Author: Douglas McLennan

David Shrigley’s Gloriously Monstrous Thumb Unveiled On Trafalgar’s Fourth Plinth

“Huh. As I suspected. The vaunted optimism of Shrigley’s thumbs-up to Britain’s glorious future is undermined by the deathly black hue of his appendage. Then there is the surreal monstrosity of the hugely deformed thumb. At seven metres high this is the tallest sculpture ever put on the plinth and, while that may seem the kind of statistic tour guides reel off, it has genuine relevance to how it works on a square that is also home to Nelson’s Column.”

Where The Big Bucks Are? Actors Go To The Fan Conventions

“Fan conventions, where stars can take home hundreds of thousands of dollars in exchange for a few hours of time, once were the domain of has-beens and sci-fi novelties. But the business has become so lucrative — think $500,000 for Captain America’s Chris Evans or The Walking Dead favorite Norman Reedus to appear — that current TV and film stars are popping up at events like Salt Lake City Comic-Con and Heroes and Villains Fan Fest.”

How Do You Measure Audience Value? Hang Out

“As an audience researcher, I am constantly disappointed about the ways in which core audiences are treated by arts organisations. They are often aggressively marketed, cynically courted and increasingly propositioned for money. But rarely are they treated as equal partners in the processes of meaning-making and engaged with in any authentic or meaningful way.”

The Digital World Has Transformed The Idea Of How You “Own” Culture

“If you are like most consumers you are probably unaware of the more subtle ways that your digital books — and movies, games, and other media purchases — are different from physical copies. That’s because your rights to those digital things are filtered through a maze of intellectual property law and limited by the fine print that you agree to when you buy them.”

Could Blockchain Transform The Art Market?

“In the art world, blockchain technology may hold the key to overcoming one of its greatest challenges: the lack of transparency. Frequently described as the last unregulated market, the art world often operates on trust alone. But this trust keeps being tested, as recent forgery scandals such as the Knoedler Gallery fiasco and the case of German forger Wolfgang Beltracchi show. A networked digital ledger such as a blockchain could help keep track of a work of art’s movements without relying on a paper-based—and at times insecure—system of recording provenance.”

“Transformational” Progress At Boston’s Handel And Haydn As America’s Oldest Performing Arts Institution Expands

Executive director David Snead: Of the $13 million raised, “$8.3 million was for endowment, which will result in a quadrupling of the corpus, and another $5.2 million was raised for a new Strategic Initiatives Fund that is financing a triple-digit increase in education programs, national touring, 6 CD’s, growth in staff, new audience development initiatives such as these videos and online streaming of concerts and market research and a new brand strategy, increases in artistic budget, the commissioning of a new work by Gabriela Frank together with the Library of Congress, infrastructure and capacity growth etc. And the number of new subscribers has doubled in one year. As a result of all this, H+H has grown from a $3 million operation to a $5 million operation in the course of just a few years, all while posting 6 consecutive balanced budgets. So yes, the joint is transformed.”