The goal of the Barr-Klarman Massachusetts Arts Initiative is to increase arts organizations’ “adaptive capacity” (because the arts landscape is changing and the next recession could hit anytime) by building capital (in terms of both cash and staff) and “cultural competence.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Chinese Author Sentenced To 10 Years In Prison For Gay Erotic Novel
“The writer, surnamed Liu but better known by her internet alias Tianyi, was handed a 10-and-a-half year jail term for ‘producing and selling pornographic materials’ last month, according to a television report on Friday. The book that landed her into trouble was a 2017 novel named Occupy, … about a forbidden love affair between a teacher and a student.” Police assert that the book is full of “graphic depictions of male homosexual sex scenes.”
Damien Hirst’s Outdoor Sculptures Of Fetus Unveiled At Qatar Hospital
The series of 14 sculptures, each well over 40 feet tall, depicting the development of a fetus inside a uterus is titled The Miraculous Journey and installed outside a new medical center for women and children. (Yes, of course they’re controversial.)
Last Classical Record Store In Vancouver To Close
Sikora’s Classical Records has been operating for 40 years, but it’s now succumbing to what co-owner Ed Savenye says are “‘the five dirty D’s’: digitization (downloading and streaming), downsizing (people no longer have room for record collections), distribution (getting access to imports is increasingly challenging), desertion (people leaving for Amazon and other online sellers), and the saddest, demise — that is, the deaths of classical music lovers who continued to buy CDs and LPs.”
Taiwan’s Film Industry Can No Longer Ignore Mainland Chinese Sensitivities (Not Even On Awards Night)
This past weekend in Taipei, at the Golden Horse Awards (which cover Chinese-language cinema worldwide), the winner of the Best Documentary prize called for Taiwan to be recognized as independent — whereupon censors in the PRC cut the broadcast off. Writer Lauren Teixeira recounts the other Taiwan/PRC drama at the ceremony and explains why the Taiwanese movie industry has to take it seriously.
Puns Are Not The Lowest Form Of Humor – Rather The Contrary, In Fact
“Despite its bad reputation, punning is, in fact, among the highest displays of wit. Indeed, puns point to the essence of all true wit — the ability to hold in the mind two different ideas about the same thing at the same time. And the pun’s primacy is demonstrated by its strategic use in the oldest sacred stories, texts, and myths.” Indeed, the fact that we think Adam and Eve ate an apple is due to a pun.
Monday Recommendation, A Day Late: Atlantis Quartet
Atlantis Quartet, Hello Human (Shifting Paradigm Records)
Nuttall’s ‘Bomb Culture’ Is Back
Far from being bound by its time, Nuttall’s 1968 investigation of Britain’s underground political and literary protest culture was a prophetic critique, and applicable as well to the American scene.
Notorious Art Forger Talks About Ethics
Wolfgang Beltracchi, convicted in 2011 of painting and selling a series of 14 forgeries that fetched a total of $45 million. He compares himself favorably to the likes of Jeff Koons: “I painted individual paintings and I never replicated them, they were always unique pieces from a certain context, a certain period, with a certain technique, with a certain narrative. These artists — Jeff Koons, but also Ai Weiwei, and there are many more — are promoted by great dealer and everyone earns a lot of money. It is trade, but it has no originality.”
It’s The End Of The Teen Mag (Thank God)
“In the year 2000, there were seven major teen magazines publishing monthly; now, there are none. This makes me feel incredibly old, but even so: I am glad that teen magazines are dead.” As Seventeen and Teen Vogue, the last survivors of the genre, go out of print, Rebecca Onion argues that this is a healthy development.