Inspired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “China: Through the Looking Glass” exhibit, I’ve been thinking a lot about museum curation, particularly about how curators address political issues in exhibit text. So tell me, what are the best museum presentations you’ve seen? And what made them so terrific?
“To get ahead in the music business of the mid-’70s, to get your own Kiss Army and a chunk of that arena money, meant convincing a man you were worth it. If you wanted to get your band signed, a man had to approve the deal. If you wanted to cut a record, a man had to agree to produce it. Chances are, a man would decide whether to play your album’s first single on the radio and whether you got booked to play it live. And few tried to exploit this boys’ club more than Fowley,” Cherkis explains. “On his runs through record label offices in Los Angeles, Fowley would lug a briefcase stuffed with song lyrics for every imaginable tune, more door-to-door salesman than Brill Building scribe. One folder was marked ‘folk rock lyrics,’ another ‘heavy metal people.’ He scoffed at musicians who thought songwriting was an art. When he met Bob Dylan in the mid-’60s, Fowley allegedly asked him, ‘What’s your gimmick? What’s your shtick?’ Fowley first scored big in 1960 with ‘Alley Oop,’ a song inspired by a comic-strip caveman. Two years later, he had another hit with ‘Nut Rocker,’ a rock version of Tchaikovsky’s ‘March of the Wooden Soldiers.’ For the next 50 years, he jumped from stunt to stunt, landing in the liner notes of hundreds of albums, from hair-metal to country, Alice Cooper to Helen Reddy. Before he died from bladder cancer this January, he turned up in a wheelchair in a Beyoncé video.”
• “Website, Profiled,” by Josh Dzieza: The Verge examines why the Awl has become a must-read, in part by saying small and specific.
“Founded in 2009 by Choire Sicha and Alex Balk, the Awl stands counter to the prevailing trends in the media industry, commenting skeptically on the conventions of the wider web while running a mix of stories that are both wide-ranging and unabashedly specific: writerly reviews of the previous day’s weather, deconstructions of minion memes, tirades against negronis and the Moon, personal essays, deadpan lists, poetry,” Dzieza writes. “The Awl’s unique position is partly the result of its business practices and goals. The site has expanded into a network, with the comedy site Splitsider, the women-oriented site The Hairpin, and the personal finance site The Billfold. At a time when venture capital feels abundant, it’s entirely self funded and profitable, though with a very thin cushion. In an industry obsessed with rapid growth, the editors are wary of scaling up. When the company expands — as it plans to do soon with a new parenting site run by former Gizmodo editor Brian Barrett — it does so cautiously, by partnering with writers.”
• “What will happen to the Internet if Reddit shuts down,” by Caitlin Dewey: Here at The Post, Dewey situates Reddit in the larger Internet economy.
“First, and perhaps least importantly, traffic to porn sites would plummet. Later, major news, entertainment and e-commerce sites, including YouTube and Amazon, would feel a notable, if not debilitating, hit. And then, concur a dozen Reddit power-users, academics and social media experts interviewed by The Post … life would go on as normal across the Internet,” Dewey reports. “To be clear, no one actually expects the Internet’s ‘front page,’ and its 35th most popular Web site, to shut down — not now, anyway. But in the wake of Reddit’s latest and most traumatic bout of internal drama, several pundits have found themselves pondering the hypothetical worst case: one in which the tensions between Reddit’s leadership and its user base topple the site, entirely. ‘If Reddit suddenly disappeared off the Internet, it would change the Internet,’ decreed Jeffrey Eberhard, one of the site’s most popular users. The question is: How would the Internet change? And what, just as pressingly, does it stand to lose?”
• “How Brody Jenner Made Hypersexed Bro-ness Into a Brand,” by Willa Paskin: In this review of the latest Jenner-Kardashian enterprise, Paskin advances a theory of how the whole shebang works, and how Brody fits into it.
“Brody Jenner is our bro par excellence. In its most benign form, the bro is akin to a puppy: you aren’t mad at it for wanting to hump everything in sight. In its most alluring form, the bro is akin to a snake: You are a little curious to see it devour its next meal. Brody is exactly the right proportions of puppy and snake. He is both silly and expert, a seer into the mind of other bros and bro-wannabes,” Paskin writes. “Performing a social type as perfectly as Brody performs “bro” is its own kind of elegance, and Brody has a douchey grace. His relationship to fame is a perfect tightrope walk. He always appears as the pretty grounded supporting player, enjoying the spotlight without ever risking getting burned by it. He is just notorious enough to get all the perks of fame, but not so notorious as to be constantly hassled because of it. He is happy to regale audiences with tales of his sexual prowess, but cool enough not to invite anyone into his actual bedroom. It’s all a very good look for Brody, but not a great one for a show.”
• “The Selfie and the Self,” by Menachem Wecker: The rainbows that spread across Facebook in the wake of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision are the latest entry in a long art history tradition.
“This identification with a larger community at the expense of individual identities comes with a particular contemporary digital flavor, but it also builds upon a long history, which dates back at least to the Middle Ages,” Wecker suggests. “Just as social media users today are performing for the public and posturing themselves in a variety of ways—whether they’re aware of it or not— portraiture has long incorporated symbols and other design elements to help define and express identity, while also associating its subjects with particular causes or traditions. Medieval households, for example, sometimes “branded” themselves with family colors in portraits and coats of arms. Jeffrey Cohen, a George Washington University English professor and director of the university’s Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute, cites a picture from the so-called Luttrell Psalter, an early 14th-century manuscript in the British Library’s collection, in which the nobleman Sir Geoffrey Luttrell is depicted upon his warhorse. Everything in the illumination, from Luttrell’s horse, armor, weapons, and shield to his daughter’s dress, bears the family shade of blue.”