Having heard Luigi Brugnaro, Mayor of Venice, expound on Tintoretto’s “values” during yesterday’s livestream of the National Gallery of Art’s press preview for the Venetian artist’s first full-scale retrospective in America, I’m convinced that museums need to lay down some content guidelines (especially for non-museum professionals) to discourage pronouncements that are inappropriate for exhibition openings.” – Lee Rosenbaum
Blog
Facebook Wanted To Scan Local US Newspapers For Local News. The Problem: 1800 Local Newspapers Have Died
The company deems a community unsuitable for Today In if it cannot find a single day in a month with at least five news items available to share. But the social media giant said it has found that 40% of Americans live in places where there are not enough local news stories to support it. – The Guardian
Why Trying To Protect The Natural World By Assigning It Human Rights Is A Bad Idea
“How can the law account for the value of complex, nonhuman entities such as rivers, lakes, forests and ecosystems? … Perhaps we should take the idea of ‘the human’ as a rights-bearer and extend it to the complex, nonhuman systems that we wish to protect, that we know are deserving of care and concern. Tempting as it is, this move must be resisted.” Human rights attorney Anna Grear explains why. – Aeon
MySpace Finally Admits It Lost All The Music Its Users Uploaded Over 12 Years
“As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your back up copies.” Boing Boing
Here’s What Happens When You Play Mozart, Hard Rock, Techno, And Hip-Hop To Ripening Swiss Cheese
Last fall, Swiss researchers exposed nine wheels of Emmentaler in an aging cellar to various types of music: classical (Mozart’s Magic Flute), rock (Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”), techno (Vril’s “UV”), hip-hop (A Tribe Called Quest’s “Jazz (We’ve Got)”) ambient music (Yello’s “Monolith”), and, as controls, steady high, medium and low tones and silence. All were on nonstop loops, with mini-transducers transmitting the sounds directly into the cheese wheels. After six months, the wheels were taken out and taste-tested — and here are the results. (So why was the classical music used Mozart instead of Mahler, Monteverdi, Stravinsky, or Steve Reich?) – Smithsonian Magazine
Seattle’s Scarecrow Video: The World’s Best Video Store? (Admittedly Now A Small Category)
It survived bankruptcy, the threat of closing and the death of its charismatic founder. In 2014, it became a nonprofit. And now, after 30 years, with more than 132,000 titles — many on VHS, laser disc and DVD — it is as much a cultural warehouse as anything else. – New York Times
Against The Bad Sex In Fiction Awards
Catherine Brown: “At the risk of taking too-seriously an award of which the keynote is not seriousness, there are several problems involved in this that are worth considering. One is the implicit hypocrisy that the award has brought great publicity to its parent magazine because of the very fact – which the award ostensibly disparages – that sex sells.” – IAI News
James Corden To Host This Year’s Tonys
“The Late Late Show” host previously emceed the annual theater awards show in 2016, and won the Tony for best actor in a play for his performance in “One Man, Two Guvnors” in 2012. – Variety
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Names Bill Rauch’s Successor As Artistic Director
“Nataki Garrett, currently serving as acting artistic director for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, will take the reins in August … The announcement ends a nearly yearlong search following Rauch’s February 2018 announcement that he would step down from the post — also this August — for his new artistic directing job at the Ronald O. Perelman Center for Performing Arts at the World Trade Center in New York City.” – The Mail Tribune (Medford, OR)
Was Shakespeare Really Queer? The Sonnets Are Pretty Clear
Sandra Newman looks at the 126 Shakespeare sonnets (out of a total of 154) addressed to the Fair Youth, at other sonnets and love poetry of the time and place, and at what Shakespeare’s contemporaries said and wrote about male-male sex and love (especially in the theatre). Then she applies Occam’s Razor. – Aeon