The artworks were taken by British soldiers who were sacking the capital of the Kingdom of Benin; the art was then auctioned off to pay for the costs of the invasion in which they were taken, and most of the pieces ended up in museums in Berlin and London, where they gave European viewers their first glimpse of African art.
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Salzburg And The Transformative Effect Of Festivals
Salzburg maintains that the $75 million spent on the festival generates four times as much in revenue for the city. The final report of this summer’s six-week festival, which ended Wednesday, said 97% of all tickets were sold. Attendance was 261,500, more than double the capacity of the Coachella music festival.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.05.17
How to Save the Berkshire Museum: A Roadmap Provided by the Endangered Danforth Art Museum
Could Williams College come to the rescue of the foundering Berkshire Museum and its endangered collection? The financially challenged Danforth Art Museum|School has shown how this might be done, … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-09-05
Chicago Jazz Fest expanded review & Deutsch photos
My DownBeat review of the 39th annual Chicago Jazz Festival held over Labor Day weekend in and spilling out of Millennium Park, highlights the best I heard — including the specially organized big band … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2017-09-05
The New Historicism Of Vagueness (Or Some Such)
Greenblatt and company treated “culture as text”; they challenged such concepts as originality, genius, aesthetic merit, “the classics,” the canon, and “major works” vs. “minor works”; and even as they sought to upend conventional approaches to literary criticism, they sought, too, to overturn what they saw as old-fashioned approaches to the telling of history, producing “counterhistories” that would amount to “assaults on the grands récits inherited from the last century.”
Taking Stock Of Houston’s Architecture After The Storm
“This week, Houston’s art and architectural communities are beginning to take stock of the damage to historic and contemporary structures, as well as cultural projects still under construction.”
We Knew It: Study Says Trained Musicians Make Better Decisions
“In addition to the rich sensori-motor benefits early music playing may have on the developing brain, music training may also confer long-lasting benefits in complex cognitive functions,” writes a team led by Kirsten Smayda of the University of Texas–Austin. “The music classes offered during many children’s elementary and high-school education in America may result in improved decision-making ability as an adult.”
If A.I. Can Paint Pictures and Compose Music, Why Can’t It Tell Good Jokes?
As we’ve seen this summer, artificial intelligence software has written songs and created paintings that many listeners and viewers can’t distinguish from those made by humans. So why have the few attempts at A.I.-created comedy lagged behind> Turns out humor is a lot more complex than music or art.
The End Of Nations And Rise Of The City-State
“This is the crux of the problem: nation-states rely on control. If they can’t control information, crime, businesses, borders or the money supply, then they will cease to deliver what citizens demand of them. In the end, nation-states are nothing but agreed-upon myths: we give up certain freedoms in order to secure others. But if that transaction no longer works, and we stop agreeing on the myth, it ceases to have power over us. So what might replace it? The city-state increasingly looks like the best contender.”
Poll Of 50 Nobel Winners: The Biggest Threats To The World Right Now
Political polarization, the rise in populism, ignorance in world leaders, distortion of the truth, and encouraging distrust among people, their leaders, and the media are considered dangerous enough to be featured on a list that includes climate change, population increase, and infectious diseases.
Billy – The Story Behind IKEA’s Ubiquitous Bookcase
“It’s the archetypal IKEA product. It was dreamed up in 1978 by an IKEA designer named Gillis Lundgren. He sketched it on the back of a napkin, worried that he’d forget it. Now there are sixty-odd million in the world, nearly one for every hundred people.”