Category: issues

“In theatre, television and pop music, being gay has become ever more mainstream, while in the traditionally avant-garde art world, queer art (or art that draws on the codes and cultures of homosexuality) is no longer only made by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) artists. … Who has the right to use this imagery and can anyone claim ownership of queer culture?”

“More colleges with a higher tolerance for risk, for passionate weirdness in curriculum and teaching, might well help our children make a more distinctive world for themselves. How far off such hopes now seem.”

“Rod Stewart is being sued over the rights to an image of his own head.” (True story.) Louis Menand gives an in-depth look at the current approaches to the concept of copyright – and asks if we need to update our ideas and laws for the Internet era.

The music industry folks behind a project called the Detroit-Berlin Connection “compare Detroit to their city after the fall of the Berlin Wall and say it has all the ingredients for a similar rebirth as a center of underground culture: deserted buildings, cheap rents and a gritty reputation.”

“A European Parliament committee voted on Monday to reject the nomination of Hungarian Tibor Navracsics as education and culture commissioner.” The legislators found that he was qualified for the post, but objected to his former role as justice minister in the controversial right-wing government of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban.

“Amazon is the shining representative of a new golden age of monopoly that also includes Google and Walmart. Unlike U.S. Steel, the new behemoths don’t use their barely challenged power to hike up prices. They are, in fact, self-styled servants of the consumer and have ushered in an era of low prices for everything from flat-screen TVs to paper napkins to smart phones.”

“Warburg defenders fear this will push the institute into financial ruin, putting it at risk of closing its stacks or even relocating and splitting apart its collection — a move that the prominent British art historian Martin Kemp recently wrote would be ‘the greatest act of vandalism in Western academia of my lifetime.'”

“The notion that Nasser might pose a threat to the United States is ‘ridiculous — unless poetry poses a threat to U.S. interests. He is an internationally recognized poet and a highly respected cultural figure in the Arab world.'”

“My dad told me he felt at peace and wasn’t afraid to die. We said all the things you’re supposed to say, but with several family members watching just off camera, we were both a bit stiff. Was that really going to be it?”

“Too often there appear to be disguised agendas that benefit a small minority of established, and most commonly London based, arts organisations and a privileged section of the population as a whole,” it states, adding that, with the next general election, an “incoming administration should review the arts council’s remit and the policies and structures for delivering it”.