There’s a disconnect between the insistence on the theater world’s wokeness and the blandness and inoffensiveness of the show. Or perhaps there isn’t. – The New York Times
Blog
Maker Faire Has Shut Down And Laid Off Its Staff
For 15 years, MAKE: guided adults and children through step-by-step do-it-yourself crafting and science projects, and it was central to the maker movement. Since 2006, Maker Faire’s 200 owned and licensed events per year in over 40 countries let attendees wander amidst giant, inspiring art and engineering installations. – TechCrunch
Why Did A Hedge Fund Buy Barnes & Noble? Can Anything Save It?
Barnes & Noble will probably never be the cultural and commercial force it once was, even if it doesn’t end up quite those dire straits. It has missed too many opportunities by now. But it still has a chance to write a next chapter that doesn’t include its demise. – Bloomberg
The Challenges Facing MoMA When It Reopens This Fall
Roberta Smith: “MoMA’s imminent closing and reopening casts everything now on view in an unusual light. You can see the future bearing down on the museum’s fabulous if blinkered past, which is about to be stretched and rearranged. The question of how profoundly and effectively this will be done should keep us on the edge of our seats all summer.” – The New York Times
The Art Of Designing Sounds For Our Devices
Toss a file and you’ll hear the sound of crumpled paper hitting a wastebasket rim. Lock your iPhone and you’ll hear a padlock snap. As Apple sound designer Hugo Verweij explained at a recent developer conference, “it’s like using a universal language that is already understood by everyone.” – Wired
Two Actors On Their Way To Perform Assaulted In Homophobic Attack In England
The two actors were embracing in the street when “‘assailants verbally abused them and thew stones at them from their car window,’ with one of the actors being hit in the face by a stone.” – The Stage (UK)
Is Notre-Dame’s Restoration Becoming A Symbol Of Macron’s Gung-Ho Presidency?
Ah, of course. Of course. “Instead of being a unifying project, the vexed question of the restoration of the Notre Dame has become a metaphor for the battle between Macron’s modernising ‘startup nation’ vision of France, and the large number of French citizens who don’t want anything to do with it.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Iraq Museum, Once Looted And Then Partly Restored, Has Antiquities And Art That Can’t Be Found Elsewhere
The museum lost about 15,000 items – but its collection is huge, luminous, and important. “Art historians and archaeologists know how exceptional the collection is. But despite Baghdad’s relative safety today, neither the city nor the museum have yet to become a major destination for Iraqis, much less foreign tourists.” – The New York Times
Can Britain’s National Portrait Gallery Cut Its Ties To British Petroleum?
It doesn’t seem entirely likely, but artists, activists, and even a judge have asked the museum to try. “They accuse the central London gallery of helping to launder the oil industry’s image through its BP sponsorship deal and say the oil company is aggravating the climate crisis by extracting fossil fuels.” – The Guardian (UK)
Doublethink, And Doublespeak, Are Stronger Than Orwell Believed
Returning to the book itself is something of a tonic against despair, but: “We are living with a new kind of regime that didn’t exist in Orwell’s time. It combines hard nationalism—the diversion of frustration and cynicism into xenophobia and hatred—with soft distraction and confusion: a blend of Orwell and Huxley, cruelty and entertainment.” And we chose it ourselves. – The Atlantic