“A mechanical engineer at the University of Versailles has modelled the engineering of the structure and shown that the walls of Nôtre-Dame could collapse under the pressure of wind speeds higher than 90km per hour, while before the fire they could withstand winds of up to 220km per hour.” – The Art Newspaper
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Did We Just Get A Sign That Hilary Mantel Has Finished Her Cromwell Trilogy?
“On Tuesday (21st May), Waterstones Piccadilly sparked excitement online when it tweeted out a prominent sign, said to be spotted in London’s Leicester Square, which appeared to hint at news on the novel, titled The Mirror and the Light.” The sign has since disappeared from the billboard, and HarperCollins has no comment. – The Bookseller (UK)
Staff At Another New York City Arts Mecca Move To Unionize
Following in the footsteps of workers at MoMA and the New Museum, employees of the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) have signed a formal petition to join United Auto Workers Local 2110. “While they haven’t yet posed any official demands, several workers [are] alleging worsening working conditions including the reduction of benefits, 401k matching, and healthcare, in addition to transforming full-time jobs to hourly part-time jobs, which render workers ineligible for benefits.” – Hyperallergic
Everyone Thought Aretha Franklin Left No Will. Turns Out She May Have Left Three
“In a court filing on Monday, the personal representative of Ms. Franklin’s estate disclosed that three handwritten documents had been discovered just weeks ago at Ms. Franklin’s home — one in a spiral notebook under her sofa cushions, the others in a locked cabinet — and asked a Michigan probate judge to decide whether any of them are valid wills.” – The New York Times
Man Booker International Prize, For First Time, Goes To Arabic Novel
“Jokha Alharthi, the first female Omani novelist to be translated into English, has won the Man Booker International prize for her novel Celestial Bodies. Alharthi … shares the [£50,000] prize equally with her translator, American academic Marilyn Booth.” – The Guardian
One Of The World’s Great Collections Of Soviet Avant-Garde Art, All Saved From Stalin, Is In Deepest Uzbekistan
And “deepest” doesn’t mean Tashkent, Samarkand, or the other Silk Road cities visited by tourists; this is in far-off Nukus, near the now-dead Aral Sea. Yet this distance from Soviet power centers is the reason an ex-electrician could amass the trove of once-forbidden art at the Savitsky Museum. – The Guardian
Author Binyavanga Wainaina, Leading Kenyan Gay Rights Activist, Dead At 48
“One of the first high-profile Kenyans to openly declare he was gay, … he won the Caine Prize for African writing in 2002 and was best known around the world for his satirical essay ‘How to Write About Africa.’ Wainaina was also named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2014 for his gay rights activism.” – BBC
Diversity beyond visible representation
“There is growing presence, visibility and representation of [Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic] artists, as well as a vision that they should be part of the mainstream. … However, we now need to move beyond visible representation to look at who is commissioning, directing, producing and programming the work of BAME artists.” – Arts Professional
NYTimes Executive Editor: Most Local Newspapers Will Die Within Five Years
Dean Baquet: “The greatest crisis in American journalism is the death of local news . . . I don’t know what the answer is. Their economic model is gone. I think most local newspapers in America are going to die in the next five years, except for the ones that have been bought by a local billionaire.” – Fast Company
Best-Selling Big-Idea Books Riddled With Errors – Should They Be Better Than Random Tweets?
“The time has come for those of us who work in book-length nonfiction to insist that professional fact-checking become as inalienable from publishing as publicity, marketing and jacket design — and at the publisher’s expense rather than as a cost passed on to the author, who, understandably, will often choose to spend her money on health care. In the age of tweets, it cannot be the fate of the book to become ever more tweetlike — maybe factual, maybe whatever. The book must stand apart, must stand above.” – The New York Times