On Friday, the old Santa Maria della Misericordia “will open its doors as a functioning mosque, its Baroque walls adorned with Arabic script, its floor covered with a prayer rug angled toward Mecca and its crucifix mosaics hidden behind a towering mihrab, or prayer niche.” The project constitutes all of Iceland’s pavilion, and it has evoked more than a little ambivalence, despite a centuries-long Muslim presence in the city.
Category: issues
The Arts Patron Of Teheran
“Almost overnight nearly all of Tehran’s billboards, which are owned by the city and are a prime source of income, stopped showcasing South Korean dishwashers and the latest bank interest rates (now 22 percent) and sported still lifes by Rembrandt and images by the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.”
Who Isn’t Consuming The Arts? And Why Aren’t They?
“When large numbers of people face barriers to participating in the arts in the way they might want to, we know that we’re missing opportunities to improve people’s lives in concrete and meaningful ways. What’s really behind this phenomenon of lower participation rates among economically disadvantaged people? And what can, and should, we do about it?”
Three Great Cartoonists – Bechdel, Spiegelman, Gaiman – Defend Charlie Hebdo’s PEN Award
“Cartoonists tend to stick together because they have to; as Gaiman points out, their work is disproportionately singled out for suppression both abroad and in the U.S., while at the same time often regarded as not ‘serious’ enough to deserve a full-throttle defense.”
Pension Costs Have Norway’s National Opera And Ballet Company Reeling
“Having to pay pensions for so many years after such low retirement ages” – 41 for ballet dancers, 52 for opera soloists and 56 for chorus members – “at relatively high rates, has already rendered the Norwegian Opera and Ballet technically bankrupt. Pension costs have risen 50 percent just since 2013.”
The Tug Of War Between Talent And Practice
“Talent is a destructive myth. To call someone talented is to imply that their abilities are intrinsic. Having written and taught for decades now, I’ve satisfied myself that the improvement of a person’s art isn’t drawn from the mystical well of their soul: it’s generated by practice.”
Charlie Hebdo Staffers Get Standing Ovation At PEN Gala, Despite Controversy Over Honoring Them
“Two members of Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine, took the stage to a thundering standing ovation at PEN American Center’s literary gala on Tuesday night, capping a 10-day debate over free speech, blasphemy and Islamophobia that started in the cozy heart of the New York literary world and spread to social media and op-ed pages worldwide.”
UK Lottery Generates Record Amount For The Arts
“£1.8 billion was shared between the Lottery Good Causes, of which the arts receive a 20% share – £359 million – alongside other areas such as sports, heritage, health and education. It represents a 2.6% increase on the previous year, which saw Lottery Good Causes benefit from £1.7 billion.”
A Plea: Let’s Get Arts On The Political Agenda For 2016
“I hope we can finally appreciate that this is politics in the real world; that the most important story any interest group can tell (and frankly the one that counts the most) is that they have a large committed base that cares about their issue and votes for those who support them; that the most important numbers and data have to do not with how many jobs we create or how much we contribute to the economy, but with how many votes might be at stake for candidates considering whether or not to align with us, and how much money we might raise for those candidates.”
Academic Conferences Are A Dreadful Bore (So Why Do We Still Do Them?)
“Academic conferences are a habit from the past, embraced by the administrativersity as a way to showcase knowledge and to increase productivity in the form of published conference proceedings. We have been complicit. Until now.”