Ian Jenkins, Archaeologist And Curator Who Oversaw The Elgin Marbles, Dead At 67

“[He] always insisted that the sculptures should, like poetry or music, be thought of as superb pieces of human artistic endeavour, and regretted the role they had come to play in what today is termed contested history. He devoted many hours of research to them, reconstructing their original arrangement. This was harder than might be thought, as only about half survive, and he was quietly pleased … that some of his ideas had been incorporated into the displays at the new Acropolis Museum in Athens.” – The Guardian

Facebook’s Doom Machine

The cycle of harm perpetuated by Facebook’s scale-at-any-cost business model is plain to see. Scale and engagement are valuable to Facebook because they’re valuable to advertisers. These incentives lead to design choices such as reaction buttons that encourage users to engage easily and often, which in turn encourage users to share ideas that will provoke a strong response. – The Atlantic

What Art Restoration Might Have To Teach Us About Repairing The Environment

“I discovered that there are important parallels between the theory and practice of repairing damaged art and that of repairing damaged nature. But there’s an important difference. The environmental sciences investigate processes of nature that have endured billions of years, and yet scientific thinking about the repair of ecosystems is but decades old. Artistic production is, on the other hand, of relatively recent origin, yet systematic thinking and writing about the repair of tarnished art is centuries old. It seems very likely that ecological restoration can learn a considerable amount from this senior literature.” – Aeon

A Historic Detroit Music Venue To Become An Amazon Factory?

“Amazon, you’re building a new $400-million, 3.8-million-square-foot distribution center on the old State Fair site. The area where the bandshell sits is slated to become a parking lot. The bandshell is an important piece of American music history, as well as Detroit music history. It would be a tragic loss if it were to end up, like so many historic Detroit buildings, as a parking lot. The music industry has suffered greatly in 2020 due to COVID-19 and we’re not out of the woods yet.” – Detroit Metro Times

NYC’s 4,500 Teaching Artists Are Out Of Luck

The Department of Education’s arts budget was $21.5 million in the last school year. The line item pays cultural organizations that find and pay artists to go into classrooms and teach kids how to dance, act, sing, paint, write, and learn all kinds of other creative skills. The arrangement works pretty well because New York City has two things in abundance: public school students and artists with both creative expertise and rent coming due. So business was booming for the city’s 4,500 teaching artists. Then Covid struck. – Gothamist

Giant, Centuries-Old Headless Buddha Discovered In Chinese City

“The 9m-high (30-foot) statue, with its head missing, was uncovered on a cliff between two high-rise residential buildings in the Nanan district of Chongqing. It is not clear when the statue was carved” — it’s believed to date to the Qing dynasty — “and local authorities are still investigating its cultural value.” – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

Frick Tricks: Reinvention to Convention, as Peripatetic Displays Move from Brutalist to Beaux Arts

While many museums are experimenting with quirky new ways of organizing their permanent-collection displays, the Frick Collection is going in the opposite direction: It will use its planned temporary occupation of the Breuer building to unveil a more conventionally coherent presentation of its holdings than was seen in its flagship building. – Lee Rosenbaum

Are Movie Studios Killing Theatres In Favor Of Streaming?

The Wall Street imperative now is too strong to resist. The conglomerates are sacrificing the future of moviegoing for the pandemically friendly practice of moviestaying. We were heading that way before COVID. Now we’re there. Outside the river of streaming content, for most studios the rest is just sentiment and small potatoes. – Chicago Tribune