“After four months of fear and anxiety, on Thursday Toronto’s arts community got some news from City Hall that calls for a victory celebration. The executive committee of city council voted in favour of sustaining arts funding levels at the same level that prevailed in 2011.”
Category: issues
Newspapers – Are They Civic Institutions Or Apps?
“[The] typical argument calls for supporting newspapers historically have been based on the idea of newspapers as a sort of civic institution that we, as a society, must preserve in the name of ideals (always capitalized) like Truth. But what if, instead, we begin to think of newspapers in perhaps a more mundane manner – as algorithms for solving problems?” Which is to say, as apps.
The Re-Imaging Of McDonald’s – And The Abandonment Of Ronald
“In 2012, Ronald McDonald is essentially a clown without a country. McDonald’s is in the midst of an ambitious, multi-billion-dollar global makeover” – upgrading its food, furnishings and fixtures to become more like Starbucks than Burger King – “[and] its middle-aged mascot has no place in it.”
Native Tribes And Anthropologists, At Odds Over A New Ruling On Bones
“Tribes have hailed the rule, saying it will help close a long and painful chapter that saw native peoples’ bones stolen by grave robbers, boxed up in dusty storerooms and disrespected by researchers.”
Building An Artist’s Utopia In Brooklyn, One Huge Warehouse At A Time
Dustin Yellin, a 36-year-old sculptor, just bought a 24,000-square foot warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, with plans to create a large arts center. “He sees Red Hook as a kind of anti-Chelsea, its relatively cheap rents and remoteness from Manhattan making it a prime setting for a grass-roots cultural operation.”
The U.S. Speaks English … And A Lot Of Other Languages Too
The U.S. may not be as monolingual as the Census suggests – and Europe isn’t as multilingual as it likes to believe.
Locking Up Shakespeare: Arizona Lawmakers Ban The Tempest For Public Schools
Imagine government officials sweeping through schools, demanding teachers and students hand over all their copies of Sherman Alexie, Howard Zinn, Leslie Marmon Silko … and Shakespeare. That’s reality in Arizona, where the legislature has banned any teaching unit that might include race, ethnicity or oppression as “central themes.”
The White House Says No To Terrible Internet Privacy Bills
After weeks of a huge internet-based protest about the SOPA and PIPA bills (complete with threats from Google and others to shut down for a day), the administration said, “We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”
The Long Goodbye Of Newspapers (Think Of Sears And Kodak)
“Let’s call the slow disappearance of familiar brands the newsonomics of the long goodbye. Take companies that have huge imprints in our culture and habits — and cashflows to match — and their disappearance from our lives can seem like it is moving in glacial digital time. But that disappearance is no less real.”
MoMA’s Film Stills Archive Still Shuttered – Why?
Ten years ago, the Museum of Modern Art shut its Film Stills Archive while it renovated its Manhattan building, promising to reopen the archive when the museum had more space. More space arrived in 2005, but the archive’s still shut – and an old labor dispute may be at the heart of it all. “What bothers me is that there’s no conscience, no morality to what they’ve done. There’s no making a wrong right here.”