“When the museum reopened last year, Aline Nyirahumure, who is from Rwanda and runs the African cultural center Kuumba in Brussels, was not impressed. Much of the money went into a new building that includes auditoriums for educational events as well as a gift shop and restaurant.
Much else has barely changed.” – Los Angeles Times
Tag: 10.31.19
New York City’s Beloved Cultural Commissioner, Tom Finkelpearl, Is Out Of His Job
In news received with consternation by many city arts organizations, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that Finkelpearl would be stepping down by what the ex-commissioner called “mutual agreement.” Finkelpearl is credited with the new plan to tie funding from the city to institutions’ diversity efforts and with the scheme that has given free access to cultural institutions to holders of IDNYC cards. – The New York Times
Leading London Arts Center Turns Down A Million Pounds From The Sacklers
In September, the trustees of The Roundhouse declined to accept a £1 million grant from the Sackler Trust, controlled by the family which owns the company that makes OxyContin. Said a Roundhouse spokesperson, “We are enormously grateful for the trust’s support over the years, but … to [accept the gift] risks distracting from our work with young people, and that’s our priority.” – The Art Newspaper
How Happiness Got To Be So Much Work
“Happiness is in many ways the marketing breakthrough of the past decade, with self-care and anti-stress products now rounding out the bestseller list on Amazon (think of ‘gravity blankets’, ‘de-stressing’ adult colouring books and fidget spinners), where they nestle alongside chart-topping tomes by ‘happiness bloggers’. All of this is made possible by a specific, disturbing and very new version of ‘happiness’ that holds that bad feelings must be avoided at all costs.” – Aeon
Once Upon a Time There Was Romance
Do you ever wonder how choreographers choose their titles? After seeing James Whiteside’s New American Romance on the last day of American Ballet Theatre’s fall season at the former New York State Theater, I spent some time pondering that. – Deborah Jowitt
Picasso Fiasco: Jarring Juxtapositions & Missed Connections at the New MoMA
The aggressively transgressive new MoMA, trying to combat museum-ennui by shaking up its displays, has aimed its cannon at the canon. Its disruptive installation strategy audaciously breaches traditional geographic, temporal and art-historical boundaries, arranging shotgun marriages among strange (and strained) bedfellows and sundering longtime soulmates. – Lee Rosenbaum
The twenty-five record albums that changed my life (13)
Forty-nine years after the fact, I can’t remember how or why I first got interested in Miles Davis. Not that you would have needed a reason to be interested in Miles in 1970. – Terry Teachout