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Founder Of Museum Of Russian Impressionism Flees Russia

“The real estate developer Boris Mints opened the Museum of Russian Impressionism in the former Bolshevik confectionery plant [in Moscow] in 2016. At the end of May, news emerged that Mints and his family had fled to London, reportedly to avoid possible criminal investigation in Russia over bank dealings.”

Germany Increases Arts Budget To €1.8 Billion

“The German parliament has approved a 9% increase in federal spending on culture, bringing the total budget to €1.8bn. Additional funding has been earmarked for preserving and protecting heritage buildings, archive materials and memorial sites. Another priority of the budget is to increase arts offerings and education in rural regions, says the German culture minister Monika Grütters.”

Time To Retire Beethoven’s Ninth?

“We have the 19th-century ideal of strength in unity — expressed in the “Ode to Joy” — scraping up uneasily against a 21st-century ideal of strength in diversity. The change in perspective makes some people afraid and angry. It makes others hopeful and optimistic. Until we see whether we can achieve a paradigm shift or whether we fall back into something like the genocidal chaos of the mid-20th century, I think we should press pause on Beethoven’s Ninth. I, personally, would be satisfied to never hear it again.”

Study: Widen Definition Of Culture To Engage Young People

The research conducted with 11 to 19 year olds found that young people have a flexible relationship with arts and culture, but one that remains most influenced by their family. It found consuming or creating art was a ‘passion’ for almost half of young people, but that definitions of arts and culture used by the funded cultural sector fail to resonate with young people who have “much wider perceptions”.

Is Hip Hop The Way Forward For The Arts?

Hip hop culture illuminates a way forward within Canadian cultural institutions’ growth, evolution and vibrancy. It may seem that the spontaneity and improvisation of hip hop — cornerstones of the culture’s innovative core threaded seamlessly throughout dance, djing, rhyming and painting — are structurally and policy-wise an impossibility within cultural institutions. But…

What Gets To Be A Science?

The methods used to search for the subatomic components of the universe have nothing at all in common with the field geology methods in which I was trained in graduate school. Nor is something as apparently obvious as a commitment to empiricism a part of every scientific field. Many areas of theory development, in disciplines as disparate as physics and economics, have little contact with actual facts, while other fields now considered outside of science, such as history and textual analysis, are inherently empirical. Philosophers have pretty much given up on resolving what they call the “demarcation problem,” the search for definitive criteria to separate science from nonscience; maybe the best that can be hoped for is what John Dupré, invoking Wittgenstein, has called a “family resemblance” among fields we consider scientific. But scientists themselves haven’t given up on assuming that there is a single thing called “science” that the rest of the world should recognize as such.

American Shakespeare Center Names A New Leader

Former Shakespeare Theatre Company associate director Ethan McSweeny has been named to run the 30-year-old American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Va., beginning next week. The Blue Ridge troupe performs in the Blackfriars Playhouse, a facsimile of the indoor theater used by Shakespeare’s troupe.

Why MoviePass Is A Terrible Idea

Every cent you don’t fork over for each free or super-cheap service you use is balanced by the advertising revenue the service hopes to make off of you. That’s not just true of the app-centric, surveillance-saturated economy of 2018 — it’s basically how the entertainment biz has worked for over a century. If you’re not entirely supported by sales or subscriptions, you’re working with advertisers. MoviePass is no different, but they are a fascinating case study in how, as modern data-driven advertising risks extinction via overdue regulation, the most cynical impulses of “old school” advertising threaten to turn everyone off just as much.

Should An Artist Like Anish Kapoor Be Invoking His Copyright Just Because He Doesn’t Like The NRA’s Politics?

“Whether Sir Anish should leverage a law meant to foster and incentivize creativity and debate to instead silence and censor speech is the question before us. Put another way, does US Copyright law grant a copyright owner the sole and exclusive right to control how their copyrighted work is used?”