In the face of critiques, Jeanine Cummins is pushing back in public. Her publisher released a statement encouraging discussion around the title, while some authors and booksellers have come to Cummins’ defense. In a culture that is used to debating black and Asian representation and stereotypes, the entrenchment around “American Dirt” is fueling even more complaints over the ease with which popular culture still employs Latino-related stereotypes in contemporary movies, television and fiction. – Los Angeles Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
The Dark Cloud Hanging Over The Grammys
For music fans, tracking such a harrowing volley of allegations and denials feels equal parts absurd and sad (especially arriving, as it has, in the midst of a Presidential impeachment trial that mirrors its rhythms). The debacle at the Academy distracts, in a dispiriting way, from the artists being honored. – The New Yorker
Georgia Now Ranks 49th In Arts Funding. Here’s What That Looks Like
Long one of the stingiest states in terms of support for the arts, Georgia is now virtually at rock bottom, not willing even to put up enough money to collect the full amount of matching funds available from the National Endowment for the Arts. This year’s grants fall $300,000 short of the NEA’s allocations. – ArtsATL
Book Publishing Seems To Be Improving. Or Is It
More independent bookstores, sales up, even new plans for Barnes & Noble. But there are looming problems. Big problems with today’s publishing industry. – N+One
Paris Opera Dancers End Strike
Dancers and musicians have been striking alongside public sector workers to oppose the government’s plan to scrap more than 40 separate pension schemes and replace them with a single points-based system. More than 70 shows have been cancelled since December at a loss of nearly 15 million euros ($16.5 million) — greater than the state’s annual contribution to the Opera pension fund. – France24
How Artificial Intelligence Is Taking Over Music
At CES 2020, Samsung introduced Neon, an AI-based companion that is being developed to be indistinguishable from a human companion. AI models are composing at a pretty high level right now. It won’t be long before most production music (background music, music for breaks in and out of segments, and other utility music) will be fully produced by AI. We’re only moments away from synthetic artists and superstars. We’re only a few months (maybe a year or two) away from completely artificial artists (not virtual, artificial — see Neon above). – Shelly Palmer
A History Of The Evolution Of MoMA’s Homes
This new MOMA is exhausting—and serene, and thrilling, and, finally, to a degree that only the greatest museums achieve, transcendental. Wandering the vast new spaces, tracing the familiar chronology of modernism through hushed, looming galleries built to a Louvre-like scale, following its sinewy path through sliding-glass portals and brushed-steel apertures that give seamlessly from Pelli to Taniguchi to DS+R (and Nouvel, thanks to the interthreading of the buildings), a visitor is overwhelmed by the grace and passion and precision of the art, new and old, canonical and obscure, fleeting and immortal. – The New Yorker
Disruptive Innovation Thinker Clayton Christensen, 67
His theory of disruptive innovation made him a key influence on Silicon Valley powerhouses like Netflix and Intel and twice earned him the title of the world’s most influential living management thinker, died Jan. 23 at age 67. – Deseret News
When Classical Music Was Central
“However difficult to imagine, across those eventful decades, countless people embraced the idea that what happened in the concert hall and the opera house was inseparable from the destiny of the United States and the well-being of the American people.” – Washington Post
So Much For The Grammys’ New Era
Ousted chief Deborah Dugan’s explosive claims threatened to overshadow the star-studded show itself, which is scheduled to air on CBS. Her brutal portrait of the Recording Academy as a chummy cabal of men with expense accounts, conspiring to line their pockets on the backs of musicians, harass women at will and cover it all up, seemed to confirm people’s most cynical fears about the music industry and the Grammys in particular, which have long been criticized as out of touch and lacking transparency. – The New York Times