Apart from his tombstone and the old stone buildings, every Kafka attraction I visited was built in the 21st century. Czechoslovakia’s uneasy leaders had tried to scrub Kafka from Prague’s history; now, the city welcomes his lucrative presence every day. – LitHub
Author: Douglas McLennan
The Art Market Is Expensive. So Museums Are Improvising
For museums determined to build collections of today’s contemporary art—which is also getting pricey, as works by women and artists of color steadily gain in value—“it’s a waiting game.” – Barron’s
Report: Classical Music’s Future As A Streaming Service
This vicious circle of song optimization / playlist optimization may be the path of least resistance but it can ultimately lead to an unsatisfying overall music experience. Classical music provides an antidote to the algorithm-defined mainstream, and of the status update driven chaotic maelstrom that is digital life. Now we are starting to see the signs of a new generation of Classical music fans searching for a refreshing, reassuring alternative to the tumult and homogeneity of mainstream. – Music Industry Blog
You Can’t Think Your Way To Being Creative. Here’s What To Do Instead
Some of the earliest scientific studies of creativity focused on personality. And some evidence suggests that innovation comes easier to people with certain personality types. A 1998 review of dozens of creativity studies found that overall, creative people tend to be more driven, impulsive, and self-confident. They also tend to be less conventional and conscientious. – Nautilus
It Doesn’t Have To Be Netflix OR Movie Theatres
Netflix is a business like any other, one locked in a seemingly unresolvable war with the movie-theater industry, which it views as a rival. Twelve percent of Americans see at least one movie a month in theaters; Netflix has about 60 million U.S. subscribers, or a fifth of the country. Both are huge money-making endeavors, and the idea that one has to die for the other to prosper is hard to grasp. – The Atlantic
Hospital As Sound Experience: A Musician’s Critique
It may take a musician’s vocabulary to identify the devil’s interval, but it doesn’t take a musician’s ear to notice that hospitals are acoustically stressful places. Noise is one of the top complaints in hospitals. – The Atlantic
Is It Time To Boot Renoir From The “Great Artists” Canon?
Sebastian Smee: “I ask this knowing it is the wrong question. It is wrong not just because huge numbers of people think Renoir is, in fact, great, as well as adorable, joyous and life-affirming. But also because, for many of the rest of us, Renoir is not ‘less than great.’ He is awful. Hideous. Beyond the pale.” – Washington Post
What Is America’s Culture?
Encouraging distinctly American artistic habits stands a chance of making art more accessible without making it unserious or “middlebrow.” The arts are so irrelevant to most Americans’ lives in no small part because they have diverted so sharply from that tradition. Without reconnecting to the “soil” of the life experience of most Americans, the art world exists with and for the Hamptons. – National Affairs
Has Magic Been Displaced By Science? Not At All
Far from having evaporated, ‘folkloric disenchantment’ is still common today in the writings of self-described magicians, shamans and witches. But we also find its analogue in academic disciplines. In this academic version of the myth, nostalgia for vanished magic has been replaced by the idea that a scientific worldview has stepped in to replace more primitive folk-belief systems. – Aeon
Who Gets Duped By Fake Online Images
The main factors that determined whether a person could correctly perceive each image as a fake were their level of experience with the internet and digital photography. – The Conversation