In Hitler’s Germany linguistic habits shaped attitude and culture, and eventually acquiescence to a system of segregation and dehumanization. The language of the Third Reich was corrosive, and contagious. Forced to repeat “the Jew Klemperer” enough times, one thinks of that person not as Victor Klemperer but as “The Jew.” The Jews were in effect deprived of their name, and in turn of their humanity. – The American Interest
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Grantmaking in the #MeToo Era
Bess Rothenberg, senior director of strategy and learning at the Ford Foundation: “The scale and momentum of the #MeToo movement compelled the Ford Foundation to take a long, hard look in the mirror. What should be our role in responding to abuses of power within the organizations we support? In preventing them? Had we been doing enough?” – Stanford Social Innovation Review
On The One Hand, Instagram Brings Ballet To The Masses
And on the other hand, dancers really have to keep their feeds up to become big stars. It’s a responsibility far away from the rehearsal studio. – The Observer (NY).
Early Black Feminist Theatre and Lynching Dramas Revisited
“In the 1910s and 1920s, a number of African American women poets and authors turned to drama to address racial violence. Writers such as: Angelina Weld Grimké, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Mary Burrill, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Myrtle Smith Livingston were among these writers who did so. With the majority of these Black women living in the heart of Washington, D.C. they were constantly confronted with symbols of democracy that they found their lived realities falling outside of. These women contributed to the genre now known as lynching dramas.” – HowlRound
A Time to Grow Our Souls: On the Foundry Theatre’s New Book ‘A Moment on the Clock of the World’
David Dower: “[Foundry co-founder Melanie Joseph has] been so far out in front of the field for thirty years, in a place the American theatre — with its templated, collectively bargained language, practices, and values — can’t reach. And she’s been urgently trying to make herself understood — about what she sees, what she’s learned, and what we could dream, make, become, and do if only we could follow what she was saying. … [Now] Joseph has released a book — a collection of essays from various authors that makes startlingly clear not only what was accomplished but, more crucially, what was attempted.” – HowlRound
Displaying, not Hiding, the Reality of Slave Labor in Art
“Thomas Jefferson, Architect: Palladian Models, Democratic Principles and the Conflict of Ideals … at the Chrysler Museum, in Norfolk, Va., is one example of how some museums are working to incorporate the impact of slavery in exhibitions and permanent collections in a way not commonly done even a decade ago. … Other museums are also grappling with how they can rework or revise their collections, even in small ways, to acknowledge the role of slavery in the art itself or people represented by the art.” – The New York Times
An Art Program in Los Angeles Proposes Ways to Address Homelessness
“The Goethe-Institut has partnered with the Los Angeles Poverty Department in organizing Worlds of Homelessness, a weeklong interdisciplinary series of events featuring artists, architects, advocates, and performers.” – Hyperallergic
The Art Institute of Chicago’s James Rondeau on Increasing Diversity in the Curatorial Field
“We’ve always been a teaching and training organization. And one of the things that we realized will help ensure our ongoing relevance is that we need museum professionals who more accurately reflect the cosmopolitan city we are in.” – Artnet
Fire Island Dance Festival: A Full-Circle Community Experience
“Born during the AIDS crisis to raise money for dancers, the festival turns 25, mixing celebration with sorrow.” – The New York Times
Drawing a Line
“We work at StageSource, which represents both the individual theatre artists and the theatrical organizations of New England. Part of our mission is to provide resources to empower our community to realize its greatest potential — and for us, that potential is impossible to reach without a definitively safe and inclusive environment. … [To that end, we created] the Line Drawn Initiative to address sexual harassment in the New England theatre sector. Through that initiative, we released a survey to uncover the scope and specifics of the problem. Unsurprisingly, the results were bleak.” – HowlRound