Art & Entertainments

Tokyo show tests if fans will come

By Jaime E. Love 2 weeks ago

It’s a blockbuster exhibition, featuring some of the biggest names in Japan’s contemporary art scene. But will people flock to galleries in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic?

That’s the question on the mind of Mami Kataoka, director of the influential Mori Art Museum, which reopens on Friday after a five-month hiatus with one of its most high-profile Japanese art shows in years.

“We live in a time when we are asked, ‘What is the role of museums and what is the role of art?'” Kataoka told AFP at a press preview of the “STARS” exhibit this week.

The exhibition was supposed to open in April, running through the summer to attract visitors in town for the Olympics, with works by leading Japanese art figures like Yayoi Kusama and Takashi Murakami.

But the coronavirus has forced a year-long delay of the Games, and the museum closed its doors in

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House approves bill to create Latino museum on National Mall

By Jaime E. Love 2 weeks ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has passed a bill to establish a Smithsonian museum for American Latinos that would showcase Latino history, art and culture.

The bill was approved Monday by a voice vote and now goes to the Senate, where it has bipartisan support.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus hailed the bill’s passage, noting that a museum honoring Latinos has been under consideration for more than 15 years.

“The Latino story is an American story, and our history is a central thread in the history of our nation,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, the group’s chairman.

“Latinos have fought in every U.S. war. Food and music from Latin America are enjoyed in every American city. American Latinos are parents, veterans, teachers, activists, innovators, artists, scientists, business owners … and so much more,” Castro said. ”Now, more than ever, America’s Latinos deserve to have our story told and our voices to

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What Unicorns and Rainbows Are Really About

By Jaime E. Love 2 weeks ago

The lights were dimmed during the last day of Devcon in October 2019. A hush fell over the auditorium in Osaka, Japan. A haunting melody rippled through the crowd of roughly 1,000 people. Everyone knew the dance was about to begin. 

Ethereum leaders, including inventor Vitalik Buterin, plus Hudson Jameson and Aya Miyaguchi of the Ethereum Foundation, would lead a goofy dance to close out the annual tech conference. 

Cheers erupted when the Ethereum influencers took the stage, nodding respectfully to conference organizers and thanking the crowd. Soon the whole crowd was following along, jumping up and down, turning in circles. Critics might say they were simply mimicking the technologists on stage, but on the ground, people were adding their own moves or simply nodding along. Every Etherean dances his or her own way, or smiles and sways timidly. (Ethereum Foundation developer Vlad Zamfir, for example, dislikes the dance and

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‘They certainly booed, I’ll tell you that’

By Jaime E. Love 3 weeks ago
Bob Dylan performs at Rhode Island's Newport Folk Festival in July 1965: Getty
Bob Dylan performs at Rhode Island’s Newport Folk Festival in July 1965: Getty

The poet in black struck an angry chord and told his people how it feels. “I got a head full of ideas that are drivin’ me insane,” Bob Dylan barked over a skiffle rock clatter called “Maggie’s Farm”, a servant-class metaphor for breaking free of the oppressive, conformist shackles of 1960s America. The song ended in a flurry of bluesy discord, and a roar went up unlike any heard in popular music before. Half shock and excitement, half dissent and betrayal, a torrid clash of howls and boos. At the side of the stage, organiser Pete Seeger reportedly demanded an axe to cut the microphone cord.

Fifty-five years ago today, the traditionalists of 1965’s Newport Folk Festival, Rhode Island, had watched Dylan walk onstage with an unannounced band, plug in a guitar and play his first ever

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