“A final audit has revealed that the deficit caused by overspending in the 2017 edition of Documenta, the contemporary art exhibition that takes place in the German city of Kassel every five years, is more than €2m wider than originally calculated.” The total deficit on the event, €7.6 million, is attributed on overspending on Documenta’s extension to Athens.
Author: Matthew Westphal
In Search Of Less Wealthy Visitors, Louvre Starts Monthly Free Saturday Nights
“The world’s most-visited museum previously opened for six free Sundays a year, but a statement published Wednesday said this was failing to bring in visitors from a broad spectrum of society. … The Louvre is hoping to appeal to more people living in poorer Paris suburbs as well as to young adults and families with older children with the initiative.”
Toulouse-Lautrec Was One Of The Creators Of Modern Celebrity Culture — And One Of Its First Victims
“His strikingly innovative designs turned artistes such as Aristide Bruant, Jane Avril and Yvette Guilbert into household names, heralding the birth of celebrity culture as we know it and making a star of their creator in the process.” (And how did he become a casualty of that culture? Absinthe.)
The Communist Manifesto Becomes A Cantata
“Choral Marx, which was recently performed at NYU’s Skirball Center, consists of nine singers whose variously musical utterance transfigures, toys with, and otherwise implements eight heavily excerpted selections from the 1888 Samuel Moore translation of the Manifesto. Led by [composer Ethan] Philbrick’s cello, the band played all the hits: ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies/ Is the history of class struggle,’ ‘The bourgeoisie has reduced personal worth to exchange value,’ ‘There is a specter haunting this world’ and so on.”
Changing Museums’ Wall Texts To Acknowledge The, Well, Problems With Certain Artists
“While museum wall labels were once used to explain the ‘title, artist, date’ status of an artwork, they’re quickly becoming a place to spark debate, rewrite history and acknowledge untold stories. In light of the #MeToo movement, wall labels are finally starting to include the controversial information that surrounds an artwork or artist. It could soon become the expectation.”
Ten Literary Translators On The Art Of Translation
Lydia Davis: “In translating, then, you are … always solving a problem. It is a word problem, an ingenious, complicated word problem that requires not only a good deal of craft but some art or artfulness in its solution. And yet the problem, however complicated, always retains some of the same appeal as those problems posed by much simpler or more intellectually limited word puzzles — a crossword, a Jumble, a code.” (Among the other translators included are Jhumpa Lahiri and Vladimir Nabokov, who makes the job sound impossible for anyone but himself.)
When Oxford’s Library Literally Branded Dirty Books With A Scarlet Letter
Well, okay, the letter wasn’t really scarlet; it was black, but nevertheless … Beginning in 1882, when the Bodleian Library overhauled its cataloguing system, the Greek letter phi (Φ) was branded onto the spines of books deemed to be “Obscene literature in general” or “Drawings and photographs of nudes and similar subjects.” These books — which ran from an illustrated edition of Ovid’s love poetry to Joyce’s Ulysses to Madonna’s Sex to a Monty Python volume — were kept under lock and key, available only with a specific referral from a professor. The Φ system was in use until, wait for it, 2010.
Why Do People Like Sad Music? It’s The Hormones
Yes, there are the obvious reasons: it can move us or validate our own sad feelings. And the human brain produces several hormones in response to music, including dopamine and serotonin. But sad music in particular induces production of a hormone called prolactin.
As Confederate Monuments Come Down, Whom Should 21st-Century Monuments Honor?
“What should a contemporary monument look like? Who deserves to go up on a pedestal? Should there be a pedestal at all? Five artists, or groups of artists, from each of the five cities involved in New Monuments for New Cities were invited to respond to the questions and to create a poster or projection of their ideal monument. The same 25 designs will travel to each location: Houston; Austin, Tex.; Chicago; Toronto; and New York.”
An Oscars Columnist Explains Why The Oscars Still Matter
Kyle Buchanan, the New York Times‘ new Carpetbagger: “This isn’t rah-rah boosterism: These awards can frustrate and often miss the mark, but that’s why they remain so crucial. If the Oscar nominations provide a snapshot of that year in Hollywood, and Hollywood helps shape the way we see ourselves, then examining them can tell us not only where the industry is headed but also where our cultural blind spots still lie.” Exhibits A, B, and C: #OscarsSoWhite, #MeToo, and #TimesUp.