Author: Douglas McLennan

Something Is Going Wrong At The Glasgow School Of Art After A Bad Fire. So Why Fire A Whistleblower For Talking?

More than 70 staff have left the GSA since a second fire devastated the Mackintosh building in June 2018. Last month Gordon Gibb was sacked for breach of contract for giving his views on failings at the GSA. When he gave evidence at the Scottish Parliament’s culture committee, he called for the iconic building to be taken out of the hands of its board following the two fires. – Sunday Post (Glasgow)

All Objects Have Meaning – So How Do Museums Contextualize Shame?

As museums face increasing pressure to be responsive to historical intersections and contradictions in their presentation of works, it can be risky to introduce audiences, who otherwise might not seek complexity born out of conflict, to objects that may provoke embarrassment or pain. Yet some institutions still believe generating this tension is a necessary step toward reconciliation. Perhaps there is no more powerful feeling provoked by a museum than shame, which extends beyond the initial encounter with an object and allows for an extended moment of recognition. – Lapham’s Quarterly

What If The Tech Revolution Was Just An Illusion Of Progress?

Ross Douthat: “What if the feeling of acceleration is an illusion, conjured by our expectations of perpetual progress and exaggerated by the distorting filter of the internet? What if we — or at least we in the developed world, in America and Europe and the Pacific Rim — really inhabit an era in which repetition is more the norm than invention; in which stalemate rather than revolution stamps our politics; in which sclerosis afflicts public institutions and private life alike; in which new developments in science, new exploratory projects, consistently underdeliver?” – The New York Times

Here’s How Hard It Is For Musicians To Make A Living From Streaming (Spoiler Alert: You Really Can’t)

For example, Taylor Swift’s song “Shake It Off” had a whopping 46.3 million streams in 2017 and earned between $280,000 and $390,000, according to one report. Swift, one of the world’s biggest pop stars, will generate more streams with one song than most musicians can accumulate in a lifetime. Another study by Digital Music News found that Pandora had the highest per-play royalty rate. At Pandora’s 1.68 cents per play, a musician would need about 114,149 plays to earn the U.S. monthly minimum wage ($12 per hour) of $1,920. – Seattle Times

Trump Versus Architecture Is Really Trump Versus Experts

The proposal would allow Trump to create a “President’s Committee for the Re-Beautification of Federal Architecture” which would enforce this design mandate, and this panel would exclude “artists, architects, engineers, art or architecture critics, members of the building industry or any other members of the public that are affiliated with any interest group or organization” involved in architecture. Speaking as an architecture critic, this is insane and borderline-totalitarian. – The New Republic

New Book Claims: Brubeck Rehearsal Tapes Show Legendary Band Struggling Mightily

Philip Clark, author of a forthcoming book on Brubeck, the American jazz legend, has for the first time gained access to 1959 recordings that had lain forgotten in a Californian archive until now. He was taken aback to hear a completely different rhythmic groove and Brubeck’s quartet struggling to make sense of it. “It sounds like a bad student jazz band,” he said. – The Guardian