Author: ArtsJournal2

State Universities Backed Themselves, With Legislative Help, Into Some Terrible Corners This Fall

As the pandemic exposes massive historical cracks in the U.S. along class and race lines, it also exposes what state universities have been dealing with for a few decades – and it’s causing serious crises. “How does one advertise an education, or the quality of a school’s faculty? Most students are, almost by definition, not in a position to assess a professor’s expertise. … What a school can advertise, through glossy pamphlets, professionally produced websites, and those iconic tours, are campus amenities: rock-climbing walls, state-of-the-art gyms, and ample dining options. University leadership, looking to compete for students, promises a fun student life, in place of an educational one.” And that’s not something one find on Zoom. – The Atlantic

The Ongoing Reckoning In The Publishing World

Publishing has rather a lot to do to catch up in the diversity, equity, and inclusion fronts. Lisa Lucas, the outgoing director of the National Book Foundation, who is Black, says, “What do you do with data that tells us we’re not diverse enough for the year 2020? We make the culture — we make books. If we are serving a whole country, then we need people within our publishing houses who reflect what our country looks like.” – GEN

Can Reading Fight Racism?

The pandemic changed some things, and then came the murder of George Floyd – and the largest civil rights movement in U.S. history. “Anti-racist manuals have been cleaned out from virtual bookstore shelves and pushed to the top of bestseller lists. And often, these buyers don’t want to read alone. Enter the anti-racist book club.” – BuzzFeed

What Democracy Looked Like, In Ballot Form

Even before the colorful public ballots of the early United States, actually, “people used the viva voce system, rooted in ancient Greece, where voters announced their candidate to a clerk. In some US colonies, voters would use objects, like corn and beans, to vote yea or nay; and in other states, people would line up on opposite sides of a road to signal how they were voting.” – Hyperallergic

Black Artists In Portland Create A New Map For Cities Confronting Their Past, And Present

Portland doesn’t exactly have the best history with its Black populations, including forced gentrification after decades of intense redlining. A 69-year-old artist says, “They tried to scoop us out of the city. … Now there are generations of Black artists working in Portland to create historical artifacts around our own existence to show that we have always been here.” – The New York Times

Germany Stages Three (Sort Of) Fake Concerts In One Day To Find Out More About Risks Of Coronavirus Spread

The idea was to figure out what could make for a safe return to live music, using healthy volunteers who had tested negative before the concerts. “The first of Saturday’s three concerts aimed to simulate an event before the pandemic, with no safety measures in place. The second involved greater hygiene and some social distancing, while the third involved half the numbers and each person standing 1.5m apart.” – BBC