“The ABC is dismantling its historic sound and reference libraries across the country and making 10 specialist librarians redundant to free up floor space and save on wages. Radio National, Classic FM, JJJ and all the other ABC programs rely on the Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth and Hobart libraries, which are packed full of CDs and vinyl as well as books and journals after 85 years of collecting.”
Tag: 01.30.18
Some Deep Thinking About What Enjoyment Is
Philosophers have puzzled over the question of what enjoyment is, proposing competing accounts of pleasure, but we can take a straightforward view that enjoyment is a distinctive state of finding an experience pleasurable. The hallmark feature of pleasure, in turn, is its feel-good quality. An enjoyable experience feels good. And it can be distinguished thus from a painful one, which feels bad. Does then the transitory nature of enjoyment undermine its worth? Or might that very brevity of enjoyment be part of its importance in human life?
Grammys In The Crosshairs After Last Week’s Malethon
Having apparently learned nothing from the many men forced to walk back tone-deaf commentary during the #MeToo movement, Recording Academy President Neil Portnow almost immediately made things worse. He responded to the hashtag by urging women to “step up.”
Ceramic Artist Dora De Larios, 84
“Throughout her career, De Larios’ work took singular forms – as small, sprightly sculptures of animals and towering goddesses – inspired by her interest in pre-Columbian craft and ancient Japanese design.”
Singapore Is Losing Its Place In The Art World To Hong Kong
“Hong Kong is a more mature market and the community is more spontaneous in terms of buying art. Singapore is a young market and apart from a small handful of established collectors, new buyers are a lot more considered, and they keep galleries on their toes.”
Portland’s Small Theatres Band Together To Cope With Soaring Rents
As with just about any cool city these days, real estate costs in the City of Roses have been rising faster than cash-strapped arts organizations can keep up with – especially for the clear-space buildings that theatres need. As several of Portland’s smaller companies lost their spaces at around the same time, they got creative.
The Crucial Quality Missing From Google’s Translator
The practical utility of Google Translate and similar technologies is undeniable, and probably it’s a good thing overall, but there is still something deeply lacking in the approach, which is conveyed by a single word: understanding. Machine translation has never focused on understanding language. Instead, the field has always tried to “decode”—to get away without worrying about what understanding and meaning are.
The “Best Person” Fallacy
The multidimensional or layered character of complex problems undermines the principle of meritocracy: the idea that the ‘best person’ should be hired. There is no best person. When putting together an oncological research team, a biotech company such as Gilead or Genentech would not construct a multiple-choice test and hire the top scorers, or hire people whose resumes score highest according to some performance criteria. Instead, they would seek diversity. They would build a team of people who bring diverse knowledge bases, tools and analytic skills.”
Does The Barnes Have The Highest Admit Price In America?
“At $30, it costs more to enter the Barnes than any other art museum in the country, according to a list compiled by Art News since the decision by the Metropolitan Museum in New York to end pay-what-you-wish ticket prices for out-of-state visitors. The Met now charges $25. But wait. That $30 Barnes ticket is not the “official” admission price — even though you can’t get in without paying it.”
Five Trends That Are Changing The Gallery World
If most longtime gallerists continue clinging to familiar patrons and familiar methods, then the art business, as physicist Max Planck once said of science, will only “advance one funeral at a time.” But either way the next generation appears ready to step up and reach out.