The dismissals are only a small part of the changes implemented by the new government. On 1 July, the National Archaeology Museum (MUNARQ), which answered to the ministry of cultures and tourism, was closed by the police, its personnel evicted, and the future of its highly perishable artefacts put at risk. Two days later it was announced that the ministry of cultures and tourism (created by a Morales presidential decree in 2009) would itself disappear and become a vice-ministry under the ministry of education. This prompted protests from Bolivian artists, who demanded that it be re-established and denounced the lack of support they have received during the Covid-19 epidemic. – Apollo
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Even Out At The Beach, This NYC Dance Festival Couldn’t Go Ahead This Year. Here’s What Happened Instead
“Every August for the past five years, Beach Sessions Dance Series has been an exciting fixture on the sands of Rockaway Beach in Queens. The festival brings contemporary-dance luminaries to share their work through free, outdoor site-specific performances, all while raising environmental awareness through beach cleanups and other collaborative programming. But as coronavirus began to decimate the plans of other summertime dance festivals, it might have seemed inevitable that Beach Sessions would also be forced to take the year off. Enter TikTok.” – Dance Magazine
Met Museum Ends Free Internships – Now They’ll All Be Paid
The museum says that as a result of Adrienne Arsht’s gift, it is now the single biggest art museum in the US to offer 100% paid internships to nearly 120 undergraduate and graduate interns each year, widening access for students who cannot afford to work without compensation. It says that the internships enable interns to learn about museum practice in over 40 department areas. – The Art Newspaper
Reclaiming The Life Story Of America’s First Published Black Poet
In 1761, at roughly age 7, the girl who would become Phillis Wheatley was taken from Africa to Boston and sold to the wife of a local merchant who educated her. Within a dozen years, she had published a book of verse in London and become perhaps the most famous Black person in the British Empire as well as a symbol for anti-slavery campaigners. Until recently, though, we knew her life story only through a tendentious memoir, written well after her death, by a woman who claimed to be a relative of her mistress. – The New Yorker
Time To Repatriate Africa’s Heritage
It’s a familiar story across Africa: 90 to 95 percent of Africa’s heritage is held outside the continent, according to a 2018 report commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron. Given the shameful manner in which African artifacts were taken and the collapse of the colonial empires that enabled the looting, it is time for European institutions to reevaluate claims of restitution. – Foreign Policy
God, What A Treat To See Live Dance Again, Writes New York Times Critic
Gia Kourlas: “It didn’t bode well that the first live dance I was going to see since mid-March was one I had seen many times before. Sunshine, a Larry Keigwin war horse set to the Bill Withers classic ‘Ain’t No Sunshine,’ can give a dancer the opportunity to really feel the music in all the worst ways. It’s treacly stuff. So I’m happy to say that as soon as Melvin Lawovi began to move, my chest tightened; I even sensed — the horror — some tears.” – The New York Times
Do We Really Want Brain-To-Brain Communication?
Let’s face it: we’ve all had second thoughts about language. Hardly a day goes by when we don’t stumble for words, stagger into misunderstandings, or struggle with a double negative. It’s a frightfully cumbersome way to express ourselves. If language is such a slippery medium, perhaps it is time to replace it with something more dependable. Why not cut out the middleman and connect brains directly? – Psyche
A COVID Face Mask That Can Translate Eight Languages And Take Dictation
“In conjunction with an app, the C-Face Smart mask can transcribe dictation, amplify the wearer’s voice, and translate speech … between Japanese and Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, English, Spanish and French.” Naturally, it was the Japanese who dreamed up and developed it; the company that makes it is called Donut Robotics. – CNN
James Silberman, Who Edited Books That Changed America, Dead At 93
Among the many important titles he midwifed over a long career at Dial, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Little Brown were James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and The Fire Next Time, Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room, E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, Seymour Hersh’s The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, and Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. – The New York Times
Notre-Dame’s Organ Is Being Taken Apart Piece By Piece To Get The Lead Out
Miraculously, the enormous instrument suffered no structural damage from the April 15, 2019 fire at the medieval Paris cathedral. But the 8,000 pipes, five keyboards, and intricate mechanisms were covered and filled with toxic lead dust from the destroyed roof and spire. Disassembly will take until the end of this year and the cleaning will take more than three years; after the organ is all back together, it will take six months to tune and voice it. – Yahoo! (AP)