Rowan Moore is not having it: “It has wrung tens of millions out of the public purse on the basis of deceptions, distortions and facts that proved to be fake. … Its claims to fundraising prowess are exaggerated, its promised transport benefits minimal. Its backers assert overwhelming public support on the basis of a poll that told those polled nothing of the costs and drawbacks of the project.”
Author: ArtsJournal2
Where Missing Women Congregate On Gallery Walls
Kenyatta Hinkle, who made a name for herself as a young artist in a 2012 Hammer Museum show, has a new show making waves in L.A. She “would play hip-hop, including Kanye West, and then draw on acid-free, recycled paper, dipping Spanish moss into India ink while dancing, which creates the nebulous and sporadic nature of her work.”
Why Our Voice-Command Intelligences Are Just As Racist And Sexist As We Are
Yeah, blame the ol’ garbage in, garbage out problem: “It may not be the fault of the programmers, the team at Princeton University reports in the journal Science. It may just be that the body of published material is based on millennia of biased thinking and practices.”
The New York Times Could Have Helped Diversify Theatre Criticism, And Instead, They Hired Another White Guy
A roundtable discusses the issue. “The line that jumped out to me from Green’s interview was when Green quotes his new executive editor [Dean Baquet] as saying, ‘It’s wrong to try to solve all of an institution’s diversity problems in one hire.’ So the answer is … to not solve any of them with this hire?”
Is Wine-Tasting Jargon A Complete Farce?
No, but it’s hard to describe smells. “While we may know as many as 30,000 words in our native language, we’re not nearly so good at defining the hundreds of thousands of distinct smells our brains process.”
Yes, Let’s Do Talk About Hollywood’s Gender Gap
The director of “Whale Rider” and “The Zookeeper’s Wife” always turned down invitations to speak on panels about being a woman director … until she realized nothing had changed during her decades of being in the industry. Nikki Caro says, “It was less ‘Why can’t I?’ and more ‘What the fuck is going on here?'”
In Defense Of Novelists’ Worldbuilding
Lincoln Michel attacked the concept in an essay last week; here, Emily Temple defends it. But she extends her defense: “No one should feel compelled to create lists of irrelevant details because of some oppressive Internet overlord. Actually, I have good news: literally nothing is required from fiction.”
Is It Time To End Gender-Specific Awards?
In Britain, the National Television Awards have been gender-neutral for a while, like the Grammys in the U.S. Could this ever work for something like the Oscars?
We Desperately Need To Cultivate Theatre Critics Of Color
“In the past thirty years, the range and scope of American theatre has diversified, and yet most full-time critics in America are predominantly white. When theatremakers of color create art that seeks to prefigure the world we wish to live in, being reviewed by someone entrenched in a white supremacist hetero-patriarchal, capitalist gaze is counterproductive. Being reviewed by someone who is not able to meet our art where it is at is problematic.”
Teens And Young Adults Are The Group Most Likely To Use Public Libraries, Study Says
Other interesting statistics from Britain and the Republic of Ireland: “The highest levels of library use were in Scotland and Ireland, with the lowest in Northern Ireland.”