Tag: 11.19.18

Australia Is Becoming A Serious Arts Tourism Destination

In 2017, according to a new study released by the Australia Council, “nearly half of the eight million visitors to Australia engaged with the arts during their stay (43 percent), which proved more popular than wineries (13 percent), casinos (12 percent) or organised sporting events (six percent). … The report also shows that arts tourists have grown by 47 percent between 2013 and 2017, a higher growth rate than for international tourist numbers overall (37 percent).”

What Do Amazon Reviews Reveal About Humanity En Masse?

Here’s the theory: “The power of the Amazon review is not what you might think. They’re not really there to help you purchase a clock or a book or even to develop a conspiracy theory about the increasing flimsiness of Ziploc sandwich bags compared to other brands. … I mean, they are there to help you purchase things, but that is secondary. The real reason to read Amazon reviews, and, in particular, to follow the Hansel-and-Gretel breadcrumb trail of those reviews as left by one person from product to product, is to glimpse into a life, strange and whole and utterly unlike your own. This is where the real magic lies.”

These Argentine Arts Workers Have Been Spending A Year Fighting Sexism In Their Industry — Have They Made Progress?

“Calling themselves Nosotras Proponemos (nP), meaning ‘we propose,’ the group [of 100 women] published a manifesto-like list of 37 demands, asking that women receive equal representation in exhibitions, collections, and leadership positions in Argentina’s arts sector. One year later, nP is celebrating the significant changes their activism has made in Argentina’s art world” — even as much work remains to be done.

Study: Does Reading Fiction Increase Your Capacity For Empathy?

Psychologists have begun to explore this question by asking whether reading fiction improves people’s sensitivity to other people’s beliefs or emotions compared to either not reading or to reading nonfiction. A paper by David Dodell-Feder and Diana Tamir in the November 2018 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General looked across 14 studies using a technique called meta-analysis to determine whether there is reason to think that reading fiction improves social abilities.

How Well-Worn Idioms Shape Our Debates

Most of us don’t seek out a new form of language, and if we happen to come across arbitrary sentences or silly paragraphs, we’re less than thrilled about it. The old idioms work just fine. We know what they mean. Even if I store food in cartons in the fridge, I don’t “keep all my eggs in one basket.” Even if you never cook for yourself, you sometimes “put it on the back burner.” Does this mean that old idioms are inevitably clichéd?

Why Jude Kelly Left London’s Southbank Centre To Start A Series Of Festivals About Women’s Achievements And Stories

Kelly stepped down last year from the artistic directorship of one of the world’s largest arts centers to work full-time on the Women of the World (WOW) festivals. “I decided I was going to make a body of work which in every single sense was going to be questioning the place that women’s stories have in art, culture, and in everyday civil life and political life.” (video)

Last Classical Record Store In Vancouver To Close

Sikora’s Classical Records has been operating for 40 years, but it’s now succumbing to what co-owner Ed Savenye says are “‘the five dirty D’s’: digitization (downloading and streaming), downsizing (people no longer have room for record collections), distribution (getting access to imports is increasingly challenging), desertion (people leaving for Amazon and other online sellers), and the saddest, demise — that is, the deaths of classical music lovers who continued to buy CDs and LPs.”