In the early 20th century, Spiritualism was at its peak, and so were fake psychics who fleeced people who just wanted to communicate with a dead loved one. Into the breech between weird and real stepped Rose Mackenberg, who “investigated more than 300 psychics and seers in the two years she worked for Houdini and many more after that. In a career that lasted decades and led her to testify before Congress, she proved to be quick-witted, adept with disguises and unblinkingly skeptical.” – The New York Times
Tag: 12.06.19
The Los Angeles Museum Of Contemporary Art Voluntarily Recognizes A New Employee Union
LA’s MOCA employees now won’t need to go through additional certifying steps – or employer “education” either. MOCA Director Klaus Biesenbach said recognizing the union was “in full alignment with this vision we have set forth for our institution. Ultimately, we’re taking this step to come together as one team, one MOCA.” – Los Angeles Times
Longstanding Member Of Swedish Academy Boycotts Nobel Ceremony For Peter Handke
Peter Englund, the former permanent secretary for the Swedish Academy and a current member, said, ““To celebrate Peter Handke’s Nobel prize would be gross hypocrisy on my part” He is the only current member of the Academy with firsthand experience in Bosnia, according to a journalist, and Handke’s win has been met with horror by “politicians and writers lining up to condemn his denial of Serb atrocities during the war in the former Yugoslavia, as well as his presence at the funeral of war criminal Slobodan Miloševic.” – The Guardian (UK)
Turns Out It’s Tough To Make Scorsese’s Guys Look Different From Each Other
The styling is in the ties. And there are … let’s say a lot of different ties in this movie. Says one of the costume designers, “The language of how the tie greets the shirt greets the belt; the cut of the suit and how that translates across the years for each of these men, that was a real joy for me.” – The New York Times
For The Stand-Up Act On ‘Mrs. Maisel,’ Almost Nothing Is Spontaneous
Rachel Brosnahan, who plays Midge Maisel, says that season three changed things for her – and made the actor a better comedian too. “While the first and second season, most of the major stand-up was born out of something she was experiencing in her real life in real time, this new season takes me on the road. She’s a working comic now. And she’s having to learn to be a technically better comic, to write tighter jokes, to write jokes for different audiences who won’t necessarily understand or relate to what’s going on in her life.””- Los Angeles Times
Performance Art Of Intimacy
That desire for usefulness has always been a knotty issue for performance art, since it is often both accessible (live and affordable) and inaccessible (challenging and unfamiliar). Intimacy and ritual seem to be buzzwords in the poetry and art world at the moment. – Times Literary Supplement
A “Soft” Science? Philosophy And Its Search For Answers
We can’t escape the question of what matters and why: the way we’re living is itself our implicit answer to that question. A large part of a philosophical training is to make those implicit answers explicit, and then to examine them rigorously. – Aeon
How The Canadian Government’s Increased Commitment To Culture Is Succeeding
As many countries have continued to cut funding for the arts, Canada’s government has gone the other way and embraced culture and the idea of getting it seen around the world. Had the Liberal party lost in Canada’s October elections, a different attitude may have been taken by the country’s politicians. Instead a great deal of optimism has been generated through Canada Council for the Arts’ commitment to sending domestic work abroad. – The Stage
Great Britain Has Lost 773 Libraries In Last Decade
“The closure of almost a fifth of the UK’s libraries over the last 10 years comes against a backdrop of a 29.6% decline in spend … since the Conservative government implemented austerity in 2010.” The number of paid librarians and other staffers has fallen by more than one-third in the same period. – The Guardian
Grantmaking in the #MeToo Era
Bess Rothenberg, senior director of strategy and learning at the Ford Foundation: “The scale and momentum of the #MeToo movement compelled the Ford Foundation to take a long, hard look in the mirror. What should be our role in responding to abuses of power within the organizations we support? In preventing them? Had we been doing enough?” – Stanford Social Innovation Review