In 2016, Rinder led the move of the museum from its original home, an architecturally significant but seismically challenged structure, to an acclaimed new building. The $112 million project, designed by New York architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, relocated BAMPFA from the southeast periphery of the Berkeley campus to a lively corner of Center Street. In the process, art and film became a much-needed linchpin between the university and the downtown of its host city. – San Francisco Chronicle
Author: Douglas McLennan
Meet This Year’s MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellows
Along with inclusion on an illustrious list of past fellows — more than 1,000 in all, since the program’s first class in 1981 — each of this year’s grantees gets a $625,000 stipend, meted out in quarterly installments over five years with no strings attached. – NPR
How Fenway Park’s Baseball Organist Gets His Playlist From Twitter
“This morning I got a request for a song called “Medicine for Melancholy,” by Rivers Cuomo,” Kantor said, sitting at the organ as a recent game got underway. “During batting practice, I got a request for ‘Detroit Rock City,’ by Kiss, and a request for anything Springsteen.” – WGBH
A “Marketplace Of Ideas” Is An Unworkable Idea
The metaphor of a “marketplace of ideas,” where some sort of rational choice theory means the eventual selection of the best quality information, looks naive in an environment where junk news driven by bots and trolls and other forms of non-transparent amplification floods the web, spreading faster than any byte of truth. – The American Interest
Why Make Art In Times Of Disaster? The Point?
Michael Chabon: “Maybe the world in its violent turning is too strong for art. Maybe art is a kind of winning streak, a hot hand at the table, articulating a vision of truth and possibility that, while real, simply cannot endure. Over time, the odds grind you down, and in the end the house always wins. Or maybe the purpose of art, the blessing of art, has nothing to do with improvement, with amelioration, with making this heartbreaking world, this savage and dopey nation, a better place.” – The Paris Review
How Gallery Prices Impact Museum Diversity
This is a textbook example of how a narrow viewpoint and blind devotion to procedure can lead you to bad ends. It’s the permanent-collection equivalent of following a navigation app’s directions deeper and deeper into a known wildfire just because you know for certain the route happens to be free of traffic. – artnet
Olafur Eliasson Named As UN Special Ambassador On Climate Change
Eliasson is known for his environmentally-themed work, which includes the installation Ice Watch, displayed during the UN Climate Summit in 2015. He is the subject of a retrospective show currently on display at Tate Modern, London. – Arts Professional
A Need For A New Definition Of Museums
“We are used to seeing a museum as a building, a precinct, an institution and a collection. Museums are indeed spaces of particular kinds, but these kinds of international visits, exhibition loans and research projects suggest that, even more fundamentally, museums are networks.” – Apollo
A First: More Boys Than Girls Graduate National Ballet Of Canada School
The class of 2020 at the Toronto-based academy is comprised of 16 boys and 11 girls. – Newsweek
Orange County’s South Coast Repertory Theatre Signals Change Of Direction
“I think things have changed. We’re getting a lot more story in 30 minutes or 30 seconds in today’s society. (Theater is) competing with a variety of mediums that deliver lot of entertainment instantly to your wrist or your desk or your home. For theater, that means we need to tell stories in compelling new ways.” – Voice of Orange County