“[Ailey] O’Toole’s bizarrely brazen act of plagiarism — stealing lines, phrases, and structural elements from the work of at least three other writers — was uncovered last Friday, unraveling her career at the speed of Twitter, the medium by which her fledgling reputation lived and died.” — Vulture
Author: Matthew Westphal
Smithsonian To Open Its First Gallery Devoted To U.S. Latino Art
“Opening in 2021 on the[National Museum of American History’s] first floor, the Molina Family Latino Gallery will feature bilingual exhibits exploring the history and contributions of American Latinos.” — Washington Post
Publishing Industry Demands UK End Sales Tax On E-Books
“Digital publications are currently taxed at 20% in the UK; printed publications have been exempt from VAT since its introduction in 1973, ‘on the general principle of avoiding a tax on knowledge’.” Now that new EU legislation allowing member states to cut VAT on digital publications, “a cohort of voices … is now urging the government to ‘axe the reading tax’.” — The Guardian
Sydney Opera House Worth $6.2 Billion To Australia Annually: Study
A report by Deloitte titled Revaluing Our Icon says that the actual financial contribution of the Opera House to the economy is now $1.2 billion annually —up 44% from the last report, five years ago — with its “social asset value,” a combination of factors such as visitor experience, willingness to pay a premium to attend a performance there, the landmark’s importance in tourist’s decision to visit Australia, etc., at $5 billion. — Australian Financial Review
Three Years After Reviving It, Theatre Drops Its Once-Famous Rep Company Because It’s Just Too Expensive
BBC”[Liverpool’s] Everyman became famous in the 1970s for its rep company, which launched the careers of actors like Bill Nighy, Julie Walters, Pete Postlethwaite and Sir Anthony Sher.The theatre was rebuilt at a cost of £27m in 2014, and revived its rep company two years later – decades after the system died out in most venues. … But the Liverpool and Merseyside Theatres Trust, which runs the Everyman and [Liverpool] Playhouse, has now been forced to ditch the idea once more.” — BBC
In The Most Heavily Bombed Country In History, The Art Scene Is At Last Recovering
Which country is this? On a per capita basis, Laos, on which the U.S. dropped 2 million tons of explosives between 1964 and 1973 in an attempt to destroy North Vietnamese military supply lines. “A new generation of artists from the Lao People’s Democratic Republic are emerging, following decades of isolation in the orbit of the Soviet empire. The economy is growing rapidly, and the country is opening up.” — The Guardian
Embedding Artists In The Municipal Bureaucracy
This past summer, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission began a program that assigns artists-in-residence to work in county government agencies (to start with, the Registrar-Recorder’s Office and the county library system). Pauline Kanako Kamiyama writes about what she and LACAC learned from the programs’s preparation and launch. (For example, “‘Trust the artist-driven process’ does not easily translate to non-arts staff nor governmental management styles.”) — Americans for the Arts
Get Thee to Cleveland For a Great Show
Lucky Cleveland! Since Nov. 18, residents and visitors to the Cleveland Museum of Art have been able to see six tapestries, woven in the mid 1570s, that have been under wraps, locked away, almost ever since then. For some 100 years, at least, they’ve been in the store rooms of the Uffizi Galery and before that in the Palazzo Vecchio Medici store rooms.
Using The Arts To Move Young Offenders Out Of Jail And In Restorative Justice Programs
Cecilia Olusola Tribble of metro Nashville’s Office of Arts and Culture writes about the Restorative Justice + the Arts program, which trains artists to teach and work with inmates at a Nashville juvenile detention center. — Americans for the Arts
The Best Free Movie Streaming Service You’ve Never Heard Of
“When the classic-movie streaming service FilmStruck shuttered last month, it caused a palpable panic among cineastes. Overstuffed with exceptional big-studio films and arthouse gems, the service represented a viable alternative to the big streamers, many of which offer relatively meager film catalogs. And FilmStruck’s demise was especially troubling when you realize just how many movies, from Oscar-winners to low-budget oddities, are completely missing from streaming services altogether. What are America’s raging Cocoon-heads supposed to do?” Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary folks, meet Kanopy. — Wired