Category: issues

That ‘war’ is one big fail (but perhaps not for the reasons you’d think).

“The rise of a new middle class, unprecedented media attention, a surge in museum building in the wake of an economic boom as well as improved relations between foreign and Brazilian institutions are behind record high attendance figures in Brazil’s museums and cultural centres.”

“Qatar is a tiny country (the size of Yorkshire) with vast mineral resources (the world’s third largest reserves of natural gas) and big ideas about how this wealth can be used to create a place in the world.”

“The [UK] scheme, called Donate, encourages people to give money to arts groups via a mobile phone or tablet device. To start it off, 11 institutions have signed up … The idea is that people will be so cheered by what they have seen – whether a play or an exhibition – that they will feel moved to donate electronically, perhaps as little as £3.”

“The backdrop for this high-budget, dual-fuzzy-concept festival is a city where the arts are simultaneously thriving and starving.”

Nancy Hatch Dupree, a former diplomat’s spouse turned guidebook writer, “is opening Afghanistan’s first centre dedicated to the study of its own history and society, picked over for decades by foreign academics but often hard for Afghan scholars to explore in their country.”

The Atlantic Cities has launched the Urbanist Toolkit Bracket Challenge, a tournament wherein readers vote for their favorite city planning tools. In the opening Round of 32 (with regional brackets called “Sidewalk Ballet”, “Le Corbusier” and “Ed Koch”), streetcars defeated bus rapid transit, food trucks faced down pop-up parks, and car share services saw off redesigned highway interchanges.

“Rather than feeling liberated by the “sharing” of their work, African artists have voiced their despair at the rampant piracy their “anything goes” internet has brought upon them.”

“When a performing arts center was first planned for the former World Trade Center site, four cultural organizations were chosen after a high-profile competition … But over the years each of the organizations has fallen away” – the last of them being the Joyce Theater, which had planned to make the center a hub for dance.

“Take, for example, the alarmist tale of the Golden Goose … She was ‘prized for her eggs,’ but she waited too long and soon ‘she could make them no more / For her egg-making device was rusty and old.’ The pop-up statistic below warns readers: ‘1 out of 3 women over 35 will have problems conceiving’.”