“Digital technologies are changing politics as we know it, but not because of some inherent or immutable characteristic that stands apart from the world in which they were created. Instead, these technologies have helped an underlying condition, namely growing discontent at marketisation – the privatising of ever more goods, services and social interactions, and the ideologies that justify that process – to find meaningful expression in the formal political arena.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Holland Cotter: Louvre Abu Dhabi’s Rewrite Of Art History
“The Louvre Abu Dhabi is banking on the theory that pointing out links among a wide variety of cultures will make all art feel more approachable to the global audience it hopes to attract. Once viewers gain the habit of spotting connections, they may come to accept that all cultures are equally valuable and personally relevant. That, at least, seems to be the thinking, and it makes sense.”
Do We Have Time For Utopias? How About Dystopias?
“It is a tough job to reclaim the idea of utopia for the twenty-first century and deploy it in the battle against the neoliberal agenda. But – if we were to want to do such a thing – these are books that could help us. If there is an alternative to a neoliberal future, the imaginative effort required by utopian thinking is a necessary step to achieving that alternative.”
What Allan Bloom Saw In Rejection Of Elites
“Underneath a nonjudgmental relativism, Bloom saw a creeping nihilism: believing that all judgments of value had equal weight, the students ended up not believing or aspiring to much of anything at all. As a result, they no longer aspired to learn the truth, but rather to be “open-minded.” Incapable of treating moral questions and culture as anything other than matters of personal preference, they couldn’t be bothered to take seriously the task of self-reinvention that their education demanded of them.”
The Internet As We’ve Known It Is Dying
“A vibrant network doesn’t die all at once. It takes time and neglect; it grows weaker by the day, but imperceptibly, so that one day we are living in a digital world controlled by giants and we come to regard the whole thing as normal. It’s not normal. It wasn’t always this way. The internet doesn’t have to be a corporate playground. That’s just the path we’ve chosen.”
How Might The Republicans’ Tax Plan Impact The Arts?
“Under the current rules, taxpayers can subtract the year’s charitable gifts from their income, reducing the amount of earnings that are subject to tax. President Trump’s proposal for a higher ‘standard deduction’, adopted by both the House and Senate bills, could mean that many taxpayers who currently deduct charitable gifts will no longer be able to do so, which could reduce the tax incentive for donating art and money to museums. While museum donors probably will not stop giving as a result, they may give less.”
“Hamilton” Breaks Broadway Box Office Records Over Thanksgiving
With many tourists in the city, schools on break and star power lifting the tide, audiences turned out en masse. “Hamilton” grossed a whopping $3.4 million in a regular eight-performance week, breaking its own record set this January. With the show sold out nonstop, the average ticket price hit $321.13, reflecting a premium pricing model that producers have started to employ across the industry.
Do Artists Have Political Responsibilities?
Should a writer be socially engaged? Is it a part of our duty? I always return to the poet and teacher Marie Ponsot: “The duty of the writer is to the welfare of the work.” Not to some political party or cause or ideal—which through making our art more useful might somehow rob it of its integrity, its wonderful, vital uselessness—but simply to the work itself.
How One Entrepreneur Is Trying To Make More Affordable Artist Studio Space
“I wanted to make a protected space,” Andrea Woodner offers, “where they don’t have to be completely bare-knuckled about the commercial environment. Here, they can be artists, think about and show their own work, and use the facility as an artist-run project space.”
Is It Females Who Decide What Is Beauty?
“The view has long been that males, in their sexual communication, are saying something important about themselves, and it’s up to the females to figure out what that is, to figure out which males are truly attractive and which are not. I argue the other side of the coin. Females aren’t trying to figure out what males are saying. When they mate with a male, by definition, that male is attractive. So females are the deciders. Over evolutionary time, it seems males are trying out a lot of different courtship traits. A bright orange here, a bright blue there, rub your wings together and make a sound, or jump up and do a dance. They are trying to do these things to tickle females’ preferences. But it’s really the females calling the shots. It’s the female’s brain that sets the bar for what kind of traits are attractive and unattractive.”