The seductive intelligence of a manifesto. – Jan Herman
Author: ArtsJournal2
Doreen Spooner, Who Blazed A Trail On Fleet Street, Has Died At 91
Spooner made her name with a photo of the woman at the center of the John Profumo scandal, but she did much more. “‘Who’d ever imagine a woman might be a photographer on a national newspaper?’ she wrote in a 2016 memoir. ‘A woman might be a tart or a monarch, but a press photographer?'” – The New York Times
Property details
At Rosmersholm, “there is a slight problem with damp.” – David Jays
The Architectural Problem Of Abandoned Malls
Are abandoned malls a special category, or are they more like abandoned warehouses, boarded-up downtowns, left-behind elementary schools? Right now, they seem to be bleak – and a growing issue. – The Atlantic
The New JJA Awards Announced
Congrats to the Jazz Journalists Association award winners! – Doug Ramsey
Britain Is On The Hunt For A New Poet Laureate After Being Turned Down By Its First Pick
Poet Imtiaz Dharker had been tipped by several British news sources as the next poet laureate, following Carol Ann Duffy, but she said no: “I had to weigh the privacy I need to write poems against the demands of a public role. The poems won.” – The Guardian (UK)
Medieval Studies (Yes, Medieval Studies) Is Actively At The Heart Of Debates Over White Supremacy
The fault lies in contemporary politics, of course, but also in the origins of the discipline: “In Europe, academic study of the Middle Ages developed in tandem with a romantic nationalism that rooted the nation-state in an idealized past populated by Anglo-Saxons and other supposedly distinct ‘races.’ In the United States, universities, cultural institutions and wealthy elites drew on Gothic architecture, heraldry and other medieval trappings to ground American identity in a noble (and implicitly white) European history. So did Southern slaveholders and the Ku Klux Klan.” – The New York Times
A Two-Time Olivier Winner Says He’s Prioritizing TV Because Theatre Doesn’t Pay Enough
David Bedella says he has to focus on LA instead of London. “TV offers celebrity and financial security and these things are important in an age where you don’t know where your next job is coming from. I want to be able to make the kind of money to support my family and not worry.” – The Stage (UK)
Another WWII Movie? Yes, And A Necessary One
The movie Where Hands Touch is about a young adult romance – about what happened to the generation of biracial young Germans who were born to white German mothers and French colonial African soldiers during and after WWI. Director Amma Asante (Belle, A United Kingdom) “poured into it her fears that racism and bigotry are flourishing today. ‘We wonder about Nazi Germany and how it got that way. It started with language and scapegoating, and we’re using a lot of [that same]language today,’ she says.” – The Guardian (UK)
Did Leonardo Stop Painting Because Of A Fall And Resulting Nerve Damage?
Some have suggested it was as stroke, but he showed no other signs of impairment. His injury suggests it may have been something else: “The ulnar nerve runs from the shoulder to the little finger, and manages almost all the intrinsic hand muscles that allow fine motor movements, so a fall could have caused trauma to his upper arm, leading to the palsy, or weakness.” – BBC