and fell before it was invented. In his view, we downplay its weirdness, perhaps because its success is so fundamental to our continued existence.” – The New Yorker

Here’s One Book Publisher Getting Through The Pandemic On Sales Of (Believe It Or Not) Poetry

Well, one kind of poetry in particular — that of Rupi Kaur, who is so popular that her most recent collection knocked Dr. Seuss off the top of Amazon’s poetry bestseller list. (Her two previous books are no. 5 and no. 8.) “For Kaur’s publisher, Andrews McMeel Publishing, this kind of immediate market impact has become customary.” – Publishers Weekly

These Artists Turned Medical Bills Into Art And Sold Them To Pay The Debt

MSCHF, the group responsible for stunts like Finger on the App and MasterWiki, is bringing attention to the failures of the American healthcare system with Medical Bill Art. Three real medical bills were rendered into oil paintings and sold for the amount of money owed via the art market. The work is aptly called 3 Medical Bills. – Mashable

The BBC Anchors The Entire British Media. Now It May Be In Real Danger.

“The world’s largest broadcaster, the BBC has remained iconic through the generations — criticized regularly, of course, but nonetheless capturing the trust and attention of Britons like nothing else. Now, though, it’s facing a remarkable array of new private-sector competitors — and public-sector overseers — that all seem to have Auntie Beeb, in various ways, in their sights. And that puts one of the core purposes of a public service broadcaster — serving as a central, trustworthy anchor in a country’s media ecosystem — at a new level of risk.” – Nieman Lab