“As the library has grown from a roomful of young Nairobians to an ongoing conversation that spans the continent—with email, Skype, and social media allowing members in a half-dozen countries to stay in touch—it’s become clear that Jalada is where the future of African literature is being written.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
UK Culture Minister: Increasing Arts Funding Is The Worst Thing We Could Do For The Arts
“The worst thing that we can do is to incentivise local authorities to reduce further their arts funding by saying that we will replace it with central government money. To solve one problem, that at the moment is only in some local authority areas, we would incentivise other local authorities to do the wrong thing.”
Here’s A Novel Argument: Blame Trump On Contemporary Art!
“Whatever the intelligentsia nurtures and celebrates in our galleries and academic journals is bound to flow eventually into the nation’s cinemas, through its ballot boxes and toward the swamp of Washington, D.C. The last few months have proven that Trump is not out to drain that swamp. He is its progeny, and we on the left — the artists, the people of culture — have done our part in creating the conditions for him to thrive.”
Blame Trump On Art? That’s A Lazy Stretch!
“The political situation is dire. Nothing really feels important right now unless it somehow connects to it, which leads to all kind of flailing around in cultural commentary. In this case, turning the problem inside out, Melamid ends up echoing the most thoughtless cliché about modern art—’my kid could do that!’—just to construct a credible way to plug art into the Conversation about Trump.”
How The Getty Singlehandedly Built A New Generation Of Art Conservators
“In the late 2000s, there were roughly 10 such experts worldwide—a small number that was poised to get even smaller. Many of these individuals were approaching retirement age, and across the whole of the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe, there were at most two young conservators considering a career in this niche field. This was the worrisome picture that emerged from a survey begun in 2008 by Copenhagen’s Statens Museum for Kunst and funded by the Getty Foundation.”
The $1,300 Boomerang: Chanel Is Pilloried For Cultural Deafness
The item — part of the Chanel spring-summer 2017 collection and priced at $1,325 for US buyers — sparked a heated debate on social media. “Cultural appropriation hits a new low – I sincerely hope that @Chanel is donating all the profits to underprivileged aboriginal communities,” wrote one Twitter user.
Why Elvis’s Status Is Plummeting (He Was A “Novelty” Act?)
Elvis has fallen to the status of “novelty act”, according to David Hesmondhalgh, an author and professor of music at the University of Leeds, who says that any musician whose image transcends their music will ultimately fade away: “If you ask a small child about Elvis, the fact he died on a toilet through overeating or wore a silly suit is all that registers. The music has become far less important than the caricature. His image has been cheapened.”
St. Paul MN’s Ordway Center Chief Steps Down
A onetime child star, James Rocco initiated the Ordway’s Broadway Songbook series, which celebrates musical theater composers. He also built up the Ordway’s in-house Broadway-style producing arm, putting on shows such as “A Chorus Line,” “Paint Your Wagon” and the recent smash, “West Side Story.”
The Art Of Protest Art – There Are Many Ways To Affect Us
It says a lot that the sales of such painfully prescient dystopias as 1984 have increased since November 9, 2016. It says even more that “Moonlight,” an indie with no stars about a gay, black drug dealer, found an enormous audience and enormous accolades at the beginning of this year. More than junkfood entertainment, we need “beautiful resistance,” as I’ve come to call the art that engages us in social justice concerns, human compassion, and values of love, courage, and dissent. We need art that reminds us that the “human condition” encompasses all humans – not just the white, male, straight faces belonging to the people who currently hold most of the highest offices of our government.
Los Angeles Is Racially Diverse. Its Arts Organizations Not So Much. So Now A Plan To Try To Fix This
“The arts are an expression of the human condition, and the county is missing out on the voices that make up a significant part of who we are in Los Angeles. In an effort to remedy this, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission has come out with a landmark report on the Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative (CEII), an 18-month public process that led to the development of 13 recommendations to the LA County Board of Supervisors to improve cultural equity and inclusion for the staffs, boards, artists, programming and audiences in our region.”