Buddy Guy is eighty-two and a master of the blues. What weighs on him is the idea that he may be the last. Several years ago, after the funeral of B. B. King, he was overcome not only with grief for a friend but also with a suffocating sense of responsibility. – The New Yorker
Blog
The Utility (And Importance) Of Cliches
While we tend to condemn clichés harshly, the scholar of rhetoric Ruth Amossy at Tel Aviv University has shown that they’re in fact crucial to the way we bond with and read other human beings. ‘How have you been?’ – ‘Not bad at all!’: in our daily interactions, clichés represent a communicative common ground, by avoiding the need to question or establish the premises of speech. They are a kind of a shared mental algorithm that facilitates efficient interaction and reaffirms social relationships. – Aeon
It Is Often Said Art Promotes Empathy. Is This Really A Good Thing?
This idea is particularly prevalent when it comes to those works of art described as “narrative”: stories, novels, TV shows, movies, comics. We assume that works that depict characters in action over time must make us empathize with them, or as the saying goes, “walk a mile in their shoes.” And we assume that this is a good thing. Why? – New York Review of Books
UK’s Society Of Authors Threatens To Sue Internet Archive Over Digital Lending Library
The Internet Archive began digitising books in 2005, because “not everyone has access to a public or academic library with a good collection, so to provide universal access we need to provide digital versions of books”. Today the archive scans 1,000 books a day in 28 locations around the world, through its book scanning and book drive programmes – with the “ultimate goal of [making] all the published works of humankind available to everyone in the world”. Users can borrow up to five books at a time, with each loan expiring after two weeks. – The Guardian
A ‘Restrained Homage To Over-The-Top Art’: The Museum Of The International Baroque
Justin Davidson: “There’s a certain slyly subversive quality to the displays of manuscripts, ceiling frescoes, foods, scientific instruments, silverware, home furnishings, and scenes of Monteverdi opera and Shakespeare performed in Spanish. Here [in Puebla, Mexico], a formerly colonized people have placed the colonists’ culture on display, as if to acknowledge with a hint of surprise that Europe such an advanced civilization in the 17th and 18th century.” – New York Magazine
Global Engagement
I began pondering issues related to community engagement almost 30 years ago. What has become clear to me is that the economic pressures faced by institutions presenting Eurocentric art forms are, throughout the world, forcing greater attention on spreading the reach of those arts. Community engagement is, to my mind, the best available means of doing so. – Doug Borwick
Breach of Trust? Rothko Gave SFMOMA Its Soon-to-Be-Auctioned Painting at the Museum’s Request
Dear SFMOMA and Sotheby’s: Have you no shame?
It’s bad enough for a museum to decide it no longer wants a work that it had specifically requested from its owner. It’s much worse when that owner is the artist himself. How will future potential donors regard such caprices? – Lee Rosenbaum
The World’s Greatest Art Thief (And How He Does It)
When it comes to stealing from museums, Stéphane Breitwieser is virtually peerless. He is one of the most prolific and successful art thieves who have ever lived. Done right, his technique—daytime, no violence, performed like a magic trick, sometimes with guards in the room—never involves a dash to a getaway car. – GQ
The Most Important Job On The Internet Right Now Is Comment Moderator (And It’s Awful Work)
“It’s where free speech, community interests, censorship, harassment, spam, and overt criminality all butt up against each other. It has to account for a wide variety of always-evolving cultural norms and acceptable behaviors. As someone who has done the job, I can tell you that it can be a grim and disturbing task. And yet the big tech platforms seem to place little value on it: The pay is poor, workers are often contractors, and it’s frequently described as something that’s best left to the machines.” – BuzzFeed
Study: Here’s How Dr. Seuss Books Are Racist
“[This study reveals] how racism spans across the entire Seuss collection, while debunking myths about how books like Horton Hears a Who! and The Sneetches can be used to promote tolerance, anti-bias, or anti-racism,” Katie Ishizuka and Ramón Stephens write in their February 2019 report, “The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, AntiBlackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss’ s Children’s Books,” as part of St. Catherine University’s Research on Diversity in Youth Literature. – People