The $750-million building project is on schedule, with the completion planned for the end of 2023. The new Peter Zumthor-designed building has stirred controversy for its square footage as well as its cost. A symbolic groundbreaking will be set “when possible given the pandemic.” – Los Angeles Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
How Hollywood Reacted To Women Getting The Vote 100 Years Ago
This early promise of a more equitable industry didn’t last. Once the studio system kicked into gear, women were largely muscled out of positions of authority. There are exploding opportunities for women in TV and streaming today, but film writing and directing are still overwhelmingly dominated by men, and white men at that. – Variety
A Viral Video Puts Spotlight On Tiny Community Dance Company In Lagos, Nigeria
“In the beginning, people kept saying, ‘What are they doing?!’” Mr. Ajala said. “I had to convince them that ballet wasn’t a bad or indecent dance, but actually something that requires a lot of discipline that would have positive effects on the lives of their children outside the classroom. I always say, it’s not only about the dance itself — it’s about the value of dance education.” – The New York Times
Newspaper Newsrooms Are Shutting Down Across America. What That Means For News
Like office workers across the United States, journalists have been pushed by the coronavirus to retreat from communal spaces and into remote work. Now some are confronting the very real possibility that they may never again work in a physical newsroom — a touchstone of journalism — and what that could mean for the future of their profession. – Washington Post
What We Learn From Book Manuscripts
The manuscripts of literary works-in-progress fascinate on many levels, from the flush-faced thrill of spying on something intensely private and the visceral delight of knowing that a legendary author’s hand rested on the paper before you, to the light that such early drafts shed on authorial methodology and intent. Sometimes, the very essence of what a writer is trying to express seems to hover tantalisingly in the gap between a word deleted and another added in its place. – BBC
Cameron Mackintosh Companies Eliminate 850 Theatre Jobs
Theatre union: “The entire industry has been shocked by Cameron Mackintosh’s unwillingness to use the coronavirus job retention scheme in full or deploy resources beyond the furlough months to support his backstage and front of house staff. Other West End employers have done their utmost to find creative ways to safeguard the livelihoods of their staff and pursue the bigger mission of saving the world class skills and talents critical to the success of theatres up and down the country.
Why Efficiency Can Be Too Much Of A Good Thing
Some motivation produces excellent performance; too much motivation produces choking. Some group collaboration produces cohesion and enhances productivity; too much of it leads to staleness. Some empathy enables you to understand what another person is going through; too much could prevent you from saying and doing hard things. – Psyche
Last Of The Grand Unifying Theorizers
Rene Girard was almost the Platonic ideal of a hedgehog: he belongs to that lineage of 19th- and 20th-century thinkers whose vast synthetic ambition is now seen by many in the academy as not simply wrongheaded but almost impolite. Sweeping intellectual projects such as his come across today as naïve and even oppressive, animated by the most obnoxious nostalgias for the Enlightenment. – Los Angeles Review of Books
Eastern Europe: Tension Between Trying To Forget Communist Past And Profiting From It
In many eastern European countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechia and Poland the locals’ desire to forget their collective traumatic past is paradoxically interwoven with the need for economic profit derived from commercialising remnants of the communist heritage. – The Conversation
At US Colleges: An Identity For Everyone
American academia is a hotbed of proliferating identities supported and largely shaped by the higher ranks of administrators, faculty, student groups, alumni, and trustees. Not all identities are equal in dignity, history, or weight. Race, gender, and sexual orientation were the three main dimensions of what in the 1970s began to be called identity politics. These traits continue to be key today. But affirmed identities are mushrooming. The slightest shared characteristic, once anchored in a narrative of pain, can give rise to a new group. – Harper’s