Tag: 01.27.20

All Objects Have Meaning – So How Do Museums Contextualize Shame?

As museums face increasing pressure to be responsive to historical intersections and contradictions in their presentation of works, it can be risky to introduce audiences, who otherwise might not seek complexity born out of conflict, to objects that may provoke embarrassment or pain. Yet some institutions still believe generating this tension is a necessary step toward reconciliation. Perhaps there is no more powerful feeling provoked by a museum than shame, which extends beyond the initial encounter with an object and allows for an extended moment of recognition. – Lapham’s Quarterly

UK’s Post-Brexit Plans On Copyright Worry Creators

Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) Deputy Chief Executive Barbara Hayes laid out the scale of the challenge the Government’s decision presents to authors: “At a time when the UK creative industries are growing to unprecedented levels we are also seeing a persistent decline in the earnings of professional authors, representing a real terms decrease of 42% since 2005.” – Arts Professional

Why Peter Schjeldahl Is Such A Great Critic

Schjeldahl’s primary mode is that of a lover, and you can read many of his pieces as impassioned love letters, often involving his favorite art: painting. His deep devotion to the medium continued throughout the decades painting was supposed to be dead. Every painter I know would give a couple fingers off their non-painting hand for a good long review by Peter Schjeldahl – not only for the recognition, but because he unfailingly brings something new into the discourse, getting to the very heart of the medium that he succinctly describes as “engaging our strongest sense, eyesight, and our finest physical aptitude, that of the hand – it’s about the hand and eye in concert.” – Momus

David Sedaris On His Sister Amy

“Movies and TV can’t capture what’s special about Amy. She’s not an actress, exactly, or a comedian, but more like someone who speaks in tongues. As opposed to myself, and just about everyone I’ve ever known, she lives completely in the moment. ‘What was that funny thing you said yesterday when we saw that old blind woman get mowed down by a skateboarder?’ I’ll ask. And she’ll have no memory of it. When Amy gets going, it’s like she’s possessed.” – Elle

Simplifying And Minimalizing Our Lives: What If It Doesn’t “Spark Joy”?

It is rarely acknowledged, by either the life-hack-minded authors or the proponents of minimalist design, that many people have minimalism forced upon them by circumstances that render impossible a serene, jewel-box life style. Nor do they mention that poverty and trauma can make frivolous possessions seem like a lifeline rather than a burden. Many of today’s gurus maintain that minimalism can be useful no matter one’s income, but the audience they target is implicitly affluent—the pitch is never about making do with less because you have no choice. – The New Yorker

An Argument Against Fairness

The Left thinks of fairness as egalitarian “equal outcomes” distribution, and the Right thinks of fairness as meritocracy (i.e., the winner takes the spoils, the qualified take the reward). Frequently, these are incompatible notions of the good, and the tension between them may have never been more intense. But running orthogonal to the debate about fairness is this more obscure yet fundamental issue of favoritism. – Heterodox Academy

Stephen Joyce, James’s Grandson And Ferocious Guardian Of His Estate, Dead At 87

“[He was] an implacable enemy of anyone who wanted to study the legendary Irish writer for almost any reason. … Though his ability to thwart scholars and Bloomsday fans diminished after 2012, when the copyright on most of Joyce’s work lapsed, Stephen Joyce still had the dubious distinction of being the most well-known of a funny list of characters: extremely obstinate literary executors.” – The Outline