CultureGrrl Video: My Opinionated Tour of the Embattled Berkshire Museum
Having written extensively and critically about the Berkshire Museum’s deaccession plans, I thought I ought to revisit that embattled institution in person. I’d been there twice before, decades ago, before … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-09-27
“Capoeira developed in Brazil, derived from traditions brought across the Atlantic Ocean by enslaved Africans … During this time, the art was considered a social infirmity and officially prohibited by the Brazilian Penal Code. The identification of ‘the outlaw’ with capoeira was so widespread that the word became a synonym for ‘bum,’ ‘bandit,’ and ‘thief.’ However, that did not stop the capoeiristas from practicing. They moved to marginal places and camouflaged the martial art as a form of dance.”
“Whatever arrogance you have – is the past lesser or greater? It’s all the same. And loss is loss is loss. And so wars are united, because they are big loss machines. They drive families apart and then some people don’t come home. … And that’s why they’re so instructive, because they remind us again and again of the worst of us. And we hope in some ways that by studying it you might mitigate it, but it won’t. There will always be wars and everybody feels it the same.” (podcast plus transcript)
As the eponymous physician in the TV series House said, “You talk to God, you’re religious. God talks to you, you’re psychotic.” Neuroscientist Dean Burnett explains that it’s all about the way the brain sets up its model of how the world works.
Yes, for years the right-wing media complex has been accusing Snopes of liberal bias whenever it fact-checks a lie or myth the right likes, and in today’s climate that situation has only gotten worse. Add to that the very bitter divorce of the site’s founders, David and Barbara Mikkelson, and a financial dispute between David and the site’s new co-owners that includes accusations of embezzlement, and Snopes is having a rough time of it.
“As the Studio Museum prepares to break ground [on 125th Street] next year, coinciding with its 50th anniversary, [Thelma] Golden, 52, is overseeing the institution at a turning point in its history. … Ms. Golden’s name, meanwhile, keeps coming up for top posts, like those at the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the same time, Ms. Golden must defend the Studio Museum’s importance in an age when the work of African-American artists is increasingly making its way into mainstream institutions.”
“Museum leaders gathered Tuesday morning to release details of the $38 million expansion that will – when finished in summer 2019 – nearly double its total exhibition space. The biggest addition is a new 8,500 square-foot, column-less exhibition pavilion” designed by Kulapat Yantrasast of the firm wHY. The pavilion will be named for museum board chair Akiko Yamazaki and her husband, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, who have contributed $25 million for the project.
“Describing performances, whether the New York debut of an exciting young Finnish pianist or a boldly radical production of The Magic Flute, is the core of the reviewing art. … [Yet] music, especially purely instrumental music, resists being described in language. It’s very hard to convey sounds through words. Perhaps that’s what we most love about music: that it’s beyond description, deeper than words. Yet the poor music critic has to try.”
“To start, the feature will only be available to a random set of users on the service. But if adopted by the platform as a whole, the change will constitute one of the most fundamental changes to Twitter’s core product in years.” Robinson Meyer answers seven questions about the change, such as, “Why would Twitter do such a thing?” (money), “What do 280 characters have to do with money?”, and What does it mean for Twitter’s most (in-)famous user?”
“The seating arrangement for the musicians in an orchestra is designed, naturally, to make the music sound best to the audience sitting out in the hall. … But [it] is definitely not optimized for the listening pleasure of the musicians, who hear a different cacophony depending on where they sit. ‘The stage has 101 acoustical micro-climates. Every seat on that stage is different,’ says section percussionist Perry Dreiman.” (audio)
