Blog

Norton Museum Director Suddenly Resigns Just 19 Months Into The Job

Elliot Bostwick Davis came to the Norton from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, after spearheading the addition of its groundbreaking Art of the Americas Wing. She joined the Norton in March 2019, a month after its $100 million Foster + Partners-steered expansion opened. The expansion triggered a growth spurt during which the museum welcomed 218,000 visitors, mounted 19 exhibitions and served 9,000 students with its schools programs in the year after its unveiling. – Palm Beach Post

Let’s Stop Defining Artemisia Gentileschi As The Rape-Victim Painter

“Indexing Gentileschi’s oeuvre back to the rape and trial reinscribes the painter as an adolescent sex object, rather than an eminent adult artist with a 40-year career across major European cities. It also means that several of her paintings have been misattributed or overlooked because they didn’t correspond to the tropes of stricken or vengeful women. – Psyche

“Lateral Thinking” Was Hugely Popular. Too Bad It Was Also Wrong

From the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies to schools and government ministries, few concepts in popular psychology travelled as far and wide as lateral thinking. Garnering in excess of 20 million readers across almost 40 countries, a BBC TV series, hundreds of paid-up and certified ‘Master Thinkers’, a network of educational and business champions, de Bono had, by the 1980s, become a peculiar type of public intellectual: one who refused to engage with critics and detractors. Criticism was, according to the father of lateral thinking and founder of the Cognitive Research Trust, a vestige of the adversarial and ‘intrinsically fascist’ Socratic method. – Aeon

Modigliani Scholar Sues Guy Wildenstein’s Nonprofit For Holding His Research ‘Hostage’

“[Marc] Restellini’s lawsuit against the institute asserts that it is in possession of roughly 89 boxes and various other containers of research materials that he had amassed over the years and that are rightfully his. The lawsuit accuses the nonprofit of holding this research ‘hostage.’ The Wildenstein Plattner Institute, however, says the records are theirs.” – The New York Times

Some Dance Companies Are Moving Beyond Online Classes Into Zoom Rehearsals

“Ballet companies are in a bizarre holding pattern right now. With studios and theaters shut down indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic, how do they keep the repertoire alive and dancers in shape? A handful of companies, including Pennsylvania Ballet and Dance Theatre of Harlem, are pressing on with rehearsals, even with no confirmed performances.” – Pointe Magazine

How Diversity Is/Has Changing/ed American Theatre

In fostering greater identity complexity, the American theater today is realizing more of its mimetic potential — a potential long curtailed because of the restricted access of artists on the margins. As the theater belatedly opens up, the repertoire of representations expands, creating a more extensive vocabulary and grammar for self-understanding for us all. – Los Angeles Times

Even ‘Paw Patrol’ Is Getting Slammed For Depicting Cops As Too Benign

Amanda Hess: “It’s a joke, but it’s also not. As the protests against racist police violence enter their third week, the charges are mounting against fictional cops, too. Even big-hearted cartoon police dogs — or maybe especially big-hearted cartoon police dogs — are on notice. The effort to publicize police brutality also means banishing the good-cop archetype, which reigns on both television and in viral videos of the protests themselves. Paw Patrol seems harmless enough, and that’s the point: The movement rests on understanding that cops do plenty of harm.” – The New York Times