“Even as they try to reclaim what was lost, they and others are also taking advantage of a rare scientific opportunity. The cathedral, laid bare to inspection by the fire, is yielding clues to the mysteries of its medieval past. ‘We’ve got 40 years of research coming out of this event,’ says LRMH Assistant Director Thierry Zimmer.” Here’s an in-depth look at what the teams are doing. (Well, were doing, before work was suspended.) – Science
Tag: 03.12.20
It’s Time For Epic Self-Isolation Living-Room Dance Parties
Seriously: Dance is doable in-the-house exercise. Though the five dancers in this article all have extensive gym and group class routines, one also says that “dancing helps me appreciate my body and how much it can do for me. I can ask it to be coordinated, connected, and challenged. I like that it can surprise me, too!” – HuffPost
Does Democratization Of Culture Mean The End Of Audience?
“My current research situates audience development within work on culture as a vocation, and wider debates around the democratisation of culture and cultural democracy. Audience development both replicates and reproduces (rather than challenges) the dominant cultural hegemony – most notably in subsidised cultural institutions. As such, it has traditionally been seen as a management tool for the democratisation of culture.” – Arts Professional
Sculptor J. Seward Johnson Jr, 89
Johnson, a sculptor who may be responsible for more double takes than anyone in history thanks to his countless lifelike creations in public places — a businessman in downtown Manhattan, surfers at a Florida beach, a student eating a sandwich on a curb in Princeton, N.J. — died on Tuesday at his home in Key West, Fla. – The New York Times
Modernism And The African American Experience
Back at the beginning of the 20th century, artists such as Picasso, Braque and Matisse turned to African art for new ideas about how to represent the world, creating figures with masklike faces, flattened forms and backgrounds of vibrant patterning. They weren’t just borrowing visual ideas, however. Many of them believed in a connection between what they saw as primitive culture and the deeper wellsprings of psychological life, a way to reference and represent urges and emotional drives that had been suppressed by “civilization.” But they also were appropriating wholesale the visual material of people who were suffering colonial oppression, taking sacred objects out of context and imputing to them European-derived ideas about their purpose and meaning. – Washington Post
An Opera That Works To Reinvent The Form
“We were like, how do we do this so that we don’t let the audience off the hook — that this is the land where this happened?” says Yuval Sharon. “Los Angeles State Historic Park feels like a central character in ‘Sweet Land.’” – Los Angeles Times
Was London’s Millennium Dome Really The Enormous Fiasco Everyone Remembers? Not Entirely …
It cost more than £750 million (that was well over a billion dollars then), the grand opening at the turn of the millennium was one snafu after another, actual visitor numbers were half of projections, and the UK government eventually sold it for a pound. But families loved it at the time, and it’s now the most popular live music venue on Earth. Imogen West-Knights recounts how it all happened in this week’s Guardian Long Read. – The Guardian
A High Stress Threat To The Arts
There will soon be lots of demands for emergency funds, to bail out small businesses, cab drivers, restaurants, and so on. Cultural workers, who contribute so much to urban life in normal times and who will be so severely missed in abnormal ones, need relief starting now, before the world they belong to withers away. – New York Magazine
Virus Could Cost $5 Billion Worldwide To Live Events Business
Coronavirus-related event cancellations seem to be barreling in by the hour, and the $26 billion global live events industry is watching with bated breath. Several sources across the booking, management, and venues sectors either declined to comment to Rolling Stone on the subject because of the uncertainty around the matter, or say they do not yet have them in place. There’s also the issue of unpredictability. – Rolling Stone
Crowds Continued To Fill Disneyland As Warnings Increase
Aimee and Charlie Cotherman, of Oil City, Pa., said that ahead of their trip to Orlando last week, they were worried about the coronavirus, but decided to still visit with their children, ages 8, 6 and 3, as well as their two-month-old baby, because “percentages are in our favor,” Mr. Cotherman said, referring to the low number of children infected. – The New York Times