Obviously, take the lead, realize there’s a problem as standards change. Instead, protests driven by social media are shaming some of the world’s most venerable cultural institutions, and they’re looking pretty bad. But there’s a balancing act to consider, writes Adrian Ellis… – The Art Newspaper
Tag: sj
Dorrine Kondo: Film Industry Diversity Numbers Are Revealing, But Not Nearly The Whole Story
“In my book “Worldmaking: Race, Performance and the Work of Creativity,” I approach the issue of diversity as a cultural anthropologist, playwright and performance studies scholar. In it, I argue that cultural representation is about something deeper than parity for the sake of parity – that everyone needs to be mirrored in the public sphere in order to exist and to count as a fully dimensional human being.” – The Conversation
Cultural Objects Versus Immigrants – A Disconnect
“Since the independence of West African countries throughout the late 1950s and early ’60s, the retention of objects and the simultaneous rejection of people has become ever more fraught. Young undocumented migrants from former French colonies stand metres away from the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, a museum in Paris full of their inaccessible patrimony. The migrants are treated with contempt while the objects from their homelands are cared for in museums and treated with great reverence. The migrants will be deported but the objects will not be repatriated. The homeland is therefore only home to objects, not people.” – Aeon
SFMoMA To Sell Rothko Painting To Help Diversify Its Collection
The move, said director Neal Benezra, will “enhance (the museum’s) contemporary holdings, and address art historical gaps.” Significantly, he said, it will also address the need “to broadly diversify SFMOMA’s collection.” – San Francisco Chronicle
Large Study Shows Students Do Better All Around If They Get Education In The Arts
It’s just the latest study to find that giving students more access to the arts offers measurable benefits. And adding time for dance, theater, or visual arts isn’t at odds with traditional measures of academic success, according to the research — which amounts to one of the largest gold-standard studies on arts education ever conducted. – Chalkbeat
It’s Great To Have A Diverse Cast, But What About The Writers?
The BBC has a new series about a Chinese family running a restaurant – but the writers aren’t from the community. Writers and actors from film, TV, and theatre have signed a letter that “calls for all scripts on the series, called Living With the Lams, to be authored by British East Asian Writers.” – The Stage (UK)
Bollywood Gets Its First Major LGBTQ Film [VIDEO]
The film, with major Bollywood stars in it, centers on the love story between two women, but they’re under pressure to be in opposite-sex marriages. The film’s director, Shelly Chopra Dhar: “The intent for this film was to reach a wider audience, to have everybody understand that love is love, and does not need to be qualified.” – BBC
Rethinking The Purpose Of British Arts Institutions
Take a look at Battersea Arts Centre, which “no longer focuses on creating the ‘future of theatre’—a laudable purpose, but not one of much interest to the many who doubt theatre is for them. Instead, it concentrates on inspiring and supporting people to take creative risks to shape their own and their communities’ future, whether those people define themselves as artists or not.” – HowlRound
Playback Theatre As Therapy For Traumatized Syrian War Refugees
“The [program] was organized by Fighters for Peace, which was founded in 2014 by former Lebanese militia members who took part in their country’s destructive 1975-90 civil war and are now peace activists. They have been using playback theater for years as part of their campaign to promote peace and try to prevent another breakout of war in Lebanon.” – Yahoo! (AP)
Leonard Pitts: On Writing About Race In America
“A simple thought experiment illustrates the point. If asked to define black literature, you would likely—and promptly—invoke Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison or some other dark-skinned giant of the written word. But what if you were asked to define “white” literature? The mind quails and resists, does it not?” – LitHub