“The accompanying political narrative was that the creative industries would champion the social utility of arts and culture as progressive realms to engage fractured communities, realise progressive values and create a more sustainable economic world. … Now it seems impossible to doubt the economic success story that is the creative industries,” at least in terms of the size of their contribution to the economy. “The trouble is that all this ‘success’ has come at the expense of any cultural, artistic or creative integrity that the sectors once had before they were herded into a single political concept.” – Prospect (UK)
Tag: 09.09.19
Defining What A Museum Is: More Than Collecting, An Ideology?
After a week of debate in Kyoto, and pushback ahead of the International Council for Museums’s annual conference in the historic Japanese city, delegates voted overwhelmingly against a contentious new definition that its critics argue is “too ideological.” – artnet
Will Artificial Intelligence Change Our Relationship With Religion?
As more religious communities begin to incorporate robotics — in some cases, AI-powered and in others, not —it stands to change how people experience faith. It may also alter how we engage in ethical reasoning and decision-making, which is a big part of religion. – Vox
The Long And Ugly Fight Over Copyright To Emily Dickinson’s Work
“The [story] involves theft, adulterous affairs, a land deal gone wrong, a feud between families, two elite colleges, and some of the most famous poems in American literature.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
Saving Endangered Indigenous Languages By Digitizing Them Is A Tricky Business, And Not Just Technically
“New technology like smartphone keyboards, language-learning apps, and digital databases makes revitalization work easier than ever, but it also requires hard conversations about which parts of a language must be kept offline.” – Slate
A Stage Combat Consultancy Run Entirely By Women
With four RSC plays, three other London shows, and a regional production all this year alone, the company called Rc-Annie is one of the most in-demand firms of its kind. Reporter Nick Smurthwaite talks to Rc-Annie’s two founders, Rachel Bown-Williams and Ruth Cooper-Brown. – The Stage
Neil Montanus, Who Took The Enormous Colorama Photos Displayed At Grand Central Station, Dead At 92
“Every weekday [for four decades], 650,000 commuters and visitors who jostled through the main concourse could gaze up at Kodak’s Coloramas, the giant photographs that measured 18 feet high and 60 feet wide, each backlit by a mile of cold cathode tubing, displaying … the wonders of color film.” Neil Montanus shot more of those photos than anyone else. – The New York Times
Italy Might Keep Its Foreign-Born Museum Directors After All
“Now that a new coalition government has been formed, sidelining the right-wing nationalist League, Dario Franceschini, the center-left politician who was behind the hiring foreign experts in the first place, is back as culture minister—which means the museum directors might be able to keep their jobs after all. And with Franceschini back, the directors of Italy’s state museum may not lose the autonomy that allowed them to modernize as they saw fit, another reform that the previous culture minister had tried to reverse.” – artnet
Scientists Find Anomaly In Dead Sea Scrolls That Casts Doubts On Origin
“This inorganic layer that is really clearly visible on the Temple scroll surprised us and induced us to look more in detail how this scroll was prepared, and it turns out to be quite unique.” – The Guardian
In 1913, Edith Wharton Created An Anti-Heroine For The 21st Century
Jia Tolentino: “More than a century after The Custom of the Country was published, Undine’s habits, given a superficial makeover, could be rebranded not just as aspirational but feminist. Today, she would learn how to defend her life story as that of a woman going after what she wants and getting it — and what could be more progressive than that? This pitch would be bullshit, but plenty of people would believe it. Our twenty-first-century Undine would have a million followers on Instagram. She’d be a Page Six legend.” – The New Yorker