sábado, 22 de agosto de 2020

REQUIRED READING. THIS WEEK, BIG’S SUSTAINABLE LILYPAD CITY, GERMANY’S NEW DOG LAWS, THE GHENT ALTARPIECE UPCLOSE, WHITE MUSEUM DOCENTS, VINCENTE FOX’S TRUMP TROLL, AND MORE.



BIG is at it again with their almost retro futurist masterplans that seem part dreamy idealism and part neoliberal hellscape. I still love to see them though. The latest is the BiodiverCity masterplan by that “will see three islands built off the shore of Penang Island, Malaysia, connected by an autonomous transport network. The vast land reclamation project, which will encompass 1821 hectares, is being developed by BIG for Penang State Government … Each island is modelled on the form of a lilypad and will be composed of mixed-use districts, 4.6 kilometres of public beaches, 242 hectares of parks and a 25-kilometre-long waterfront.” For more info and images visit Dezeen. (via Dezeen)

Let’s start on a light note with this story out of Germany about a new law that is going to require dog owners to walk their dogs at least twice a day for an hour in total. Everyone is wondering how they could possibly enforce it:
The German agriculture minister has announced she will introduce a controversial new law that will require dog owners to walk their canine friends at least twice a day, for a total of at least one hour.

The rules would also forbid owners from tying up dogs for long periods of time or leaving them alone all day. Around one in five German homes has a dog; over 9 million dogs are kept as pets in the country.

“Pets are not cuddly toys — and their needs have to be considered,” Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner said Monday. She said her ministry was acting in accordance with “new scientific research about dogs’ needs.”

There’s a new website devoted to the Ghent Altarpiece, the famed 15th-century altarpiece by painters Hubert van Eyck and Jan van Eyck, and it includes very detailed images of the work post-restoration.
Is the fact that most museum docents at US museums are white part of the problem?
That June day, one of the museum’s volunteer guides was leading a tour of four school-age girls. Three of the girls were Black, says Shaw, and one was South Asian. The girls were asking the guide questions about the art, which included collages, large-scale installations, works made from found objects, and photographs, many of which dealt with racism, identity, and history. “What’s Black Power?” one of the girls inquired. The guide, an older white woman, was clearly struggling to give answers. At one point, Shaw says, she compared Afro-textured hair to different kinds of animal fur. “She knew what she was saying wasn’t quite right. But she didn’t really know how.”

It wasn’t the first time Shaw, who is Black, had witnessed a guide saying something racist, unwittingly or not. So she decided to speak to her supervisor. The response she got, she says, was along the lines of “I hear you, and we can do more training, but there isn’t that much we can do, because it’s a volunteer position.”

Media columnist Margaret Sullivan takes aim at some of the weak apologies by news organizations:
A faulty story may appear on a printed section front or an online home page or a prime-time network program. A correction will be hidden on an inside page or at the bottom of the online version of a story, or will be mentioned in passing at the end of a show. (Some publications put important corrections at the top of online articles, not the bottom, as with the Washington Post article mentioned earlier.)...............

https://hyperallergic.com/583825/required-reading-491/

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