An independent investigation by the Queens Museum’s board into the handling of an event sponsored by the Israeli government has concluded that “the president and executive director of the museum, Laura Raicovich, and deputy director of the museum, David Strauss, exercised poor judgment,” adding that they “knowingly misled the board, and otherwise failed to comport themselves with the standards consistent with their positions.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
How Bloomberg Philanthropies Invested In Public Art That Earned Millions
“According to Bloomberg’s math, the four winning projects based in Los Angeles; Gary, Indiana; Spartanburg, South Carolina; and a triumvirate of Albany, Schenectady, and Troy in New York generated $13 million for those four places, both in terms of new jobs, related neighborhood investments, and visitor spending. More than 10 million people are estimated to have viewed those works, which not so subtly encouraged water conservation, culinary job training, better-lit public spaces, and improvement to blighted buildings, respectively.”
Silicon Valley Is Great At Tech, Not So Much On Social Theory
“Silicon Valley tech companies draw on innovative technical theory but have yet to really incorporate advances in social theory. The inattention to such knowledge becomes all too apparent when algorithms fail in their real-life applications – from automated soap-dispensers that fail to turn on when a user has dark brown skin, to the new iPhone X’s inability to distinguish among different Asian women.”
Berkshire Museum Members Vow To Fight On After Settlement On Deaccessioning
“This agreement effectively allows the museum to do what it always wanted to do,” Nicholas M. O’Donnell, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said by today by phone. “My clients are stunned at the complete reversal by the Attorney General’s office in barely two weeks,” he added in a statement, in reference to an earlier AGO filing that suggested the museum’s “failure to select the less harmful, reasonably practicable, alternative mode of action” could be a breach of fiduciary duty.
UK Governments Have Privatized Many Formerly State-Run Services. Are The Arts Next?
University tuition fees are a prime example. Public transport run for profit by private-sector franchisees is another. Sooner or later, central government’s what-next-to-privatise spotlight was bound to turn to the Arts Council. Unthinkable? Ask any client of the Student Loan Company. Ask anyone who commutes to work by train, paying the highest fares in Europe. Ask English Heritage (once the Ministry of Works) or the Canal and Rivers Trust (formerly British Waterways).
Tyranny Of The Five-Paragraph Essay (Or How Not To Think)
“The foundation is the five-paragraph essay, a form that is chillingly familiar to anyone who has attended high school in the US. In college, the model expands into the five-section research paper. Then in graduate school comes the five-chapter doctoral dissertation. Same jars, same order. By the time the doctoral student becomes a professor, the pattern is set. The Rule of Five is thoroughly fixed in muscle memory, and the scholar is on track to produce a string of journal articles that follow from it. Then it’s time to pass the model on to the next generation. The cycle continues.”
Nézet-Séguin To Lead Met Opera Two Years Early
The company announced on Thursday that Yannick Nézet-Séguin would become its new music director next season, two years ahead of schedule. The accelerated ascension will give much-needed musical stability to the Met, the nation’s largest performing arts organization, which suspended Mr. Levine, its longtime conductor, in December and opened an investigation into his behavior.
Deborah Borda: The Thinking Behind The NY Philharmonic’s Next Season
“We felt the New York Philharmonic should be of our city, about our city, and in our time.” Like every other arts organization, the orchestra is chasing the young (or youngish), and Deborah Borda insists the key is not to peddle outdated prestige or blandish with watered-down entertainment but to present art that is socially engaged. “Millennials are hungry for experience, but they need a different context, one that’s political and social,” she says.
Our Reading Utopia Has Turned On Us
“Now more than ever, art and commerce seem indistinguishable. On today’s Internet, everything is, to borrow Hebdige’s term, even flatter. There’s less time, somehow, for the depth of history—yesterday’s trends float farther and farther from their points of origin, commingling as styles without pasts, images without contexts. I do most of my reading online, and a few hundred words can take hours to digest—a paragraph of text is a launch pad to other places; I find myself falling down YouTube and eBay wormholes, my attention drifting. That state of being would have sounded like heaven to my teen-age self. It doesn’t usually feel like it now, though.”
Judge Rules: Taylor Swift Lyrics Are Too “Banal” To Copyright
In his ruling, Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald held that combining the phrases, “Playas gonna play” and “haters gonna hate,” does not entail sufficient originality to warrant copyright protection. “By 2001, American popular culture was heavily steeped in the concepts of players, haters, and player haters,” Fitzgerald wrote. “The concept of actors acting in accordance with their essential nature is not at all creative; it is banal.”