Amid mass demonstrations against structural racism spurred by George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis, Minn., activist-created book lists have been widely shared across social media for would-be allies to educate themselves on white privilege, systemic racism and the history of being black in America. Sales of such titles have spiked in recent days, and retailers are trying to meet the demand, with orders for some titles jumping fivefold from a week prior. – CBC
Blog
The Worst Of Times Or The Best Of Times To Be An Arts Administrator?
Executives’ job descriptions are changing under their feet, requiring skills in handling not only a global health crisis but also issues of racial equity. – The New York Times
As Big Museums Reopen In Europe, A Benefit: No Big Crowds
Now, at most 450 people at one time are allowed in the Uffizi’s many galleries, chock full of some of the art world’s greatest masterpieces. – Washington Post
What Was The Point Of Blackout Tuesday?
“I don’t understand the point of asking people who were already posting non-stop about George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and protests and racism and police brutality and links to financial and community resources and anti-racist reading guides to pause all of that just to fill their timelines with…black squares. And now our “protest” is the same protest as the San Fran Fucking 49ers’s protest? If the point of the campaign was to do literally the opposite of what it was intended to do, mission accomplished.” – The Root
Elsa Dorfman, Who Took Two-Foot Polaroids With A 200-Pound Camera, Dead At 83
“[She] first became known in Cambridge when she started selling her photos in a pushcart in Harvard Square. When police tried to chase her away, [her husband], a civil rights attorney, successfully argued that photographs are not ordinary merchandise that required a peddler’s license but were an intellectual product protected by the First Amendment. … Far from a pushcart, at the height of her career a 20-by-24 inch Polaroid portrait by Dorfman cost thousands of dollars.” – WBUR (Boston)
The George Floyd Fallout: Art Museums Take a Knee
In a striking departure from their customary reluctance to take strong political stands that would alienate some visitors, art museums around the country, speaking separately but with one voice, responded to the asphyxiation of George Floyd. – Lee Rosenbaum
Can We 3D-Print Coral Reefs To Save Them?
A couple of architects are 3D printing using organic materials – a project to support coral reef restoration via protective clay ‘coral seeding units’, and a prototype cabin built from ceramic and sawdust tiles to help solve California’s affordable housing crisis. – Aeon
A New Online Dance Work For The Age Of Coronavirus And George Floyd
“Short as it is, [Jamar Roberts’s] video, Cooped, released last week, is one of the most powerful artistic responses yet to the Covid-19 crisis. And as that crisis changes shape, as the anxiety over disease and confinement is compounded by violence and protest, the resonance of the work only expands.” – The New York Times
What Happens To Literary Life In Isolation
The absence of a tactile literary culture—one that happens in real time rather than on a screen—meant an uncomfortable cultural silence. And yet, during early morning walks through an empty city in April, paying attention in a wholly new way, I became acutely aware of being surrounded by literature, of how it manifests on many of Washington’s streets in the places where writers once wrote and lived, their words etched in stone. – VQR
Writers Are Having To Change Their In-Progress Books To Reflect COVID-19 Epidemic
“‘I can’t make my characters exist without interaction,” [one novelist] says. ‘While, for instance, I can edit out cheek kisses because this may no longer seem the norm, my characters need to meet, to row, to fight, to make love – and in a thriller, to murder. There will be insufficiently little exciting plot, in other words, if they can’t interact as they did pre-Covid.'” – The Guardian