Keeping track of all the scandals around museum patronage in the United States in the last few years is no easy feat. There are scandals over real estate money, prison money, oil money, funding by climate change deniers, funding by supporters of far-right causes in general, Koch Brothers funding, and more. And as they multiply, the scandals begin, more and more, to become less about individuals and more about the system. Sometimes voiced out loud but mainly behind the scenes, the question for museums is: Where will the money come from? – Momus
Tag: 07.05.19
Why Do We See So Many Gay Male Characters On Broadway But So Few Lesbians?
Sure, there’s The Prom, and before that Fun Home, Indecent, and, going back, Rent and perhaps The Color Purple, but that’s been about it, writes Elisabeth Vincentelli. “Obviously, Broadway is not the be-all and end-all of American theater. But it does represent validation and awareness, the ability to put on big spectacles, and the opportunity to land regional productions … It feels as if lesbians are still trying to build a theatrical house while gay men — having had a house, a two-car garage and a gazebo for years now — have moved on to deconstructing and repurposing the real estate they can afford to be tired of.” – The New York Times
Mark Morris Directs His First Non-Dance Theatre — Beckett, No Less
The choreographer is directing three plays — Come and Go, Catastrophe, and Quad (a pure-movement piece which Morris likens to Lucinda Childs) — for this month’s Happy Days festival in the Northern Irish town of Enniskillen (where Beckett went to boarding school). “The timing is actually much harder than it looks; the point isn’t virtuosity, it’s expertise,” says Morris. “… And I am all about timing.” – The New York Times
Why Tracy K. Smith Spent Her Two Years As Poet Laureate Traveling America
“She felt poetry might be able to help mend some of the divisions that the election had highlighted. Her plan was this: to put together a collection of poems from living poets, called American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time, that she felt were in some way relevant to our moment, and to hit the road — visiting community centers, senior centers, prisons, and colleges.” (audio) – The New Yorker Radio Hour
#CriticsSoWhite (And Male)
“It’s 2019 and we are in the middle of a renaissance in black artistic production. And you are telling me the best people to evaluate that are the same ones who basically ignored black artists for decades?” – The New York Times
Douglas Crimp, Pathbreaking Art Historian, Dead At 74
“[He] penned some of the most important art-historical essays of the second half of the 20th century, including ‘Pictures’ and ‘On the Museum’s Ruins’ … [and his] influence has been vast. His writings explored a vast range of topics, from image circulation to institutional critique to art and AIDS. It has become impossible to write the history of postmodern art without referring at least once to his criticism.” – ARTnews
Famed Napa Art Center Collection Says It Will Sell Most Of Its Collection To Fund Educational Programs
In a radical shift of program, the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa plans to sell off most of the 1,600 works of art in its fabled collection to focus on exhibitions and education. – San Francisco Chronicle
UK Artists Press Institutions To Stop Taking Money From Big Oil Companies
On Friday, 78 British artists including Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Sarah Lucas said they had called on the National Portrait Gallery in London to cut ties with BP, saying its “role in furthering the climate crisis” made accepting new sponsorship from the company unacceptable. – The New York Times
Scientists Have Figured Out How To Revive Dead Brains (Now What?)
“These findings,” the scientists write, “show that, with the appropriate interventions, the large mammalian brain retains an underappreciated capacity for normothermic restoration of microcirculation and certain molecular and cellular functions multiple hours after circulatory arrest.” – New York Times Magazine
What Artificial Intelligence Is Showing Us About How We Perceive The World
The power to see the future was previously limited to psychics and shamans. Now researchers (and, increasingly, anyone with a computer) use pattern recognition to precognitive ends, feeding their programs artifacts of the past to generate data on the future. – Hyperallergic