How The Scientists Leading The Notre-Dame Restoration Are Working, And What They’re Learning

“Even as they try to reclaim what was lost, they and others are also taking advantage of a rare scientific opportunity. The cathedral, laid bare to inspection by the fire, is yielding clues to the mysteries of its medieval past. ‘We’ve got 40 years of research coming out of this event,’ says LRMH Assistant Director Thierry Zimmer.” Here’s an in-depth look at what the teams are doing. (Well, were doing, before work was suspended.) – Science

Does Democratization Of Culture Mean The End Of Audience?

“My current research situates audience development within work on culture as a vocation, and wider debates around the democratisation of culture and cultural democracy. Audience development both replicates and reproduces (rather than challenges) the dominant cultural hegemony – most notably in subsidised cultural institutions. As such, it has traditionally been seen as a management tool for the democratisation of culture.” – Arts Professional

Modernism And The African American Experience

Back at the beginning of the 20th century, artists such as Picasso, Braque and Matisse turned to African art for new ideas about how to represent the world, creating figures with masklike faces, flattened forms and backgrounds of vibrant patterning. They weren’t just borrowing visual ideas, however. Many of them believed in a connection between what they saw as primitive culture and the deeper wellsprings of psychological life, a way to reference and represent urges and emotional drives that had been suppressed by “civilization.” But they also were appropriating wholesale the visual material of people who were suffering colonial oppression, taking sacred objects out of context and imputing to them European-derived ideas about their purpose and meaning. – Washington Post

Was London’s Millennium Dome Really The Enormous Fiasco Everyone Remembers? Not Entirely …

It cost more than £750 million (that was well over a billion dollars then), the grand opening at the turn of the millennium was one snafu after another, actual visitor numbers were half of projections, and the UK government eventually sold it for a pound. But families loved it at the time, and it’s now the most popular live music venue on Earth. Imogen West-Knights recounts how it all happened in this week’s Guardian Long Read. – The Guardian

Virus Could Cost $5 Billion Worldwide To Live Events Business

Coronavirus-related event cancellations seem to be barreling in by the hour, and the $26 billion global live events industry is watching with bated breath. Several sources across the booking, management, and venues sectors either declined to comment to Rolling Stone on the subject because of the uncertainty around the matter, or say they do not yet have them in place. There’s also the issue of unpredictability. – Rolling Stone

Crowds Continued To Fill Disneyland As Warnings Increase

Aimee and Charlie Cotherman, of Oil City, Pa., said that ahead of their trip to Orlando last week, they were worried about the coronavirus, but decided to still visit with their children, ages 8, 6 and 3, as well as their two-month-old baby, because “percentages are in our favor,” Mr. Cotherman said, referring to the low number of children infected. – The New York Times