Category: issues

Martha Nussbaum: Where Is Our Public Discourse On Ideas?

“When a profession is protected by academic freedom and tenure, it tends to turn inward. To a large extent that’s good. The great philosophers of the past who wrote so beautifully—Rousseau, John Stuart Mill—had to write beautifully because they had to sell their work to journals. They had to sell books to the general public because they could not hold positions in universities. Mill was an atheist, and, therefore, could not hold a position in a university. It’s a good thing that we’re protected by tenure and academic freedom, but we should realize that it creates a risk of getting cut off. Scholars should write, at least sometimes, for the general public. But if I tell my graduate students to write for the general public, where are they going to publish?”

Six Brooklyn Street Artists Accuse McDonald’s Of Violating Their Copyrights

The burger chain hired six Bushwick-based street artists to paint its new bagel sandwich in public spaces around the Netherlands while being filmed, using that footage for an ad alongside the “Vibe” video. While the four-minute-long video focuses mostly on the hired artists, who are part of the Bushwick Collective group, work by many other street artists appears in the video without permission.

NEA Releases Latest Data On Arts Jobs Economy

“This latest ACPSA data is from 2014 and reveals that the arts and cultural sector contributed $729.6 billion or 4.2 percent to the U.S. economy that year. Between 1998 and 2014, the contribution of arts and culture to the nation’s gross domestic product grew by 35.1 percent. The new state data tracking arts and cultural employment and compensation provides illuminating profiles and allows for comparisons among states and regions.”

Championing Etiquette In An Age That Can Seem Hostile To The Very Idea

Laura Miller meets Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning, two 30-something great-great-grandchildren of Emily Post and the heirs to her etiquette empire, to talk about the challenges of promoting good manners in “a time when jeering, insults, and other forms of impoliteness emanate in a steady stream from the highest office in the land” – and of resisting the desire of (some of) the public to peg them as finger-wagging schoolmarms.

Two Iranian-American Gallerists Charged With Trying To Overthrow Iranian Government

Karan Vafadari and Afarin Nayssari, founders of the Aun Gallery in Tehran, were arrested last summer after Revolutionary Guards stormed the exhibition space, destroyed some art and carried away other pieces. “The couple has been incarcerated at [the] notorious Evin Prison … and has been denied access to legal counsel, interrogated extensively, and frequently placed in solitary confinement over a series of charges that human rights organizations have denounced as baseless.”

When Ancient Athenians Tried To Make Athens Great Again

“Twenty-four centuries ago, Athens was upended by the outcome of a vote that is worth revisiting today. A war-weary citizenry, raised on democratic exceptionalism but disillusioned by its leaders, wanted to feel great again—a recipe for unease and raw vindictiveness, then as now. The populace had no strongman to turn to, ready with promises that the polis would soon be winning, winning like never before. But hanging around the agora, volubly engaging residents of every rank, was someone to turn on: Socrates, whose provocative questioning of the city-state’s sense of moral superiority no longer seemed as entertaining as it had in more secure times.”

In Poland Artists Went On Strike To Protest (Did It Do Any Good?)

“There was a huge amount of publicity. It was a symbolic act. We could explain to journalists that the situation for artists is really poor, that we’ve not done well, that we are outside the system.” The mission of those striking was to raise awareness that “most cultural producers are poor,” and “remain outside the system of pension and health insurance.”

Which Is More Harmful To The Arts: Elitism Or Populism?

Liesl Schillinger: “Those of a populist mind-set attack so-called elitist art forms as boring; those of an elitist mind-set attack so-called populist art forms as facile and unworthy. But in either case, it’s usually the mind-set, not the work itself, that raises hackles.”
Adam Kirsch: “The truth is, however, that few writers ever make a conscious choice between elitism and populism, difficulty and accessibility. Writers write as their minds and fates compel them to.”