The Department of Justice filed a civil complaint in New York, and announced that Hobby Lobby had agreed to the fine and to forfeit thousands of antiquities including cuneiform tablets and clay bullae that prosecutors said were smuggled through the United Arab Emirates and Israel to the United States using deliberately false labeling practices.
Tag: 07.05.17
Longtime Chicago Institute Of Art Teacher Quits, Citing Hostile Environment
In his resignation letter, dated June 12, Bonesteel protested what he called “abuse of Title IX protections. Overall,” he wrote, “it is my contention that I have been unfairly vilified and demonized by [a] small cadre of militant LBGT students with an authoritarian agenda.”
Comic-Con Is A Non-Profit (Who Knew?) – And A Very Successful One
“When, in the nonprofit sector do you see revenue growth like this? The sponsoring organization’s 990 reports on GuideStar show that the organization’s revenue has grown from $185K in 2011 to $3.8M in 2015.” And how many nonprofits do you know of whose conventions draw well over 100,000 participants?
Is Urban Dictionary ‘Really, Really Racist’ And ‘Insanely Sexist’?
“Started in 1999 by then-computer science student Aaron Peckham, the crowd-sourced online dictionary that The New York Times calls the ‘lexicon of instant argot’ has grown over the past two decades into an internet behemoth.” Problem is, the definitions are submitted by ordinary users. In other words, as Clio Chang argues, “it is a pure product of the internet hordes” – and the hordes have contributed some very ugly stuff to the site, stuff that Peckham seems uninterested in policing.
Is Shakespeare More Powerful Live Or In Cinemacast? Let’s Use Heart Monitors To Find Out
The Royal Shakespeare Company will put the devices on a group of theatre patrons in July and simulcast viewers in August; the idea is to measure not only whether one medium is more or less emotionally involving, but also whether violence in mainstream movies has desensitized screen viewers to the brutality in the play. And which play’s brutality will be the test case? The one that’s really notorious for gore.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 07.05.17
Metropolitan Museum’s Empty Director’s Chair: Text of Dan Weiss Memo to Staff
Now that Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Campbell has officially left the building (as of June 30), who will serve as acting director until a new director is chosen? Surprisingly, the short answer appears to be: … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-07-05
First Half Of 2017 Sets Streaming Music Records
“Nielsen released its latest annual midyear music report, and thus far in 2017, on-demand audio streams topped 184 billion, up 62.4% over the same time period last year. When video streams are added to the equation, the total soars to 284 billion streams, an increase of 36.4% versus the first half of 2016. The gains in streaming have been more than enough to offset the continued decline of physical and digital sales: overall audio consumption has grown 8.9% despite a 17% dip in the former and a 19.9% drop in the latter.”
Solving Problems Through Art – Peter Schjeldahl On Agnes Gund’s Sale Of A Lichtenstein To Fund Social Justice
Roy Lichtenstein died in 1997. What might he think of all this, if he were alive today? He was a Democrat; he created prints in support of Dukakis, in 1988, and of Clinton-Gore, in 1992. But his overriding drive was to bring qualities of high art into taut accord with motifs from commercial mass culture. There is a term for that kind of aspiration: American.