Category: issues

“Safdi said that proliferating downtown high-rises — he called them “object buildings” — sitting atop retail spaces around the world are creating cities that are “disjointed and disconnected and not worthy of our civilization.” He said these buildings fail to nurture community spaces like the squares and piazzas of the past, so that the very idea of shared space is becoming extinct.”

“National Geographic used artist Barrett Lyon’s internet image (opte.org) on the cover of its bookazine, 100 Scientific Discoveries that Changed the World, and in the book, The Big Idea, without Lyon’s permission or respecting the Creative Commons license that allows it to be used free of charge for non-commercial purposes.”

In August, the National Library asked the public to help with the purchase of a €2.4 million illuminated manuscript; last week, the Musée d’Orsay began a campaign to raise €30,000 towards restoration of a Courbet painting. This week, the Louvre – who’s been doing this for four years now – launched a €1 million appeal to help buy a bejeweled 18th-century table that Proust wrote about in Swann’s Way.

“Somehow the Great White Male has thrived and continues to colonise the high-status, high-earning, high-power roles (93 per cent of executive directors in the UK are white men; 77 per cent of parliament is male). The Great White Male’s combination of good education, manners, charm, confidence and sexual attractiveness (or “money”, as I like to call it) means he has a strong grip on the keys to power. Of course, the main reason he has those qualities in the first place is what he is, not what he has achieved.”

“After taking a second look at Los Angeles County government’s spending capacity for the 2014-15 fiscal year, the Board of Supervisors has added $54 million to the $84.7 million in arts and culture spending it had authorized in June when the board OK’d the main county budget.”

The country’s largest historic preservation group will have to spend many millions over the next decade for maintenance and restoration of its properties, which include castles, battlefields, and even a few islands.

“If you say you are an artist, but you make little money from selling your art, can your work be considered a profession in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service?” As of last week, the answer is yes.

After a Christian group was twice allowed to distribute Bibles in Orange County public high schools, the Satanic Temple – last heard from with an idea for the Oklahoma state capitol – suggested that they should be permitted to give out The Satanic Children’s Big Book of Activities there. Several news outlets reported that permission had been granted (which led to the predictable protests), but it ain’t so.

“The thing that makes Dunham’s show so interesting, the reason it inspired a certain unsettlement among some of its early fans, is that it often portrays young-liberal-urbanite life the way, well, many reactionaries see it: as a collision of narcissists educated mostly in self-love, a sexual landscape distinguished by serial humiliations — a realm at once manic and medicated, privileged and bereft of higher purpose.”

“‘Propaganda’ is a stretch … But it’s certainly true that the literary establishment has received a great deal of sympathetic coverage.”