Good Morning,
The Museum of Ice Cream and its cousin the Museum of Balloons are printing money while traditional museums count their deficits (The New York Times). The lesson isn’t that audiences got dumber, it’s that they’ll pay handsomely for an experience they can photograph, and a Rothko isn’t sexy enough for TikTok. Ah, the Selfie Generation.
Traditional institutions are suffering for it. DePaul shut down its art museum’s daily operations but kept the collection on campus, removing art from the public discourse (WBEZ). In Australia, art prizes have lately become pay-to-play, charging artists to enter the very contests meant to discover them (ArtsHub) and the expenses add up fast.
Elsewhere, the Trump administration erased mentions of slavery from two more historic sites in Philadelphia (MSN). So is our culture’s problem fake news or incorrect facts? A smart essay argues our crisis isn’t a facts problem but an interpretation-of-facts problem (Persuasion). Control which facts survive and interpretation takes care of itself.
Also: David Sedaris confesses to a Duolingo habit serious enough to alarm his fans (The Guardian).
All of our stories below.
Doug
