“As libraries create access to a digital future, the books that have traditionally inhabited them are being displaced at an alarming rate. This leaves many asking: Does acceptance of digital resources mean that the books must go? And what is at stake when artists, art historians, students, and the public can no longer engage in the act of browsing the stacks as part of the process of creating and researching art?”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Americans Have Signed Up For Streaming Services At A Phenomenal Rate
In less than a decade, the percentage of U.S. households subscribing to a paid streaming video service surged 450% — from just 10% in 2009 to 55% in 2017.
LA’s MoCA Still Silent About Firing Of Head Curator (So We’ll Speculate)
Christopher Knight: “Today, about a week later, we still have no answer as to why MOCA Director Philippe Vergne fired chief curator Helen Molesworth — and we likely won’t. I have a few speculations, which I’ll get to. But the action represents larger stresses vexing the museum world in our New Gilded Age.”
John Oliver’s Gay Bunny Book Parodying Vice President’s Rabbit Book Tops Amazon Charts
On Sunday night John Oliver announced on HBO’s Last Week Tonight that A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, a children’s book about a gay bunny, named after a pet rabbit owned by the family of Vice President Mike Pence, would be available immediately. That meant it beat a rival children’s book, Marlon Bundo’s Day in the Life of the Vice President, written by Pence’s daughter Charlotte, and illustrated by his wife, Karen, by mere hours to the digital shelves.
How The TV Show Portlandia Killed Old Portland
“Portlandia was the moment something shifted and a new kind of person started showing up in Portland, who wasn’t the same kind of hearty doer, but more of a spectator who wants to be entertained by a city,” said Carye Bye, a former Portland-based artist who donated her hand-printed cards to Portlandia.
Now We “Curate” Everything. What A Devaluation Of The Word!
“Curation” lends to the proceedings a certain air of quasi-professionalism. It seeks to claim for the proprietors an exquisitely refined faculty of discrimination, a sense that “objective” higher standards are being enacted and adhered to. The selection that has been made, we are being assured, was not a product of whim or fancy, let alone crass commercialism.
Does A Better-Educated Population Really Make A Better Society? (Maybe Not?)
“Since individuals’ investment in their own education is personally rewarding, you might infer that government investment in society’s education would be socially rewarding. But this is a classic ‘fallacy of composition.’… Yes, schooling is selfishly lucrative—at least for strong students. On a societal level, however, it is shockingly wasteful for students weak and strong. Federal, state, and local government spends far too much money educating Americans.”
Why Artists Are Allowed Inside Museums To Copy The Masters
The oldest of these programs is that of the Louvre, which began during the French Revolution in 1793, reportedly just a month after radical Parisians converted the royal palace into a museum. Back then, it was a rule that any artist who wished to enter the museum and copy from the work of the masters would be given an easel to do so—it’s not surprising, then, that among its alumni are familiar names, like Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí.
Your License To Be Bad
You might wonder how people who seem so good by occupation could be so bad in private. The theory of moral licensing could help explain why: When humans are good, it says, we give ourselves license to be bad.
Why Do People Binge-watch Netflix But Fear Long Plays?
People post on social media how quickly they watched an entire season, not unlike the days when young readers stayed up all night to buy, and then read, each instalment of Harry Potter. Yet when they hear of spending all day in a theatre, the average person will look at you as if you’ve gone mad. Six hours of Peer Gynt, even with intermissions and a dinner break? They react as if you’re a cultural masochist, enduring theatre like some David Blaine stunt.