While surfing/researching for my inventory project I came across this blog posting.
How to Think
Managing brain resources in an age of complexity.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
When I applied for my faculty job at the MIT Media Lab, I had to write a teaching statement. One of the things I proposed was to teach a class called "How to Think," which would focus on how to be creative, thoughtful, and powerful in a world where problems are extremely complex, targets are continuously moving, and our brains often seem like nodes of enormous networks that constantly reconfigure. In the process of thinking about this, I composed 10 rules, which I sometimes share with students. I've listed them here, followed by some practical advice on implementation.
1. Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.
2. Learn how to learn (rapidly). One of the most important talents for the 21st century is the ability to learn almost anything instantly, so cultivate this talent. Be able to rapidly prototype ideas. Know how your brain works. (I often need a 20-minute power nap after loading a lot into my brain, followed by half a cup of coffee. Knowing how my brain operates enables me to use it well.)
3. Work backward from your goal. Or else you may never get there. If you work forward, you may invent something profound--or you might not. If you work backward, then you have at least directed your efforts at something important to you.
4. Always have a long-term plan. Even if you change it every day. The act of making the plan alone is worth it. And even if you revise it often, you're guaranteed to be learning something.
5. Make contingency maps. Draw all the things you need to do on a big piece of paper, and find out which things depend on other things. Then, find the things that are not dependent on anything but have the most dependents, and finish them first.
6. Collaborate.
7. Make your mistakes quickly. You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Shakespeare put it, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."
8. As you develop skills, write up best-practices protocols. That way, when you return to something you've done, you can make it routine. Instinctualize conscious control.
9. Document everything obsessively. If you don't record it, it may never have an impact on the world. Much of creativity is learning how to see things properly. Most profound scientific discoveries are surprises. But if you don't document and digest every observation and learn to trust your eyes, then you will not know when you have seen a surprise.
10. Keep it simple. If it looks like something hard to engineer, it probably is. If you can spend two days thinking of ways to make it 10 times simpler, do it. It will work better, be more reliable, and have a bigger impact on the world. And learn, if only to know what has failed before. Remember the old saying, "Six months in the lab can save an afternoon in the library."
Two practical notes. The first is in the arena of time management. I really like what I call logarithmic time planning, in which events that are close at hand are scheduled with finer resolution than events that are far off. For example, things that happen tomorrow should be scheduled down to the minute, things that happen next week should be scheduled down to the hour, and things that happen next year should be scheduled down to the day. Why do all calendar programs force you to pick the exact minute something happens when you are trying to schedule it a year out? I just use a word processor to schedule all my events, tasks, and commitments, with resolution fading away the farther I look into the future. (It would be nice, though, to have a software tool that would gently help you make the schedule higher-resolution as time passes...)
The second practical note: I find it really useful to write and draw while talking with someone, composing conversation summaries on pieces of paper or pages of notepads. I often use plenty of color annotation to highlight salient points. At the end of the conversation, I digitally photograph the piece of paper so that I capture the entire flow of the conversation and the thoughts that emerged. The person I've conversed with usually gets to keep the original piece of paper, and the digital photograph is uploaded to my computer for keyword tagging and archiving. This way I can call up all the images, sketches, ideas, references, and action items from a brief note that I took during a five-minute meeting at a coffee shop years ago--at a touch, on my laptop. With 10-megapixel cameras costing just over $100, you can easily capture a dozen full pages in a single shot, in just a second.
Cite as: Boyden, E. S. "How to Think." Ed Boyden's Blog. Technology Review. 11/13/07. (http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/boyden/21925/).
Sunday, August 31, 2008
From Early Adopter to Early Discarder
From the NY times a few weeks back. Click on the title above for a link to the article.
All my life I’ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual, sprinkling quotations from Kafka, Epictetus and Derrida into my conversations, impressing dates and making my friends feel mentally inferior. But over the last few years, it’s stopped working. People just look at me blankly. My artificially inflated self-esteem is on the wane. What happened?
