Author: Douglas McLennan

Mellon Foundation Pulls Grant After University Of North Carolina Makes Deal With Neo-Confederate Group

In a Letter to the Editor published in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander confirms that funding was rescinded in direct response to the settlement. The university’s decision to protect and display the Confederate statue was especially jarring in light of the proposed grant’s intended purpose: “to develop a campuswide effort to reckon with UNC’s historic complicity with slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and memorialization of the Confederacy.” – Hyperallergic

Paris Bets On Ambitious New Contemporary Art Complex To Activate Suburbs

Collectively, the dealers hope, Komunuma’s mix of programs will make it a destination, especially as the greater Paris region seeks to shore up activity in the capital’s suburbs. They foresee “a plurality of centers with multiple, distinct identities. The development of Grand Paris will lead to a redistribution of the geography of contemporary art.” – Artsy

Museums Ponder Virtual Reality As An Art Experience

Virtual reality and augmented reality (AR)—which overlays digital elements on the real world rather than creating a fully immersive alternative—are “unbelievably promising” for the future of communication, says Daniel Birnbaum, who left his post as the director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm to lead the London-based VR and AR production startup Acute Art early this year. But he points out that major museums such as the Louvre have concentrated on the educational uses of the technology, neglecting its own potential as an artistic medium. – The Art Newspaper

How Toni Morrison Took Her Place In History

With Playing in the Dark, Morrison changed the rules of the game, effectively recasting what we see when we look back to figures like Woolf and to writers of the present and future like Colson Whitehead, Jesmyn Ward, and Angela Flournoy. “All of us are bereft,” Morrison writes, “when criticism remains too polite or too fearful to notice a disrupting darkness before its eyes.” – The Nation

Are The Arts In Crisis Or Is This A Great Opportunity?

While some have reacted to this trend with protests of ‘art for art’s sake’, perhaps we should view the increasing focus on the usefulness of the arts as an opportunity. The cultural sector now has the chance to define how it would like to be valued. Perhaps having to prove “relevance” will seem a light touch when compared to metrics like gross value added or wellbeing adjusted life years.  – Arts Professional

Developers Propose £3.5 Billion London-Themed Fantasy Park… In London

Working in partnership with Paramount Pictures, BBC and ITV, on behalf of a Kuwaiti developer, the team have concocted a perfect vision of little Britain that will bring a tear to even the most steely of Corbynite eyes. After being drawn into the great union jack glass tent, visitors will be funnelled into High Street, a place “full of shops and restaurants” – like actual British high streets used to be. Maybe there’ll be an empty library and an interactive food bank experience, too. – The Guardian

When Classical Music Mattered

“As a common language of celebration or eulogy, as a means of expressing collective joy or sorrow, classical music is indeed a dying tongue. Would 2,500 people cram into the nave and transept  of the National Cathedral today to hear Haydn’s Mass in the Time of War, as they did in January 1973, when Leonard Bernstein conducted a concert in protest of President Nixon’s second inaugural?” – American Scholar