For some, museum director Charles Venable is “a visionary who is facing the IMA’s fiscal challenges with a new focus on making the museum relevant to more people, including families, couples and millennials looking for experiences. But to critics, Venable is the man who has turned the IMA into a members-only club, de-emphasizing art and accessibility in favor of flowers, food and fun.”
Category: AUDIENCE
How Individuality Gets Subsumed Into Mobs
“In Group Psychology, Freud asks why crowds make a ‘barbarian’ of the ‘cultivated individual’. Why are the inhibitions enforced by social life so readily overwhelmed by all that is ‘cruel, brutal and destructive’ when we join together with others? And why does the crowd need a strong leader, a hero to whom it willingly submits? The crowd – which is, after all, just an evanescent massing of humanity, a gathering that will quickly disperse once its task is finished – is oddly ‘obedient to authority’. It might appear anarchic, but at bottom it’s conservative and tradition-bound.”
Summer 2017: Movie Box Office Disaster. TV? It’s Doing Just Fine
“By the time Labor Day weekend wraps, summer box-office revenue is expected to finish at $3.78-billion [U.S.], down 15.7 per cent over summer 2016, according to comScore. That’s the steepest decline in modern times, eclipsing the 14.6 per cent dip in 2014. It will also be the first time since 2006 that revenue didn’t clear $4-billion.” Further, to no one’s surprise, the value of stock in companies that own theatre chains in the United States has collapsed – Regal Entertainment has seen shares plunge 28 per cent, while AMC Entertainment dropped 45 per cent. Meanwhile, television, even broadcast TV, is doing fine. It’s not a matter of across-the-board revival for the networks.
Study: The Idea That Universities Fight Inequality Turns Out To Be A Myth
“In a fascinating new paper published this summer, five economists, Raj Chetty, John Friedman, Emmanuel Saez, Nicholas Turner, and Danny Yagan, call into question higher education’s role in promoting upward mobility. The centerpiece of the paper is “mobility report cards” for each college in America. The researchers considered 30 million students between 1999 and 2014 and compared their parents’ incomes to their own post-college earnings, by school. With this data, they could see exactly which colleges helped the most students rise from the bottom of the earnings ladder to the top.”
Art In Support Of Homeless: 9000 to Sleep In A Park In Edinburgh
“It is hoped 9,000 people will take part in the sleepout, which will see Liam Gallagher, Deacon Blue, Amy Macdonald and Frightened Rabbit play unplugged. No tickets will be sold, with members of the public and businesses joining the event by reaching fundraising targets and accepting the sleep-out challenge.”
Artist To Swarm Philly’s Ben Franklin Parkway With Lantern-Covered Pedicabs
In a new project titled Fireflies, Cai Guo-Qiang, the artist known for (literal) fireworks such as Fallen Blossoms on the front steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, will send a fleet of pedicabs swathed in colorful lamps to perform synchronized maneuvers on the city’s grand avenue and then pick up passengers for an evening ride.
No, Asking The Community Who Doesn’t Attend Your Theatre What You Should Do Isn’t The End Of Expertise
Of course dig deeper behind the headline and the York initiative is not quite the latest nail in the coffin for expertise that it might first appear. Rather it’s a smart move to broaden audiences and repertoire and involve the local community from a theatre that has already pioneered involving young people in every aspect of theatre production from programming through to producing and marketing with the annual excellent Takeover Festival.
One Public TV Station Cut Back On Pledge-Drive Time – And Saw Revenue Rise
“In what began as a one-year experiment last summer, the New York pubcaster [WNET] carved out regular time slots for fundraising programs on its flagship channel, ending the campaign-style drives that go on for weeks. With pledge confined to a limited number of slots – including Thursday primetime and weekends – the station also changed how it communicated with viewers and members about fundraising.”
Truck Drivers Are Addicted To NPR, Even When They Disagree With It
As one trucker told reporter Alan Yu, “Every single driver I’ve ever talked to listens to NPR.” Why? Some of it is that the substance can keep people engaged for mile after mile. But this is also another case where geography is destiny.
So Much For The Public Square – Charlottesville Reveals Tech Platforms’ True Nature
“The recent rise of all-encompassing internet platforms promised something unprecedented and invigorating: venues that unite all manner of actors — politicians, media, lobbyists, citizens, experts, corporations — under one roof. These companies promised something that no previous vision of the public sphere could offer: real, billion-strong mass participation; a means for affinity groups to find one another and mobilize, gain visibility and influence. This felt and functioned like freedom, but it was always a commercial simulation.”