“For most of this broken country, shallow entertainments remain the only expected (and affordable) compensation for a shallow life of tedious obligation and meaningless work. This huge portion of the populace, kept distant from any true personal growth by every imaginable social and economic obstacle, desperately seeks some residual compensations in silly slogans, status-bearing affiliations, and, of course, the manifestly empty witticisms of politics.”
Category: issues
Maybe It’s Not So Cool To Deaccession Culturally Specific Gifts, Museums
“‘It’s an insult to the donors, the descendants, to Asian culture,’ said Yu of San Francisco. ‘My parents did this so that Asian art would be appreciated. It should stay in the Northwest.'”
How Do We Fix Public Space That’s Broken? Some Ideas For L.A.
“It would be easy to conclude that these problems will always seem intractable, or that the chance to solve them has come and gone. But … the next mayor could make headway on every one of these issues.”
WTF Is Up With Diversity In The Performing Arts?
“The ‘of-privilege’ institutions sit in an Art Burst showcase thinking ‘Do I really have to sit through another autobiographical identity politics solo show telling me things about poverty and racism that everyone in this room already agrees with and is working to solve?’ while the more diverse organizations see the funding that goes to European and contemporary work and feel alienated by what appears to an unfair elitist, Eurocentric bias.”
Don’t Read the Comments! (Or, The Ruination Of The Internet)
“Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought.”
Critics Charge Iceland’s Porn Ban Threatens Freedom
“This level of government surveillance directly conflicts with the idea of a free society.”
New – And Lower-Cost – Arts College In Barcelona Aims At Anglophones
“A new higher education performing arts school that will teach its courses in English is set to open in Barcelona this summer, claiming to be the first in continental Europe to offer both technical and entrepreneurial training. The Institute of the Arts Barcelona will offer one-year diploma courses in acting, dance and musical theatre from this September.”
Movies And The Propaganda They Make
“While it is true that propaganda is no longer a straightforwardly top-down process, the root of the word – to propagate, or to grow – still usefully describes how cinema plays a central role in the reiteration and reinforcement of particular ways of seeing and thinking, and how this, in turn, has strong political consequences.”
Dreaded Sequester Won’t Shutter Smithsonian’s Museums (Yet)
“The world’s largest museum complex is bracing for a $40 million cut in funding due to the budget stalemate in Congress, but the Smithsonian Institution is vowing to keep the doors open at its museums and the National Zoo.”
Entertainment Jobs In LA Finally Rebound After Recession
“The industry employed 132,200 at its pre-Great Recession peak in 2004. But in the following years thousands of entertainment jobs were lost as the industry suffered along with the rest of the tanking U.S. economy. But in 2012, the number of jobs was back up to just under 130,000–a 3.7 percent increase from 2011.”