Category: visual

No, she didn’t pull an Ai Weiwei. “A little girl accidentally broke a 2,000-year-old glass vessel during a visit to the Israel Museum on Sunday. The museum said the object has now been repaired and is in better shape than it was before.”

“Trauma is all about details. Trauma renders itself in certain songs, in the quality of the air against the sky, in colors of socks, in flavors of alcohol. When the human brain encounters a trauma, it makes quick decisions about what to remember, and it often remembers otherwise mundane details: the timbre of birdsong, or the specific shake of a tree’s shoulders. Sometimes the brain gets kind of obsessive about trauma.”

“Until the last minute they want to mess with your head. They want to make you paranoid. At one point he said, ‘Someone close to you works for us.’ I said, ‘You’re not going to make me a paranoiac. I’ve been here for eight months and I am not a paranoiac.’ I understood they were watching me. But I would not let them make me a paranoiac. That’s what they do, they make you paranoid, they isolate you.”

“With poor sanitation, a decaying structure and no ventilation, this once-historic building is facing demolition – yet grocery shops, hair salons, cafés and even a school have sprung up to cater for the thousands of residents in this sprawling community.”

“The Bachman-Wilson House, a New Jersey home originally designed in 1954 by world-famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright for Abraham Wilson and Gloria Bachman, was being threatened by repeated flooding at its original location along the Millstone River.” So the Crystal Bridges Museum bought it and moved it, and “the house is scheduled to open to the public on November 11, 2015, the museum’s four-year anniversary.”

“For each piece, the database tells us the work’s title, some brief biographical information about the artist, the year of creation, the medium and dimensions, and how and when MoMA acquired it. These aren’t exactly trade secrets: It’s basically the data printed on the placards posted next to each painting. But, in MoMA’s case, it’s assembled in one place, comprehensive, easy to use, and recent. The museum made the database freely available online last month.”

“Patrons and employees of the museum — also known as the Karakalpak State Museum of Art — vociferously protested her dismissal. They defended Marinika Babanazarova, the granddaughter of a former ruler of the region, as the collection’s stalwart protector.”

“The weaponization of photography is a partial reflection of a modern culture that is willing to consume and interpret imagery without analysis or concern for who might be victimized by the image. And the rate at which photos and video can spread online feeds this insatiable consumption. It wasn’t always like this.”

“The number of people armed with cameras today has never been greater – in the past 10 years the act has become utterly ubiquitous. But it isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened. It’s the second.”