Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) wore black, dyed his hair green, broke with his family, refused to get a regular job, did absinthe and opium, had too much illicit sex, and, of course, died young. Better, “his first collections of poems, Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857), was prosecuted for offending public morals, challenging its audiences with its startling treatments of sex, Satanism, vampirism and decay. No wonder his words would one day be set to music by The Cure.” – The Conversation
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How King Tut Exhibitions Grew To Become A Multimillion-Dollar International Industry
“The first major touring exhibition of artifacts from King Tut’s tomb was a product of financial necessity. In 1961, archaeological sites in Egypt were in danger of flooding and the country needed funds to protect them. Over the next 5 years, more than 30 objects from Tut’s tomb toured 18 cities across the United States and Canada. A slightly enlarged show opened in Japan in 1965. Through 1981, Tut artifacts were nearly always on the road, touring from Moscow to London, from Paris to Berlin.” – Artsy
As Netflix Expands Into More Countries, It Has To Deal With Those Countries’ Mores — And Censors
“[The company’s] 2018 annual report lists both ‘censorship’ and ‘the need to adapt our content and users interfaces for specific cultural and language differences’ as business risks. But as its subscriber growth in the United States stalls, the firm needs to keep growing significantly overseas in order to keep investors happy and stave off the competition from services like Apple TV Plus and HBO Max.” Reporter Alex Marshall looks at how these issues are playing out so far in India and Turkey. – The New York Times
The Renovation Of Belgium’s Africa Museum Was Supposed To Address The Country’s Ugly Colonial History. It Hasn’t Made Much Of A Start.
“When the museum reopened last year, Aline Nyirahumure, who is from Rwanda and runs the African cultural center Kuumba in Brussels, was not impressed. Much of the money went into a new building that includes auditoriums for educational events as well as a gift shop and restaurant.
Much else has barely changed.” – Los Angeles Times
Extinction Rebellion’s Street Theatre, And How Climate Change Is Treated In An Actual Theatre
Before it lost public sympathy with a badly misjudged action on the London Underground, the British activist group’s agitprop had had a good deal of success, thanks to its “instinctive understanding of public theatre.” Critic Kate Maltby looks at Extinction Rebellion’s successes and missteps alongside the current Old Vic production of Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs, starring Claire Foy and Matt Smith as a couple of climate-anxious white millennials. – The New York Review of Books
New York City’s Beloved Cultural Commissioner, Tom Finkelpearl, Is Out Of His Job
In news received with consternation by many city arts organizations, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that Finkelpearl would be stepping down by what the ex-commissioner called “mutual agreement.” Finkelpearl is credited with the new plan to tie funding from the city to institutions’ diversity efforts and with the scheme that has given free access to cultural institutions to holders of IDNYC cards. – The New York Times
Leading London Arts Center Turns Down A Million Pounds From The Sacklers
In September, the trustees of The Roundhouse declined to accept a £1 million grant from the Sackler Trust, controlled by the family which owns the company that makes OxyContin. Said a Roundhouse spokesperson, “We are enormously grateful for the trust’s support over the years, but … to [accept the gift] risks distracting from our work with young people, and that’s our priority.” – The Art Newspaper
Dead Musicians Are Touring As Holograms (Really)
“Was it really okay, I wondered, to let holograms stand in for once-vital, important artists and carry out new performances? Was this an inevitable development in the interweaving of high tech and art — or did it possibly speak to something darker about our 21st-century morals and our endless quest to be entertained? What did this phenomenon say about, well, us?” – Washington Post
AI Is Getting Very Good At Writing Prose
When the creators of GPT-2 gave the AI model a single sentence referencing J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, the machine generated a few paragraphs of Tolkien-esque prose—capturing a measure of the author’s unique world and sensibility. – Publishers Weekly
How Happiness Got To Be So Much Work
“Happiness is in many ways the marketing breakthrough of the past decade, with self-care and anti-stress products now rounding out the bestseller list on Amazon (think of ‘gravity blankets’, ‘de-stressing’ adult colouring books and fidget spinners), where they nestle alongside chart-topping tomes by ‘happiness bloggers’. All of this is made possible by a specific, disturbing and very new version of ‘happiness’ that holds that bad feelings must be avoided at all costs.” – Aeon