The Spirit Of Burning Man, And Why It Just Doesn’t Fit Into A Museum

For all of its insane growth, creeping capitalism, and occasional insufferability, writes Jillian Steinhauer, the desert festival largely continues to uphold its “‘radically participatory ethic,’ the idea that there are no spectators because everyone can and should be involved in building the contents of Black Rock City.” The problem, when you try to put art […]

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How Art For Justice Aims To Reduce Mass Incarceration

It’s worth remembering that the Art for Justice Fund is barely a year old. Yet in that short time frame, the fund, along with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, has placed the issue of mass incarceration front and center across the arts giving landscape. The rapid evolution of Art for Justice has provided socially driven funders with […]

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Who Should Store Confederate Monuments After They Come Down?

That all depends on the lawsuits – and the museums. “‘Truth is, we absolutely could not take them,’ says Christy Coleman, CEO of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Va. Coleman often receives calls from cities hoping to find homes for their Confederate monuments. ‘The biggest reason, I’d say, that museums aren’t able to […]

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Here’s Provocative Art That Really Provokes, And How Two Museums Are Handling It (Carefully)

At the University of Kansas’s Spencer Museum, one of the 16 flags in the project “Pledges of Allegiance” drew enough anger that the university president ordered it taken off the flagpole. The Blanton Museum at the University of Texas at Austin is displaying The City, Vincent Valdez’s life-size painting of a modern-day Ku Klux Klan […]

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Is UNESCO World Heritage Status A Kiss Of Death For Sites In Developing Countries?

Looking at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Luang Prabang in Laos, and the Vietnamese town of Hoi An (whose historic buildings and streetscape miraculously survived the 20th-century wars), art and cultural management professor Jo Caust argues that the mass tourism that comes with the coveted World Heritage designation can turn such places into theme parks and […]

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Could This Be How To Organize A Museum For The 21st-Century Age Of Migration?

A new exhibition in Hamburg by curator Roger M. Buergel (still known for his provocative Documenta 12 in 2007) “delivers on its contention that European museums need to do much more than just restitute plundered objects in their collections, important as that is. A 21st-century universal museum has to unsettle the very labels that the […]

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Arts Orgs Fear They Simply Can’t Afford To Turn Down Donations From Ethically Dubious Sources

“Although the vast majority are concerned that taking the ‘wrong’ sort of money could damage their reputation, just one in four report that their organisation has any sort of ethical fundraising policy. The findings emerge out of a survey of over 500 arts workers who shared their views on ethical fundraising and sponsorship. Their comments […]

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