Existential in Exeter
Dear Existential,
It pains me to see so many people being pseudo-intellectual in the wrong way. It desecrates the memory of the great poseurs of the past. And it is all the more frustrating because your error is so simple and yet so fundamental.
You have failed to keep pace with the current code of intellectual one-upsmanship. You have failed to appreciate that over the past few years, there has been a tectonic shift in the basis of good taste.
You must remember that there have been three epochs of intellectual affectation. The first, lasting from approximately 1400 to 1965, was the great age of snobbery. Cultural artifacts existed in a hierarchy, with opera and fine art at the top, and stripping at the bottom. The social climbing pseud merely had to familiarize himself with the forms at the top of the hierarchy and febrile acolytes would perch at his feet.
In 1960, for example, he merely had to follow the code of high modernism. He would master some impenetrably difficult work of art from T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound and then brood contemplatively at parties about Lionel Trilling’s misinterpretation of it. A successful date might consist of going to a reading of “The Waste Land,” contemplating the hollowness of the human condition and then going home to drink Russian vodka and suck on the gas pipe.
This code died sometime in the late 1960s and was replaced by the code of the Higher Eclectica. The old hierarchy of the arts was dismissed as hopelessly reactionary. Instead, any cultural artifact produced by a member of a colonially oppressed out-group was deemed artistically and intellectually superior.
During this period, status rewards went to the ostentatious cultural omnivores — those who could publicly savor an infinite range of historically hegemonized cultural products. It was necessary to have a record collection that contained “a little bit of everything” (except heavy metal): bluegrass, rap, world music, salsa and Gregorian chant. It was useful to decorate one’s living room with African or Thai religious totems — any religion so long as it was one you could not conceivably believe in.
But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone.
On that date, media displaced culture. As commenters on The American Scene blog have pointed out, the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement and as the marker of social status.
Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it. (In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL e-mail address is a scarlet letter of techno-shame.)
Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel. The brain overshadows the mind. Design overshadows art.
This transition has produced some new status rules. In the first place, prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser. Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever. Maximum status goes to the Gladwellian heroes who occupy the convergence points of the Internet infosystem — Web sites like Pitchfork for music, Gizmodo for gadgets, Bookforum for ideas, etc.
These tastemakers surf the obscure niches of the culture market bringing back fashion-forward nuggets of coolness for their throngs of grateful disciples.
Second, in order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.
When you first come across some obscure cultural artifact — an unknown indie band, organic skate sneakers or wireless headphones from Finland — you will want to erupt with ecstatic enthusiasm. This will highlight the importance of your cultural discovery, the fineness of your discerning taste, and your early adopter insiderness for having found it before anyone else.
Then, a few weeks later, after the object is slightly better known, you will dismiss all the hype with a gesture of putrid disgust. This will demonstrate your lofty superiority to the sluggish masses. It will show how far ahead of the crowd you are and how distantly you have already ventured into the future.
If you can do this, becoming not only an early adopter, but an early discarder, you will realize greater status rewards than you ever imagined. Remember, cultural epochs come and go, but one-upsmanship is forever.
All my life I’ve been a successful pseudo-intellectual, sprinkling quotations from Kafka, Epictetus and Derrida into my conversations, impressing dates and making my friends feel mentally inferior. But over the last few years, it’s stopped working. People just look at me blankly. My artificially inflated self-esteem is on the wane. What happened?
Existential in Exeter
Dear Existential,
It pains me to see so many people being pseudo-intellectual in the wrong way. It desecrates the memory of the great poseurs of the past. And it is all the more frustrating because your error is so simple and yet so fundamental.
You have failed to keep pace with the current code of intellectual one-upsmanship. You have failed to appreciate that over the past few years, there has been a tectonic shift in the basis of good taste.
You must remember that there have been three epochs of intellectual affectation. The first, lasting from approximately 1400 to 1965, was the great age of snobbery. Cultural artifacts existed in a hierarchy, with opera and fine art at the top, and stripping at the bottom. The social climbing pseud merely had to familiarize himself with the forms at the top of the hierarchy and febrile acolytes would perch at his feet.
