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What Political Contributions Do Museum Trustees Make (And What To Make Of It?)

Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave almost $8 million to political causes in 2016, with about 58 per cent of that total going to Republicans and conservatives. Perhaps less surprisingly, 89.5 per cent of contributions ($4.3 million) from Saint Louis Art Museum board members went to Republicans. However, in downtown LA – a mere limo ride from liberal Hollywood – trustees at the Museum of Contemporary Art also favoured Republicans and conservatives with over 70 per cent of the money they donated, to the tune of $11.1 million.

I Run From You: German Train Station To Play Schoenberg To Drive Out Drug Dealers

Deutsche Bahn — Germany’s national train operator — has come up with a confrontational approach. This autumn, it will try piping “atonal music” into a Berlin railway station, a spokesman confirmed Wednesday in an emailed statement. It is an attempt to make the station less comfortable for drug users. In explaining the move, an official told the publication Deutsche Welle that few people find such music beautiful, and that many perceive it as something to run away from.

Disabled Musicians Take The Proms

There are other orchestras in the UK for disabled musicians, notably conductor Charles Hazlewood’s British Paraorchestra, which was formed in 2011 to give disabled musicians the chance to perform. The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has gone a stage further, treating music-making by disabled musicians as one of its core activities. Resound’s six musicians perform as a self-contained group, but also play as members of the larger orchestra.

NY Public Library Lets You Read Books On Instagram

The first novel published to the social media service is Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel, Alice in Wonderland. The surreal Wonderland-inspired graphics were designed by conceptual illustrator Magoz. The NYPL says they had hoped to mimic the feel and layout of classic books on the screen, with the innovative and engaging element of artistic design on select “pages.”

Is It Art, Or Is It Space Junk? Artists And Astronomers In Conflict Over Low-Orbit Works

In January, Peter Beck sent his Humanity Star (described by irked scientists as a three-foot-wide disco ball) into orbit, and in October, Trevor Paglen’s Orbital Reflector will follow. In an article headlined “Hey Artists, Stop Putting Shiny Crap Into Space,” George Dvorsky looks at the origin of these two pieces and gets some choice words from each side of the divide.

Yale’s Intriguing “Leonardo” Examination Gets a Grade of “Incomplete”: Few Leonardos, Many Photos

Since another Leonardo “discovery” has been much in the news of late (including this recent twist, questioning its authorship), the Yale Art Gallery’s summer exhibition, Leonardo: Discoveries from Verrocchio’s Studio, has more topicality than the museum’s chief curator Laurence Kanter might have imagined when he began planning it.

Recent Listening In Brief

Cécile McLorin Salvant, Dreams And Daggers (Mack Avenue)
The two-CD collection has 23 songs, five of which have original lyrics by the singer. The other pieces are standards, some seldom heard, by Kurt Weil, Langston Hughes, Irving Berlin, Julie Styne, Bob Dorough, Noel Coward and Frank Loesser.

The Obsessive Fans Of ‘Twin Peaks’, And The Answers To The Questions They Obsess Over

The Internet was the perfect way for those who loved the original series to bat their theories back and forth, and from the medium’s days, that’s what they did. Joanna Robinson offers a brief history of that fandom and how it affected the Twin Peaks franchise and eventual reboot – and she gets a few mysteries clarified by co-creator Mark Frost.