The Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, frozen in September when the museum decided to deaccession and sell some of its art, represents a tiny fraction of the money that’s coming in from art sales. But, after a bruising fight, the museum wants the money anyway. A state representative says, “These are funds paid for by the residents of the Commonwealth. This is where they belong.”
Tag: 04.21.18
The Soul-Crushing Burden Of Writing, And Reading, The College Student Essay
U.S. college students just aren’t good at essays, says one prof, and that’s because no one takes those students seriously, not even themselves. “A decade teaching young writers has taught me a great deal. First, we need to value more the complete and complex lives of young people: where they come from, how they express themselves. They have already lived lives worthy of our attention and appreciation. Second, we need to encourage young people to take seriously those lives they’ve lived.”
Sylvia Plath’s Surviving Goods Went Up For Sale, But Who Bought Them?
Wow: “There was poetic justice of a sort in the auction of the poets’ belongings by their daughter, Frieda Hughes, at Bonhams in London in March. Ms. Plath’s lots, which included clothes, jewelry and childhood drawings, outsold Mr. Hughes’s mostly literary remnants (which is to say, books) twice over and then some, earning $551,862.” (Yes, this piece is about money – but also about who Plath was.)
In The Netflix Vs. Cannes Skirmish, Everybody Lost
The Guardian says: “In this brittle standoff, fault lies on both sides. The French anti-streaming measures may be draconian, but resistance to Netflix’s anti-cinema model is quite understandable. … Quite aside from diminished screen size and visual impact, what films gain in universal accessibility, they lose in promotion, public awareness and even prestige, slotted as they are into a vast, fast-moving content menu between Adam Sandler originals and new episodes of Queer Eye.”
Numbers Can Be Beautiful, And That Might Affect Whether Security Codes Are Truly Random At All
There’s a reason this might be happening: “More often than not, the passcodes that appear in my Google Authenticator app seem tailored to reduce the cognitive burden of storing them in my working memory, the short-term storage bin our brains use to stash information for a few precious seconds before forgetting it forever.”
Actually, Kendrick Lamar Should Have Gotten A Pulitzer For Writing, Not Music
Here’s why: “Literary recognition would transform every other young black boy writing rhymes. It would stick two fingers up at the notion that the only way young black boys can get respect is on the streets. Contrary to popular belief, young black boys spend more time writing poetry than they do stabbing and shooting each other. For real. They have transformed the English language with an unparalleled lyrical dexterity. But we refuse to acknowledge that.”
How The Pulitzer Committee Chose Kendrick Lamar For Music
Violinist and Pulitzer jury member Regina Carter: “I just sat down and it was like wow. I just felt like what he had to say and how he would say it, you had to really sit down and think about it and what does it mean for me? It might mean something completely different for someone else that’s listening to it. I felt like it was his experience as a black man in America — and a lot of peoples’ story, not just his story—and just trying to figure stuff out. It’s so poetic. I felt like if you took his lyrics and put them in a book, it would be great literature.”
New York Removes A Statue Of The ‘Father Of Gynecology,’ Who Experimented On Enslaved Black Women
This wasn’t a fast decision about the man who didn’t use anesthesia when he performed experimental surgeries on the women. “The removal of his 80-year-old statue comes after eight years of protests, activism and the local community collecting more than 26,000 signatures.”
George Eliot’s Masterpiece ‘Middlemarch’ Was Shaped, Says Novelist Jennifer Egan, By Eliot’s Unconventional Love Life
Eliot, whose non-pen-name was Mary Ann Evans, lived for decades with her partner, whose open marriage meant that when his wife had a baby with a different man, he was fine with it (and supported the baby). “Lewes’s legal wife went on to have three more children with her lover, all of whom Evans and Lewes supported (along with Lewes’s three sons) through their writing, editing and translating. Their urgent need for money was partly what prompted Lewes to encourage Evans to try her hand at writing fiction at the age of 37.” How does that life experience turn into Dorothea’s terrible mistake with Casaubon? Read on.
Pushkin Was A Radical Russian Poet Whose Works Became Some Of Our Greatest Operas – And Now His Life Is One, Too
The British writer and lyricist Marita Phillips, a descendant of Pushkin’s, grew up with a large book of his fairy tales, and she’s wanted to mount an opera about him, and his tragically early death in a duel, ever since. Plus, he was quite political, and “Russian history is so violent and colourful it is easy to become interested.”