Reading Room: Civic Engagement

Reading Room: Civic Engagement: Why Cultural Institutions Must Lead the Way

arts and culture organizations must understand themselves not as arbiters of taste, but as creative homes for the people. They must be places driven by artists, culture bearers, philosophers, and activists. They must be platforms for cultivating public imagination; building thick and diverse networks; convening across differences and sectors; and incubating breakthrough ideas that stick, because they spring from communities that come together to embrace truth, honor diversity, and poetically pursue freedom.

By Deborah Cullinan
Source: Stanford Social Innovation Review
Link: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/civic_engagement_why_cultural_institutions_must_lead_the_way

Reading Room: Tech Start-Ups Have Become Conceptual Art

Reading Room: Tech Start-Ups Have Become Conceptual Art

The potential gutting of the NEA is worthy of concern and lamentation. But equally important, and no less disturbing, is the fact that the role of art, in part, had already shifted from the art world to the business world anyway. In particular, the formal boundary-pushing central to experimental and conceptual artists might have been superseded by the conceptual efforts of entrepreneurship.

By Ian Bogost
Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/03/tech-startups-conceptual-art/519924/

Call for Participation: Hyphenated American

Call for Participation: Hyphenated American
Deadline: March 28

Last year’s Hyphenated American project, supported by an Idea Lab Mini-Grant, was a great success featuring visual art, poetry, new music compositions, and guest lecturers who came together for a show focused on Latinos in the U.S. This April, Hyphenated American is returning with a broader focus to amplify the voices of immigrants, refugees, and hyphenated Americans of every culture. If you are an ally, we want to hear from you too!

What are we looking for? Creative responses to the theme “Diversity enriches the U.S.” Submissions can be in any of the arts including dance, visual art, film, music, and poetry! As a Hyphenated American you have a unique voice and a unique message. Share it in a show that unites people in an increasingly divisive climate.

Send a sample or description of your project idea by March 28 to Monique Osorio: aosorio1@uga.edu

Oh and by the way, what is a hyphenated American? Well, you know.. Latin-American, Arab- American, Muslim-American, African-American, to name a few, but you get the idea.

Reading Room: Trump Proposes Eliminating the Arts and Humanities Endowments

A deep fear came to pass for many artists, museums, and cultural organizations nationwide early Thursday morning when President Trump, in his first federal budget plan, proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

President Trump also proposed scrapping the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a key revenue source for PBS and National Public Radio stations, as well as the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

It was the first time a president has called for ending the endowments. They were created in 1965 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation declaring that any “advanced civilization” must fully value the arts, the humanities, and cultural activity.

By Sopan Deb
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/arts/nea-neh-endowments-trump.html

ICE Conversation: European Video Game Music

ICE Conversation: European Video Game Music
Wednesday, March 15 at Noon
Dancz Center for New Music, Hugh Hodgson School of Music, Room 264

How does video game music operate and function east of the Iron Curtain? Join this ICE Conversation for a case study of three controversial games as well as context-setting comments, observations on music and game psychology, clips, and actual rookie gameplay. Led by Dr. David Haas, UGA Musicology Professor. He teaches courses in late Romantic and early twentieth-century topics. His research focuses on Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky, Russian opera, Russian music criticism, and music and literature. He is the author of “Leningrad’s Modernists” (1998) and the translator of Boris Asafyev’s “Symphonic Etudes” (2007).