In 1960, for example, he merely had to follow the code of high modernism. He would master some impenetrably difficult work of art from T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound and then brood contemplatively at parties about Lionel Trilling’s misinterpretation of it. A successful date might consist of going to a reading of “The Waste Land,” contemplating the hollowness of the human condition and then going home to drink Russian vodka and suck on the gas pipe.
This code died sometime in the late 1960s and was replaced by the code of the Higher Eclectica. The old hierarchy of the arts was dismissed as hopelessly reactionary. Instead, any cultural artifact produced by a member of a colonially oppressed out-group was deemed artistically and intellectually superior.
During this period, status rewards went to the ostentatious cultural omnivores — those who could publicly savor an infinite range of historically hegemonized cultural products. It was necessary to have a record collection that contained “a little bit of everything” (except heavy metal): bluegrass, rap, world music, salsa and Gregorian chant. It was useful to decorate one’s living room with African or Thai religious totems — any religion so long as it was one you could not conceivably believe in.
But on or about June 29, 2007, human character changed. That, of course, was the release date of the first iPhone.
On that date, media displaced culture. As commenters on The American Scene blog have pointed out, the means of transmission replaced the content of culture as the center of historical excitement and as the marker of social status.
Now the global thought-leader is defined less by what culture he enjoys than by the smartphone, social bookmarking site, social network and e-mail provider he uses to store and transmit it. (In this era, MySpace is the new leisure suit and an AOL e-mail address is a scarlet letter of techno-shame.)
Today, Kindle can change the world, but nobody expects much from a mere novel. The brain overshadows the mind. Design overshadows art.
This transition has produced some new status rules. In the first place, prestige has shifted from the producer of art to the aggregator and the appraiser. Inventors, artists and writers come and go, but buzz is forever. Maximum status goes to the Gladwellian heroes who occupy the convergence points of the Internet infosystem — Web sites like Pitchfork for music, Gizmodo for gadgets, Bookforum for ideas, etc.
These tastemakers surf the obscure niches of the culture market bringing back fashion-forward nuggets of coolness for their throngs of grateful disciples.
Second, in order to cement your status in the cultural elite, you want to be already sick of everything no one else has even heard of.
When you first come across some obscure cultural artifact — an unknown indie band, organic skate sneakers or wireless headphones from Finland — you will want to erupt with ecstatic enthusiasm. This will highlight the importance of your cultural discovery, the fineness of your discerning taste, and your early adopter insiderness for having found it before anyone else.
Then, a few weeks later, after the object is slightly better known, you will dismiss all the hype with a gesture of putrid disgust. This will demonstrate your lofty superiority to the sluggish masses. It will show how far ahead of the crowd you are and how distantly you have already ventured into the future.
If you can do this, becoming not only an early adopter, but an early discarder, you will realize greater status rewards than you ever imagined. Remember, cultural epochs come and go, but one-upsmanship is forever.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
No, Not Here, That's Not Possible - Why Can't Artists Be Artists at SAM and the Frye?
I was at my desk in the collections dept. when Jen Graves' intern showed up to inquire about painting in the museum. At first I was cranky, then realized how wistful and frankly envious I am when I go to major museums in the east and see painters actually painting from masterworks and ask myself why the hell haven't I done this?
Nice article, text below and link to it is also above when you click on the title.
No, Not Here, That's Not Possible
Why Can't Artists Be Artists at SAM and the Frye?
by Jen Graves
The first painting you encounter in the blockbuster traveling show Inspiring Impressionism at Seattle Art Museum this summer is not an impressionist painting. And it's not an older, "master" work—by an artist like Velázquez, Titian, or Hals—either. An exception was made to start the show with this otherwise unremarkable 1912 canvas by the little-known artist Louis Beroud because Beroud's painting, An Evening in the Louvre, directly illustrates the theme of the exhibition: artists learning from other artists, often by painting copies while standing right in front of them in galleries. In An Evening in the Louvre, a whiskered, white-haired Louvre janitor is beginning his work for the night, cleaning up after copyists in the gallery, whose easels and unfinished oil copies await the artists' return in the morning. This is part of how great artists learn, even artists who abandon tradition, the show reminds us. There's example after example of the impressionists' copies of master works in Inspiring Impressionism.
