Eric Nuzum, who spent two decades in public radio before moving into digital audio: “The unspoken groupthink at work … is that an idea cannot have both merit and risk at the same time. Resources are precious. Time is limited. As guardians of public funds, it is imperative that public radio’s decision-makers ensure that they invest in winners. Every time. This philosophy is a petri dish for failure. And not the good kind of failure.”
Tag: 01.10.18
How Roman Ruins Ended Up Repurposed Into A British Garden
In short, cultural imperialism, “the heyday of the British Empire and the ancient world of Roman North Africa.”
Michael Wolff’s Book Isn’t The Only ‘The Fire And The Fury’ Out There – And The Other One Is Selling Out, Too
Randall Hansen is a historian who lives in Canada and who wrote The Fire and the Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945 in 2009. People had been buying it here and there over the years; after all, it’s not as if WWII goes out of style. Then he checked after Michael Wolff’s book about the president of the United States came out. “And saw that I had moved from very, very low sales onto three best-seller lists,” Hansen says.
This Iraq Veteran Turned Choreographer Is Making Provocative Dances About War
Roman Baca, who trained in ballet before deploying to Fallujah, has founded Exit12 Dance Company, “a small troupe with a goal of inspiring conversations about the lasting effects of violence and conflict. Through Exit12, he began to get involved in art and healing for military veterans.” (includes video)
Report: Falling Below The Bottom Line? America’s Arts Organizations Struggle To Keep Up
The central question raised in this report is: “Are organizations bringing in enough revenue to cover their expenses?” Looking at unrestricted surplus (before depreciation), the average organization saw an unrestricted surplus of 2.1% of expenses in 2016. In the same year, overall operating bottom line (before depreciation) was 0.4% of expenses—virtually break-even. However, surpluses fell to a negative 4.2% when factoring in depreciation, meaning that the average organization is not reserving sufficient funds to repair and replace their fixed assets, which can lead to future challenges, particularly for organizations with high levels of fixed assets.
‘Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede’, A Sort Of Civil-War-Themed ‘Medieval Times’, Drops The ‘Dixie’ Part After Criticism
Slate‘s Aisha Harris: “Last summer, I made my way from Yankee territory and into the land of cotton to review Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. … a kitschy dinner theater show best summed up as ‘Springtime for the Confederacy.’ … Seeing it in 2017, just a week after protests over Confederate monuments led to the death of an innocent woman, made it especially shocking. I articulated this sentiment last August, and my review stirred up no shortage of debates over history, Dolly, and Southern pride.” Now the producer of the Parton-themes shows seems to have heard those debates.
Katie Roiphe And Harper’s Were Going To Out Creator Of ‘Shitty Media Men’ List – Here’s What Happened When Word Got Out
Literary Twitter erupted; a co-founder of The Toast offered to pay writers if they pulled their articles from Harper’s in protest; writers did – and other publications lined up buy those articles. Madeleine Aggeler reports on how things went down and how the magazine responded.
Woman Who Created ‘Shitty Media Men’ Spreadsheet, About To Be Outed, Comes Forward, Reveals What’s Happened To Her Since
“A slew of think pieces ensued, with commentators alternately condemning the document as reckless, malicious, or puritanically anti-sex. Many called the document irresponsible, emphasizing that since it was anonymous, false accusations could be added without consequence. … Eventually, some media companies conducted investigations into employees who appeared on the spreadsheet; some of those men left their jobs or were fired. None of this was what I thought was going to happen. … It was intended specifically not to inflict consequences, not to be a weapon – and yet, once it became public, many people immediately saw it as exactly that.”
The Creativity Construct
E. O. Wilson’s new book, “The Origins of Creativity,” is about the role of the humanities in an intellectual culture increasingly dominated by science. Wilson values the humanities, but he wants them to have closer ties to some of the sciences, an argument that draws on his view of the relationships between human biology, thought and culture.
Museum Values V. Trump Values
Adrian Ellis: “Whatever the longer-term causes and effects, the current reality is that his agenda—and the values he is modelling, encouraging and appealing to in his electoral base—are starkly at odds with the values that most museums hold at their core. This is an unusual and increasingly uncomfortable experience for a museum community whose priorities and rhetoric have been—throughout my professional life, at least—broadly congruent with the prevailing values of society and echoed routinely, albeit sometimes too faintly, by our political leaders.”