Manhattan’s Spiraling Rents Are Killing Off One Of Its Best Art Spaces

“The closing of 38 Greene feels like the end of an era, partly because it reflects the threat posed by the gold-coasting of Manhattan to its alternative spaces — among them the excellent White Columns on West 13th Street. Now facing the ends of leases, profit-hungry landlords and the like, these spaces are seers. They have a nerve and flexibility absent from museums and commercial galleries. Their nurturing of non-mainstream artists and collectives is essential to a living art world.”

If Films Want To Qualify For The Oscars, They Can’t Be Seen As ‘Television’

“A documentary feature must be released in L.A. County or the borough of Manhattan in New York City and play at least four times a day within a certain window of showtimes on those days. (This is to prevent someone potentially renting a theater to play to empty houses early in the morning or the middle of the night.) And a feature documentary must also get a review from a movie critic — ‘a television critic review will not be accepted,’ read the rules — in either the L.A. or N.Y. Times.”

Virginia Arts Commission Members Threaten To Defund Museum Over ‘Anti-Christian’ Works

“The offending works are the pop-surrealist artist [Mark Rylan]’s ‘Fountain’ (2003) and ‘Rosie’s Tea Party’ (2005), which both show young, doll-like girls in unsettling scenes: In the former, a figure cradles her own head as blood springs from her neck; in the latter, a girl is surrounded by an assortment of meats and slicing a hunk of ham inscribed with the papal encyclical ‘Mystici corporis Christi.'”

What’s It Like To Be An Editor, Really?

“The industry in general is waking up belatedly and slowly to the real benefits of having diversity in staffing. … I mean, it’s a plus to have a Spanish speaker and reader on your staff. Not to have one but to have multiple. It’s a plus to have people reading more diversely and understanding different cultural experiences.