Noting that “many commentators often conflate ‘museum’ with ‘art museum’,” Bob Beatty points out that there are far more history museums than art museums in this country. Oddly, attendance figures broken out for history museums are surprisingly scarce, but Beatty runs the numbers he can.
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Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.01.18
Take Another Trip! The Paston Treasure Beckons
I’ll bet most, if not all, of you have never heard of a large painting called The Paston Treasure, c. 1663. Neither had I, until I saw a little picture of this 8 feet by 5.4 feet work. … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2018-03-01
Review: Martin Wind’s “Light Blue”
Martin Wind, Light Blue (Laika)
Martin Wind gathers a coterie of distinguished colleagues and demonstrates why for two decades he has been a mainstay bassist in the US and Europe. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-03-01
How Screen Star Mary Pickford Became The Most Powerful Woman In Hollywood
In 1919, she co-founded United Artists with movie pioneers Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks (whom she married the next year). The goal was to make and distribute their own films, and then rake in the profits. They built a big office building in Los Angeles (today it’s an Ace Hotel), and the adjacent theater — ornate, Spanish Gothic, with murals, sculptures and lobby fountains — was for showing their films.
Why We Need More Translators
Literary translation is a difficult profession to break into. Plenty of people want to do it, but in the insular English-speaking world, there’s regrettably little work to go around, and it’s easier for publishers to entrust their books to already-known translators who are seen as less of a risk. But there are many benefits to widening our pool of working translators, not least because new translators often lead us to meet new writers. More than half of the books submitted for the TA first translation prize are debuts for their translators as well as English-language debuts for their authors, showing that translators are in the vanguard of literary change.
Dolly Parton Celebrates Giving Away 100 Million Books To Kids
Parton began the Imagination Library in 1996 in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she was raised. Children whose families sign up are posted free books, funded via charitable giving.
Some Insights To How The Oscars Are Being Reformed
Assessing this year’s crop of nominees, one can detect certain trends that indicate where the Oscars are heading and why. I offer three, all of them holding out the promise that the Academy is in little danger of making a gaffe on the order of Around the World in 80 Days (1956’s baffling choice for Best Picture) anytime soon.
Visitor Admissions Have Plunged For Two Big London Museums
The National Gallery had 6.3 million visitors in 2016, but this fell to 5.2 million last year, a drop of 17%. The NPG did much worse, with numbers decreasing from 1.9 million to 1.3 million—a fall of 35%. The data for May to December 2017, as reported in the Times newspaper, presented an even more dismal picture, with a decline for the NPG of 42%.
Chuck Klosterman: The Ways We Look At Culture Have Completely Flipped
“Being smart meant you knew about things that you didn’t experience. If you were a student of history, it meant that you understood the expanse of history. Anyone can know what’s going on right now. To be smart you have to know what came before you, and that no longer seems to exist. Now the belief is sort of: Any of that stuff can be found on the internet in five seconds. I don’t want someone telling me what the past was supposed to mean and have that inform the way I listen to music now or I watch film now. I want to eliminate the past and only exist in this perpetual state of the present.”
America’s Librarians Pressed Into The Drug War
The opioid epidemic is reshaping life in America, including at the local public library, where librarians are considering whether to carry naloxone to battle overdoses. At a time when the public is debating arming teachers, it is another example of an unlikely group being enlisted to fight a national crisis.
How Facebook’s Algorithm Tweak Wiped Out A Thriving Digital Publisher
The site Little Things, which had amassed 12 million Facebook followers, said the recent algorithm shift, which Facebook has said was designed to tamp down content that is consumed passively — and would instead emphasize posts from people’s friends and family — took out roughly 75% of LittleThings’ organic traffic while hammering its profit margins.”