BehindtheMuseum

🎧 Substack and podcast in which @TiffanyJenkins & arts folk discuss the big ideas & controversies rocking the cultural world.
👂 .

[BehindtheMuseum @BehindtheMuseum]

Woke in museums does not stem from institutional capture or pesky cultural Marxists but a crisis of purpose within https://t.co/32W0WQST23

[tiffany jenkins @tiffanyjenkins]

Who was George Forster, and why has this extraordinary 18th-century traveller been forgotten? An eyewitness to Captain Cook’s voyages, caught up in a 'complicated' marriage and initially an enthusiast for the French Revolution, Forster led the most remarkable life. @tobymundy talks to @andrea_wulf about The Traveller, shortlisted for the @BGPrize.

Watch here: https://t.co/2M8hAPSJoR

[BehindtheMuseum @BehindtheMuseum]

“The way in which curators now manage museum objects is reminiscent of how the priestly caste in ancient Egypt policed sacred idols and artefacts. They also kept them well away from contamination by the proletarian gaze.” #mummies

https://t.co/x94l7OPaIw

[tiffany jenkins @tiffanyjenkins]

Riva! Riva! A fascinating account from @pittsmike abt how the Easter Island stone heads were acquired, based on a long-lost report that challenges the claim that Britain stole the island’s “soul”.

https://t.co/YyovJQbOv2

[tiffany jenkins @tiffanyjenkins]

Fantastic review of Strangers and Intimates.

[tiffany jenkins @tiffanyjenkins]

The gorgeous pb edition of my book - Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life - is available to pre-order for 25% off at Waterstones! The offer runs until midnight on Friday. GET YOUR COPY NOW. 📚

Enter “FEB26” at the check out. Link: https://t.co/uxZruu9cTA

[tiffany jenkins @tiffanyjenkins]

A thoughtful and encouraging interview with Taco Dibbits, director of the
@rijksmuseum
on the future of museums, and what Billie Holiday and Rembrandt hold in common. https://t.co/TQyB66zimv

[Interintellect 🧭 @interintellect_]

Privacy was cherished for self-discovery & intimacy. What happens to the self when this space vanishes?

Join @tiffanyjenkins, philosopher @stephengadubato & @TheAnnaGat to explore the profound personal cost of the vanishing private world. https://t.co/5mG8isTAZZ

[tiffany jenkins @tiffanyjenkins]

https://t.co/RWKj8Vtztv

[tiffany jenkins @tiffanyjenkins]

Artist Sophie Calle shows that in our rush to surveil and be surveilled we have overlooked the fundamental fact that the most important parts of human experience remain invisible. Link in reply #privacy

[tiffany jenkins @tiffanyjenkins]

Interesting conversation. That said, I'd recommend Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind or Russell Jacoby's The Last Intellectuals as more insightful guides to understanding the culture of stupidity. Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum.

[Ewan Morrison @MrEwanMorrison]

Why am I always so deeply moved Arvo Part's music, when I don't share his Orthodox Christian faith?

How empty and rigid life would be if we only listened to music from people whose politics and religion we shared, and we blocked-out or banned all else.

[Frank Furedi @Furedibyte]

Our history is being rewritten, and our heritage is under attack. From Shakespeare to scientists, our cultural icons are being recast as villains. In my new book The War Against The Past, I explore why we must defend our legacy against those who seek to erase it.

Pre-order your copy here: https://t.co/u0XpkrbxD3

[GB News @GBNEWS]

'It's a crisis of purpose'

@tiffanyjenkins says woke artists' attacks on social issues often are used as an attempt to 'mask a hollowness' to their work.

[Austin Williams @Future_Cities]

A brilliant explanation of the crisis in Scottish arts - relating to #BaillieGifford @edbookfest defunding - that actually diminishes us all.

[nigel biggar @NigelBiggar]

.@aroberts_andrew .@DouglasKMurray .@tiffanyjenkins .@davidtorrance Read in full my letter of protest to the Kelvingrove Museum at its travesty of the truth about Scottish (and British) involvement in slavery: https://t.co/JYepm0bcSQ

[Matthew Stromberg @MattStromberg]

@dilisciavalen and I wrote about the abrupt cancellation of an ambitious expanded restaging of #michaelFried's influential 1965 exhibition "3 American Painters," which was set to open at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in July, for @hyperallergic https://t.co/gURfylc4S0

[BehindtheMuseum @BehindtheMuseum]

The Israel-Hamas war is tearing the arts world apart. Good if worrying piece from @RichmoMusic on the unstoppable spread of cancellation and censorship in the arts.

https://t.co/M4P01pAqSK

[BehindtheMuseum @BehindtheMuseum]

Very interesting discussion on the politics podcast @BungaCast on contemporary art - what it is and why artists today find it hard to create the beautiful @jjcharlesworth_ https://t.co/mfcmGf9Ufl

[Pierre d'Alancaisez (is) Verdurin @verdur_in]

I’m starting a series of quick-fire exhibition reviews, each max 200 words long. Idea shamelessly copied from @art_manhattan.

notes and notices: Mandy El-Sayegh, Interiors at Ropac, 2/5.

“There aren’t enough ideas here to go around these Mayfair halls.”
https://t.co/fIlaK87cby

[Pierre d'Alancaisez (is) Verdurin @verdur_in]

In my 20 years of thinking about art, “beauty” came up only a handful of times. That’s surprising in a world which still has sunsets.

For @TheCriticMag, I wrote about the war on beauty’s essentialism and the problem of socially constructing it again.
https://t.co/bF6LXwWLmn