“On Friday, the state education watchdog Rosobrnadzor forced the European University in St. Petersburg, a private post-graduate school for the social sciences and humanities, to halt all education activities. The order came after a St. Petersburg district court ruled that the university had violated several legal regulations.”
Tag: 12.12.16
A Dead End-End Career Track For English Majors?
“Traditionally, writing and teaching at the university level have been the career paths of choice for English majors. Nice work if you can get it. I never could, which is why I’ve spent most of my life as a librarian. My up and down career as a writer, on the other hand, has afforded me much satisfaction and very little money… My real career as a librarian is all very well, but since it’s fundamentally a paycheck, I can’t muster excessive enthusiasm for an institution that provides a lifelong education free of charge for the broadest conceivable public and generally represents American values at their best. I didn’t major in English to serve American values. I majored in English so that I could spend the rest of my life arguing about books and culture, even if I had to do so in my off hours, even if the argument was chiefly with myself. I still think it was the best decision I ever made.”
‘The Surrealist Country Par Excellence’ – Mexico, Cauldron Of Modern Art In The Americas
Mexico was called ‘the surrealist country par excellence’ by no less a Surrealist than André Breton himself. J. Hoberman writes that the show of Mexican Modernism at the Philadelphia Museum of Art “presents a … response to European art that, at least up until World War II, was equal to and in some regards stronger than that of North America.”
Have A Look At Oskar Schlemmer’s ‘Triadic Ballet’, The Original Bauhaus Dance
Last month we told you about an updated version of this work with choreography by Karole Armitage. Here’s video of a 1970s attempt at reconstructing the original.
What Do ‘I Love Lucy’, ‘Seinfeld’, ‘Arrested Development’, Rick And Morty’, And Every Other Sitcom Have In Common? The Magic Formula
“Almost all sitcoms can be divided into seven segments, each of which sets up or advances the plot in a specific way. As a result, it’s possible to predict at around what minute in an episode the main character will declare their goal, encounter their first obstacle, and succeed or fail at getting what they want. This formula is the reason sitcoms can be written at such a fast rate, and sometimes wind up seeming, well … formulaic. But it’s also the reason many sitcoms are able to find new and groundbreaking ways of being funny.”
Afrofuturism – A Cultural Genre Comes Into Its Own
“Familiar to some, exotic to others, the term refers loosely to an unlikely fusion of parts: Egyptian and other non-Western mythologies, mysticism and magical realism with Afrocentricity, modern technology and science fiction. A freighted concept in more ways than one, it gained traction this year, muscling its way into the pop cultural mainstream via the intertwined worlds of entertainment, art and style.”
Study: Watching Romantic Comedies Makes You More Empathetic
“Repeated exposure to romantic films led to increases in sensitivity for four of the five moral intuitions,” writes a research team led by Matthew Grizzard of the University at Buffalo–State University of New York. “At the same time, any exposure to action films seemed to erode those changes.”
From Victim To Feminist Heroine: Artemesia Gentileschi
Curator Judith Mann: “She is a phenomenon in terms of the history of art, because we really understood her life far earlier than we cared, really, about her painting. And the understanding of Artemisia as a painter, as an artist, followed the fanfare of her celebrated rape, and it made a rather skewed understanding of this artist. And now we try to go back and fill in and properly understand.”
They’re Still Trying To Find Ferdinand And Imelda Marcos’s Mysteriously-Disappeared Art Collection
“As time has passed, the government has tried out different, more innovative strategies to find the art. But the results have been slow to come in, and the Marcos family is once again gaining political power. … Earlier this year, it started an interactive website to crowdsource information. Like any respectable social media campaign, the website features a clever Twitter hash tag: #ShowMeTheMonet.”
Exit Interview: Alan Gilbert Prepares To Leave The New York Philharmonic
“In his wake, he leaves a formidable legacy of experimentation that expanded not just what an orchestra can and will do, but who it’s for. Gilbert and [Helga] Davis sat down in his office to talk about what he means by serving a community, the moments in performance he lives for, and how maybe he could’ve benefited from throwing tantrums and showing his stress more.” (podcast)