“In the last 15 years, women and women of color have come into the field in unprecedented numbers. But what this means is that we’re in a full flowering of potential for science fiction because we’re getting science fiction from so many different kinds of voices. So what this era will be remembered for is that.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
The Peculiar Case Of The Five Stolen Francis Bacon Paintings
“The case seems to have baffled both local police and international investigators. But that’s because every element of the story is baffling.”
The Strand Bookstore’s Famous Quiz For Job Applicants (So Just How Smart Are You?)
“There are tests for driver’s licenses and citizenship, for New York City landmarks preservationists and sanitation workers. But a quiz for an entry-level retail job at a bookstore?”
Why Are So Many Artists Choosing To Be Anonymous?
“Welcome to the strange world of modern-day fame, when it helps to be a nobody if you want to be a somebody! In some ways, we are returning to the rules of the medieval world, when major works of art and technology were created by anonymous innovators. But there’s a difference nowadays: Today’s mystery artists cultivate their aura of secrecy. They prefer obscurity over the perks of celebrity status.”
Records: Art Looted By Nazis Sold Back To Nazis
“It turns out, the archives show, that hundreds of works were actually sold back at discounted prices in the 1950s and the 1960s to the very Nazis who had taken possession of them, including the widow of Hermann Goering, a senior aide to Hitler who pillaged art to amass a collection of more than a thousand works.”
Why The Classics Are Holding Their Own In Colleges While Other Humanities Are On The Decline
“A recent statistical analysis of professorial job openings by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences shows declines in all humanities disciplines since the Great Recession of 2008, including classics. However, classics suffered least in the downturn. The field has kept its small market share, while the number of job postings fell precipitously in other humanities fields.”
Our Don’t-Miss Stories From Last Week’s ArtsJournal: Musical Prime Minister Edition
This week: A penetrating portrait of artist Chuck Close, a reality check on meritocracy as a concept, a look at anger and our access to visceral emotion in a media-saturated world, the enduring meritocracy of the Emmy as measure of success, and a Prime Minister exits stage right, humming.
This Week In Audience: Audience Confusion Editon
This Week: Pokemon Go suggests a different relationship between real and virtual, an art prize in which critics don’t matter, museums challenge visitors to spot fakes, a French city that has reinvented itself around art, and a claim that modern audiences are confused and uncertain.
Our Pop Culture Is Filled With Anger
Visceral and at times frightening narratives are running through our popular culture. We get Batman and Superman — once the extensions of our better selves — battling each other in a grim rain; the take-no-prisoners TV commentaries of Samantha Bee and John Oliver; abrasive, if clever, comics like Amy Schumer; rage and betrayal in Beyonce’s “Lemonade”; meth and degradation in “Breaking Bad”; beheadings, dragons, torture and wars for supremacy in “Game of Thrones.”
How Playwrights Do Anger
“The better playwrights are inevitably drawn more to questions than answers, but in turbulent times a God-like neutrality can seem like an abdication of responsibility. To put the matter in Yeatsian terms: Why should the best among us, our writers, lack conviction, while the worst, a tough call but let’s go with our representatives in Congress, be full of passionate intensity?”