“In regards to arts advocacy in general, we need to take a new approach that places the arts as a vital, engaging activity of tremendous value to Americans. Too often we approach advocacy and communication with our heads bowed and our hands out: “Please sir, can you save the arts? Can you save my organization that has been in the red for years and would you maybe consider following your state’s policy that requires arts programming in schools?” We are too timid, too afraid of offending and are perceived as impotent, ineffectual and incompetent.”
Tag: 08.07.17
Chuck Close, Marina Abramovic, Kara Walker And Others Condemn Calls To Cancel Dana Schutz Show In Boston
The National Academy artists wrote in response to Boston protesters asking the ICA to cancel the Schutz show because of her painting Open Casket, which is of the open casket and broken face of Emmett Till and was roundly criticized at the Whitney Biennial. The painting is not in the ICA show. The artists wrote, “It is also of the utmost importance to us that artists not perpetrate upon each other the same kind of intolerance and tyranny that we criticise in others.”
Aphra Behn, Playwright And First British Woman To Make A Living Through Writing, Was Also A Spy
The playwright was wildly successful, but “beyond her successes on the stage and in fiction, Aphra Behn was a Royalist spy in the Netherlands and probably South America. She also served as a political propagandist for the courts of Charles II and his unpopular brother James II.”
Britons Will Get The Right To Be Forgotten Online Just In Time For Brexit
In addition to the right to having any site, including Facebook, delete all trace of personal data, people will find that “companies will also have to ask people for permission to collect personal data rather than rely on pre-selected tick boxes.”
Two Members Of The Band Pussy Riot Have Been Detained (Again)
The Russian feminist punk band members had been protesting another artist’s prison sentence in Siberia when they were detained by police. One of those detained, Maria Alyokhina, was convicted of “religious hooliganism” and sentenced to two years in prison for performing a “punk prayer” in Moscow in 2012.
Google Has Figured Out How To Make Your Phone Photos Better Before You Take Them
In a completely not creepy development, Google’s neural network is now so fast at improving photos that its “algorithm transforms photos so fast you can see the edited version in the viewfinder before you snap the picture.”
With Technology Comes Power. But It Might Make Us Less Happy
“Lives of artificial bliss handed to us on a platter of biochemical and neuroelectronic manipulation may well turn out to be stifling, unchallenging lives, and the human imagination, if it is not stunted and stupefied by virtual reality and other illusions, is likely to find unpredictable ways to subvert them. We will have found out that gods are never happy.”