“[It’s] the greatest art scam in Canadian history,” says art dealer Don Robinson, who suffered a stroke because of the stress he endured in his campaign against a market awash with forgeries. “The more you dive into a pool of garbage, the more you get to know the garbage within it,” says Ritchie Sinclair, Norval Morrisseau’s former assistant and another key figure in exposing the scandal. – The Art Newspaper
Author: Douglas McLennan
NY Museums, Collectors Worry About Art Security
COVID As Social Disease
COVID is a social disease, a pathological experiment on the nature of our social relations. It is experienced in our social life in four major ways, and our responses bear upon the nature of our society. There are the everyday forms of our social life; the divisions within society that shape our experiences and concerns; the attitudes toward social boundaries — who belongs and who does not; and the social forms available for reacting to threats. – Los Angeles Review of Books
When Magazines Had Visions Of Changing (And Improving) The World
In 1895 Ladies’ Home Journal began to offer unfrilly, family-friendly architectural plans in its pages. They were mainly colonial, Craftsman, or modern ranch-style houses, and many still stand today. The Cosmopolitan, as it was then known, advertised the Cosmopolitan University, a custom-designed college degree—for free!—by correspondence course. McClure’s magazine, the juggernaut of investigative journalism—home to Ida Tarbell’s landmark investigation of Standard Oil, among many other muckraking articles of the Gilded Age—began to plot an array of ventures, including a model town called McClure’s Ideal Settlement. – Lapham’s Quarterly
A Critic Of Big Tech Starts His Own Project To Sort And Rank Information
Essentially, it’s a site that recommends the very best and most relevant books, podcasts, scientific articles, videos and journalism to anyone who wants a better understanding of the world. But there’s more to The Syllabus. Evgeny Morozov wants to make people think. The Syllabus criticises how information and knowledge are discovered and disseminated online, based as they currently are on clicks, likes and shares. In other words, based on popularity. Morozov is building a system that determines the relevance of information in a new way – a way that might even be better than Google. – The Correspondent
The Art World Pre-COVID Is Dead
Jerry Saltz: “Even an art-lover lifer like me has to admit much of the art world infrastructure feels like it’s already in the balance. Some of it may be gone even now. In three months, or six months, or — God forbid — 12 or 18 (there has never been a vaccine for a coronavirus)? There will be galleries on the other side of this chasm, and museums, and artists making work, of course. But I worry that such a sundering will only exacerbate the inequalities that more and more dominate this universe, with megagalleries and art stars surviving and the gap between them and everyone else only widening, rendering the scrappier artists and galleries something close to invisible.” – New York Magazine
How To Suspend Live Events Without Wrecking The Human Talent?
Live events and entertainment are people-based businesses that rely on the creation of emotional experiences and human interactions. Shedding too many employees, or the wrong employees, may impede the ability to resume operations when the crisis ends. – The Conversation
Is Spatial Awareness Our Superpower?
In the age of GPS, we tend to take our navigation and spatial abilities for granted, until they – or the technology – let us down. It is easy to forget that they have sustained us for tens of thousands of years. Over the course of our evolution, Homo sapiens developed an appetite for exploration and a wayfinding spirit that set us apart from previous human species. It had a huge effect on our future. One of the most intriguing recent ideas in anthropology is that our ability to navigate was essential to our success as a species, because it allowed us to cultivate extensive social networks. – Aeon
Hungarian Strongman Uses Virus Emergency To Seize Control Of Museums, Theatres
As the undemocratic features of the Orbán regime became increasingly obvious, the cunning liberal directors would choose productions that, with even minimum sensibility, could be interpreted as critical of Viktor Orbán’s illiberal regime. Thus, these theaters became irritants to the Fidesz officeholders. And, after “Budapest fell” in October 2019, the government wanted to rein in “rogue” theaters. – Hungarian Spectrum
The Netherlands Has Had A Rash Of Van Gogh Thefts In Recent Years
The fact that all 28 Van Gogh paintings, from six separate thefts, were eventually recovered should offer hope that The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring will eventually return to its home in Groningen. – The Art Newspaper