Category: issues

“Some community leaders … wonder why a city with such a fierce appetite for new parks, public spaces, museums and theaters has not invested in a major facility that acknowledges their significance. Why doesn’t Houston have a Latino cultural center on the scale of, say, the Asia Society Texas Center?” – Houston Chronicle

The new database hosts profiles of underrepresented critics and journalists and invites media outlets, studios, networks, talent and film and television critics associations to find and contact them for screenings, interview junkets and publishing opportunities. – Los Angeles Times

“In an announcement made on Tuesday, the French culture minister Franck Riester said the project was ‘conceived and wanted’ by Georges Wolinski — one of five caricaturists killed in the 2015 attacks, in which 12 people lost their lives. Its aim is to create ‘a place for meetings’ to enable the creation and promotion of satirical cartoons and support their creators, the statement says.” – The Art Newspaper

American Historical Association meetings aren’t known for rousing policy debates. At this year’s gathering, however, there was a sense that historians’ perspectives are sorely needed in current policy discussions — and that historians are increasingly willing to step up. – Inside Higher Ed

The books have the same publisher. They credit the same authors. But they are customized for students in different states, and their contents sometimes diverge in ways that reflect the nation’s deepest partisan divides. – The New York Times

Ballooning budgets and years of delay are becoming a regular feature of prestigious cultural construction projects in Germany. For a country that thrives on a reputation for efficiency and engineering prowess, its recent record is sobering. – The New York Times

‘You live on one continent and work on two others.’ You have ‘a firsthand knowledge of the sunrise over the Po, the sunset over Shenzhen, the crackle of the midday sun as the Acqua Alta wets your calves’. You might be a poor culture-ronin, but you have accidentally attained an enviable ‘air of weary cosmopolitan glamour’, which follows you back to your shabby, expensive flat. But with climate change… – Frieze

Taking into account that actual tuition and fees are already essentially free, could there still be significant effects when students know for certain that their schooling will cost nothing? Yes. – The Conversation

The gut renovation of Cologne’s opera house is running eight years late and more than double the original budget — and that’s only up to now, since the basements are full of ductwork, cabling and pipes that were badly coordinated and may need to be completely redone. Munich’s Deutsche Museum renovation, Berlin’s Humboldt Forum and the Pergamon Museum are all similarly late and roughly half a billion euros or more each; the Stuttgart opera house renovation may cost a billion. “For a country that thrives on a reputation for efficiency and engineering prowess, its recent record is sobering.” Catherine Hickley looks at why things are going so wrong. – The New York Times

“The museum’s educators provide lessons in art and art history as well as English language arts, social studies and even science and math. … The list of past subject areas includes surrealism, the Harlem Renaissance, the art of persuasion, the Civil War and Italian mathematician Fibonacci.” – The Washington Post