While this year has been rough for most, D’Amelio has had an extraordinary 2020 by anyone’s standards — never mind a teenage schoolgirl who little over a year ago was just filming dance videos in her bedroom. Not only has her profile on the app grown exponentially from just 1 million followers a year ago, but her career outside of TikTok has also exploded. – CNET
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Calling In Cancel Culture
“I think you can understand how calling out is toxic. It really does alienate people, and makes them fearful of speaking up.” – The New York Times
Philadelphia Museum Of Art Closes, Furloughs Staff
The PMA reopened on September 6 after almost six months of closure. In August, the museum laid off 85 of its employees; an additional 42 workers accepted voluntary separation agreements. The decision to reduce staff was announced two days before the outcome of a union vote at the museum in which 89% of workers voted “yes.” The August layoffs followed a reduction of over 20% of the museum’s workforce (100 employees) in June through a combination of furloughs and voluntary separation agreements. – Hyperallergic
City Of Seattle Creates A New Real Estate Company To Buy And Manage Arts Spaces
The city is taking the rare step of creating a “mission-driven” real estate development company so that it can create, purchase, manage and lease property for arts and cultural spaces — which could include a wide range of venues and organizations, including galleries, bookstores, nonprofit dance companies and cultural community centers. – Crosscut
Where Did The Banksy Bike Go?
Someone stole half of the artwork in Nottingham, even though the bike was not rideable and seemingly not an attractive target. It’s not the first time the art was hit: “The council had protected the mural with clear plastic sheeting, but it was also targeted with spray paint at least twice.” – The Guardian (UK)
With An Uncertain Future Bearing Down On Us, We’ve All Become Storytellers
What will happen next? We don’t fully know. (Of course, we never know, but the pandemic makes it worse.) Novelist Nancy Star: “Aren’t we all lost now, in the pandemic, trying to see what’s going to happen next, unable to catch more than a glimpse of a few feet ahead? Plans have been of questionable use. I still don’t know what made me buy so many frozen vegetables. … I know this feeling. This is how it feels to write a first draft of a novel.” – LitHub
Many Arts Groups Are Getting More Donations Than Usual During Lockdown
In Seattle, arts organizations report that their fundraising is up — sometimes dramatically — over what they typically raise. – Seattle Times
Actor Wes Studi Revisits ‘Dances With Wolves,’ And How Native Depictions Have Changed On TV And Movies
Some things have improved – and others have far to go. Studi: “We’re getting to see Natives in contemporary situations and still bringing it as skins — as Indians. It’s never enough, and never soon enough, but we’ve got to live with the world we have.” – Yahoo! Entertainment
A Musical Breakdown Of How Steve McQueen Scored His New Movies
McQueen goes through his thought process for the film Lovers Rock. “West Indian people, Black people, were not welcome into clubs. Therefore, people thought, ‘You know what? We’ll make our own.’ So front rooms used to be turned into discos. People just roll up their carpets, get their couch, and a coffee table, whatever, put it in the spare room, and make that front room a venue for a club.” – Slate
Well, 2020 Has Bested Even The Oxford English Dictionary
Language changed so quickly in response to the pandemic that the OED decided not to pick only one word or term this year. “What struck the team as most distinctive in 2020 was the sheer scale and scope of change. … This event was experienced globally and by its nature changed the way we express every other thing that happened this year.” – The New York Times