Michael DeMarsche and Bob Ekelund: “We believe that the position against deaccessioning has become increasingly untenable, given increasing storage costs and the decreasing likelihood that a large portion of great art will rarely, if ever, be shown.” (Most art museums have only a small minority of their holdings on display.) “This regulation also restricts necessary mission changes and financial preparation for an uncertain future. We propose an update to the [American Alliance of Museums’] current position, one that would give museums the flexibility and autonomy to refine and hone their collections, while ensuring they have the resources needed to best serve their communities.”
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Inside Harlem’s New ‘Foreign Trade Zone’, A ‘Fortress’ Holding Billions’ Worth Of Art
Inside Harlem’s New ‘Foreign Trade Zone’, A ‘Fortress’ Holding Billions’ Worth Of Art
“[The facility] is called Arcis Art Storage. ‘Arcis’ is Latin for ‘fortress’ — a fitting name for what’s essentially a museum-quality bunker, currently insured to store up to $3 billion worth of goods. … Security is tight: Guests at Arcis must have their retinas scanned to go through the first door, then present their bare forearms for a vascular scan at a second door.” Atossa Araxia Abrahamian braves the security gauntlet.
Dance Critic Judith Mackrell Is Leaving The Guardian; Lyndsey Winship Steps In
Mackrell: “Dance has been so very generous to me as a writer, and The Guardian such a fantastic platform, that I feel I’m walking away from my own dream job. But I’ve been doing it for 32 years (nine of them at The Independent before I joined The Guardian) and if it’s time for me to focus on other projects it’s also time to hand the mic to another voice.”
Arts Philanthropy In Miami Is Finally Taking Flight
“A dedicated group of snowbirds invested in some cultural enrichment for the city in the 1980s, marking a wave of new institutions that began to pop up in Miami.” Now, a dozen years after the 2006 opening of what is now the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts (and its rescue from disaster by Arsht two years later), “there is more diversity across Miami’s nonprofit disciplines than ever.”
We Need To Bring Opera Back To ‘Its Essential Simplicity’: Conductor Mark Wigglesworth
“When people say that opera is not for them, I think – more often than not – they mean that going to the opera is not for them,” writes the former music director of English National Opera. “Or at least what they perceive the experience of going to the opera to be. I don’t believe the art form is the problem. But many find it hard to imagine opera away from the expensive, exclusive and entitled associations attached to it. That’s understandable. For at some point the reputation of opera became separated from its actual performance. The evening parted company with the event.”
‘The Best View In Europe’: Westminster Abbey Opens Its New Museum
“Westminster Abbey is opening a museum this week in its hidden “attic”, the triforium, which offers a stunning vista of the Gothic nave more than 50ft below. … Until 2015, the abbey had a smaller museum in the 11th-century undercroft off the cloisters, but the new venue has the space for four times as many objects — around 300 in total.”
Does This Small Country Have The World’s Most Radical Libraries?
“As well as pushing the envelope in regard to architectural skill and style, Finnish libraries have an impressive record of being at the forefront of cultural progress and new thinking. Some of the first maker libraries (spaces where the public can borrow equipment and tools), for example, were founded in Finland, and today, some facilities offer the use of high-tech equipment such as 3-D printers and musical equipment free of charge.”
Nine Issues That Brexit Raises For British Creative Talent
“Personal politics aside, there are practical reasons why people in the arts are worried that Brexit will be bad news – including their concerns about free movement of talent, funding and Britain’s reputation around the world. But others are seeing silver linings. Here are some of the ways Brexit could affect the UK’s creative industries and talent.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 05.30.18
The pyramid and the wheel
There are countless ways to categorize collective human action (by legal entity, by sector, by formal/informal structure, by tax status, by geography, and on and on). But sociologist/political-scientist/historian Johan Galtung suggests there are essentially two … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2018-05-30
Recent Listening, In Brief
Keeping up with the ceaseless flow of jazz albums is impossible, but it’s a pleasure to try. Here are short reviews of a few relatively recent releases. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-05-30
How Music Has Informed Science
In Greek tradition, music ranked equal in status to arithmetic, geometry and spherics (astronomy), which together comprised the quadrivium, the core curriculum of four disciplines that a learned person was expected to master.