There are more than 5,000 English-as-a-Foreign-Language schools in the country — about 20% more than in China, which has more than 10 times the population. And their lessons come on top of the English classes included in Japan’s public school curriculum. And yet the Japanese rank among the worst in Asia in English proficiency. So what purpose do all the EFL schools there serve? Several purposes, actually. – Metropolis (Tokyo)
Tag: 10.19.20
At Issue Over The Hirshhorn’s Plan To Remake Its Gardens
The opinion of Hirshhorn officials about whether the sculpture garden is a work of art is central to their stewardship and decision-making about the sculpture garden’s proposed redesign. – Cultural Landscape Foundation
Ethics And The Politics Of Deaccessioning
“Difficult times bring out the best in us, and sometimes, encourage the worst. The current manifestations around deaccessioning are beginning to be solved by the courts. Unfortunately, when ethics can no longer endure, we turn to the courts for resolution. The (museum) professionals are abrogating their authority to another group of professionals (lawyers).” – James Abruzzo
Checking In With The Guerrilla Girls: Protesting For 35 Years
“We wanted to create the idea that we are everywhere, and we are listening. We could be working at the MoMA or even at Leo Castelli’s gallery. We wanted to create this idea that the art world was being watched, surveilled and scrutinized. Anonymity has protected us, but now I’m not sure anyone cares any more who we are. It has changed.” – The Guardian
What “The Normal Heart’ Meant To Those Living Through The Height Of The AIDS Crisis
“[Larry] Kramer’s portrait of what a generation of gay men suffered renders America akin to a warzone, where the corpses of victims are refused death certificates and left to collect dust in oversized refuse bags, and funerals become so frequent as to be social events. … The Normal Heart is a primal howl from the frontline, with all of its mud and viscera, expressive of the fact that when your friends are dying all around you, you have no choice but to act urgently.” – BBC
How The Louvre Became The Louvre
Ten million people visited the Louvre last year, before France’s lockdown in March, and no museum can become so crowded without cancelling its own purpose, or replacing it with another purpose—the purpose of a dutiful hajj, of having been there. There are too many people looking to allow anyone to see. – The New Yorker
Is There Such A Thing As Contemporary Conservative Literature? Can There Be?
No, Atlas Shrugged doesn’t count as literature, and neither do Ann Coulter and Dinesh D’Souza. “To define Right-wing literature is to ask what literature is and what it’s for, but the most ready-to-hand answers (beauty, truth, empathy, expression) are incongruous to conservatism’s means, if not to the perverse utopianism of its final objectives.” – Aeon
Meet The New York Dance World’s Bubble Doctor
“Bubbling has gained traction in the dance world as companies and organizations try to find ways of bringing artists together to create work in a safe environment. That involves rules, medical protocols, tests and vigilance, and it requires a presiding authority to decide what those should be. Enter Dr. Wendy Ziecheck, a Manhattan internist, who trained with George Balanchine’s doctor and was the medical director for the Rockettes before taking this unlikely new career path.” – The New York Times
2,000-Year-Old, 120-Foot-Long Etching Of Cat Found In Peruvian Desert
“The newly identified likeness is a Nazca Line — one of hundreds of ancient drawings created in the Peruvian desert by removing rock and soil to produce a ‘negative’ image in the sand. … Dated to between 200 and 100 B.C., the geoglyph is thought to be older than any others previously discovered in the region.” – Smithsonian Magazine
For Its First Post-Lockdown Show, Prado Walks Straight Into Controversy Over Art World’s Sexism
“The exhibition, whose English title is ‘Uninvited Guests’, explores how artworks bought and celebrated by the Spanish state between 1833 and 1931 treated women as people and artists. … [The show has] faced criticism from some female artists and academics, who have accused the museum of echoing the very misogyny it has sought to expose by focusing on many works by men rather than celebrating those by women.” – The Guardian