“According to Drexel, museum, and city officials, the university would oversee pruning the vast number of objects — there are more than 100,000 items in the collection — to a ‘manageable’ size, digitizing the whole kit and kaboodle, and making it all available online, suitable for searching by institutions in need of loans or those seeking to mount new exhibitions.” The museum’s historic building will be closed and possibly sold. — The Philadelphia Inquirer
Author: Matthew Westphal
Theodore Rabb, Innovative Historian Of Renaissance And Champion Of Western Civilization, Dead At 81
“During an era in which scholars developed increasingly specialized interests, Dr. Rabb adopted a sweeping academic approach, ranging from economic history to politics to painting, emphasizing the broad scope and lasting influence of ideas that flowered during the Renaissance. … [He] taught that the values of Western culture are an inescapable, invaluable fountainhead of modern life.” — The Washington Post
Paris’s ‘Miniscule Theatres’ Rebel Against Ticket Tax That Supports Only Bigger Venues
There are about 30 of these tiny theatres in the city, and they seat 25 to 50 people and can run as small as 170 square feet. And they, along with every other private sector venue, have to pay a 3.5% sales tax on every ticket. But that money goes into a fund to assist members of a 58-theatre association that refuses to admit the smallest companies. — The Stage
Opening Of GES-2, Moscow’s Big New Contemporary Art Museum, Postponed To 2020
“[Oligarch Leonid] Mikhelson is spending around $300m to transform a former power plant near the Kremlin into a 20,000 sq. m museum designed by Renzo Piano. … GES-2 will be part of a Museum Mile in Moscow that links it to Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, the State Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.” — The Art Newspaper
Radio Free Alcatraz, The Pirate Broadcasts That Spooked The FBI
For nine months in 1969-70, Native American activist John Trudell made weekly broadcasts from the shuttered prison in San Francisco Bay, programs that aired on Pacifica Radio stations in California, New York, and Texas. They brought the injustices faced by indigenous Americans to the ears of more than 100,000 listeners — and earned Trudell an FBI file that ran to more than 1,000 pages. — Narratively
Trees, Arts, and Communities
For many of us, a free tree sounds like an unequivocally good thing. Why would anyone not want one? It turns out, as a nonprofit in Detroit learned the hard way, that there are a number of reasons. — Doug Borwick
A Deal With The Devil? Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’, 30 Years On
It was on Valentine’s Day of 1989 that the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his notorious fatwa decreeing that author Salman Rushdie should be executed on grounds of blasphemy for the novel, as should anyone who helped in its release. Riots, death threats, bomb threats and a few murders ensued; Rushdie himself had to spend almost a decade in hiding. Scholar Kevin Blankinship looks back at both “the Rushdie Affair” (which few people under age 30 know about) and what really is, and is not, in the book. — Los Angeles Review of Books
With Arrival Of Social Justice And Inclusion Movements, Museums Have To Question Everything About Themselves
“Recently, activists have begun to apply increasing pressure on a number of leverage points in museum systems: leadership and curatorial staff, financial backers, and the institutions’ narrative habits, as well as the provenance of institutional holdings. The question becomes, ‘Whose knowledge is it?’ — and, by extension, ‘Whose world?'” — Nonprofit Quarterly
How Wildfire-Ravaged Paradise, Cal. Managed To Put On Its ‘Nutcracker’ (Even If It Was A Month Late)
The worst fire in California destroyed Trudi Angel’s ballet school in Paradise, along with costumes and sets for the Nutcracker she’d been putting on there for 33 years (and along with pretty much everything in the entire town). But Angel’s young students pleaded with her to keep the show going this year — and the many people she knew in the wider ballet world pitched in to help. — San Francisco Chronicle
Classic Hubris? The Rise And Fall Of The Newseum
“The distress sale of its building to Johns Hopkins University … has become a cautionary tale of bloated budgets and unrealized ambition. The museum has been weighted down by crushing debt and beset by management upheaval, and its downfall has long been foretold, but it is still a gut punch to an industry labeled the ‘enemy of the people’ by President Trump and struggling with digital-era financial troubles galore.” — The Washington Post