Scandalmakers
Frida Kahlo Archive Drama
The LATimes‘ Christopher Knight reports on the archive of the “magnetic, self-mythologizing” Frida, little-known and drama enducing.
Saltz takes on MoMA
The Guerrilla Girls may have their own count in protest of sexism in museums, but art critic Jerry Saltz confronts MoMA on their gender-imbalanced collection and curation on the 4th and 5th floors, via his Facebook page. More after the jump.
Scienceblogs goes to the creation museum!
God made dirt and dirt don’t hurt, right?
“Their first big exhibit is a perfect example of the principle in action. It’s a model of a dinosaur dig, with two men working away at excavating the bones. There is a video accompanying it in which the two views are presented. The younger Asian fellow in front says, and I paraphrase, “This animal died about a hundred million years ago. Its body dried in the sun for several days before being slowly buried under layers of sediment in a local flood.” Then the avuncular creationist says, “I see the same bones, but I believe this dinosaur was killed suddenly about 4400 years ago in a huge global flood, which buried it deeply all at once.” And then he goes on to explain that see, they have the very same evidence, but he understands it in the light of God’s word.”
curated by michael jackson
MJ is auctioning off his goodies! There is so much for sale that its being held in a former department store.Here is a brief sample of the collection of the King of Pop, via the NYTimes.
ich verstehe nicht
Cologne city officials knew the archives were sinking–taking in water for months and noticeably sinking in early february–but they didn’t notify the proper authorities.
Those investigating how the building packed with unique cultural treasures collapsed, killing two people, heard on Friday night that the ground underneath the building had started letting water into the foundations last September – and the building was shown to be subsiding in February.
That’s some sad shit, let’s hope it doesn’t happen to the world economy.
kipple: a thoroughly polite dust up
We were cleaning out under our bed the other day, throwing out broken stereos, some adult videos from the mid 1990s, a VCR, when we got thinking (and breathing and sneezing) dust. We worked in a museum once that was so dusty that our bags were literally covered in a few millimeters of it whenever we picked them up from the floor under our desk at the end of the day. Our workstation was just outside the registrar’s office, very close to a large table where documents were handled every day. At least they washed their white gloves. Obviously an enemy (and yet ominipresent force) of collection houses everywhere, we went and wikipedia’d that shit.
Here are some wonderful factoids:
+ Dust ain’t dust if it’s diameter is more than 500 micrometers
+ Much of indoor dust comes from skin cells — and your body sheds its entire outer layer of skin once every two days!
+ According to the German Environmental Survey, approximately 6 mg/m²/day of house dust is formed in private households
+ Nearly 1000 dust particles per square centimeter settle on domestic surfaces every hour
+ If dust gets airborne its categorized as an aerosol–which we just figured out means a solid thats in the air! Brill.
+ Space Dust! The zodiacal light seen in the dark night sky is produced by sunlight reflected from particles of dust in orbit around the Sun
+ Most obviously awesome and gross, dust mites: they are everywhere, in all dust, and they eat it and poop it out, creating even more dust. Yum.
Much to our delight, we discovered there’s even an online Museum of Dust, with some really, really cool posts. Huzzah!
See also, Kipple, and the Fun Science Gallery’s dust scans.
chickens: no sympathy for empathy museum
Via New Curator, this wonderful bit about the latest PETA attention grabber, a proposal to turn an old poultry plant into a Chicken Empathy Museum of Feelings and Emotions. Look, we’re against animal cruelty as much as the next progressive-guilt-ridden urbanite. Free range, organic, of course. And yeah we know, it’s not enough, but, ethical and political and nutrition arguments aside, we just have to say, much like a chicken, this museum ain’t gonna fly (ZING).
Oh, and good luck getting this approved by Bobby Jindal, who will surely want to rebound from his Kenneth-the-page rebuttal speech by funding a PETA museum. Oh, funding, we forgot, he’s rejecting $98 million for the unemployed in government stimulus funds. Way to bring it home, Bobby. What a mensch!
An extra tip to New Curator for the highly literate “this reminds me of Artaud” reference.
Oh, we’ve tried so many times to be a veggie. But bacon…tastes…so…good.
*REMINDER* non-profit workers unionize tonight!
Don’t let that micromanaging Director push you around any longer!
*Tonight*
Nonprofit Happy Hour
Thursday, March 12, 2009, 6pm – 8pm
Revival Bar, near Union Square
We know it’s not easy times for nonprofit organizations right now.
And that means it is not easy times for those of us who work for nonprofits.
Come find out about starting a UNION at your workplace.
Strategize with nonprofit workers about how they are using their UNION to address job security, layoffs, hiring freezes, transparency, and workload issues that are affecting all of us right now.
For more information about unionizing at CWA 1180, visit http://www.cwa1180.org/organize/nonprofit.shtml
Library Murder on the Orient Express
Oh, they shut down the mighty Donnell library, where we used to research term papers in the eighth grade*, to make room for a boom-era hotel owned by Orient-Express Enterprises Incorporated LLC. Now the economy’s gone all bust and the hotel is high-tailin’ it back to the Orient Asia. So what now? The original plans called for a scaled-back mini-library, from 42,000 square feet of public space to 19,000.
What will become of the gutted building? Affordable housing? Archive-style lofts? Spiraling Skyscraper Farms?
*100 note-card minimum, and oh, they had old copies of Playboy at periodicals circulation!
free science
Well this is some bullshit, John Conyers, D(issapointing), MI, who used to busy himself fighting quixotic but honorable battles to impeach BushCo, is now trying to block open access to science journals.
And yes, the bill’s sponsors are getting donations from journal publishers. What a world!