Well, SAM may support the premise of this show—but only in theory. SAM is the only stop on the exhibition's national tour, which also stops in Denver and Atlanta, that universally forbids painting in its galleries. The Stranger sent an intern, John Borges, to the museum posing as a great-artist-in-training, with paints, a palette, a drop cloth, and a traditional French easel, and he was escorted straight up to the administration offices and told what he wanted to do was impossible. "It seemed like the guard was rooting for me," Borges said afterward. But no dice.
Even as great historical European museums and many leading and smaller American museums allow painting in the galleries, SAM says it can't.
"We can't be all things to all people," Lauren Mellon, SAM's chief registrar, told me later. "Having a copyist program is very labor-intensive, and we don't have the resources to do it."
With last year's announcement by Mimi Gates that a massive influx of donations of art would catapult SAM to the status of "major museum," and given the fact that SAM still has an additional physical expansion built into its future plans in the new building it shares with Washington Mutual, will there ever be a time when SAM could accommodate copyists?
"It is not practical for this institution," Mellon said flatly.
Resistance like this makes Gary Faigin crazy. Faigin is an old-fashioned painter and artistic director of the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle. He's always trying, to no avail, to get his students in to paint at SAM—and at the Frye Art Museum, a Seattle repository for late 19th-century and early 20th-century German and Austrian painting.
"It's just an attitude thing," Faigin said. "The older museums are just more hip to the fact that this is part of the deal—it's part of your service to make this possible. The idea that it puts the art at risk, or that it blocks other visitors, or the chemical smell—well, all of that that seems reasonable if you started out feeling like you didn't need to do it. If you consider it a part of your mission, you work it out, just like all these other museums."
Both Mellon and Frye registrar Annabelle Larner said the European tradition is only practiced in a few major museums in the United States, those with extensive resources. (The Stranger's intern was bounced even more emphatically from the Frye.) But that's not really true. A quick search revealed copyist programs—programs that allow individuals into the galleries in order to copy in wet mediums—at the following museums: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, along with the ones you'd expect—the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. The Art Institute of Chicago allows students of its school to copy. The High Museum of Art permits the practice for special occasions (usually for school groups)—special occasions like Inspiring Impressionism, where the show started its tour last winter. A class of students copied a Murillo from an earlier exhibition of Louvre paintings. Their copies were exhibited concurrently with Inspiring Impressionism.
When it comes to resources, a copyist program can be done on a shoestring—as at Denver, where a small portion of an education department staff member's time includes overseeing the vetting of applicants. The most extensive program, at the National Gallery, where 10 easels are maintained and loaned out, still amounts to only about a quarter of a full-time job, according to the current manager, Carol Nesemann.
On a trip to Vienna this summer, Pamela Belyea, Faigin's codirector at Gage and his wife, happened to see a copyist drop her paints to the floor in the vaunted Brueghel room at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. "Nobody batted an eye, they just wiped it up," she said. "It is ridiculous how challenging it is to find an avenue for art students to copy at the Seattle Art Museum or the Frye Art Museum. As a museum, if you actually believe you're creating a community of artists, then you have to crack the door open a little."
Considering that there probably isn't a single room in an American museum as precious as that room packed with Brueghels—or very few—why are some American museums so uptight?
"That's a good question," said Portland Art Museum director of collections Donald Urquhart. He quickly added that he didn't think "uptight" was necessarily the right word—Portland Art Museum forbids copying in paint, too. So do the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Getty. All three institutions say they're protecting their art and their patrons.
There are risks and irritations involved in copying. Paints could splatter, rickety easels could fall into works of art, and other visitors' views could be blocked. But that's why museums control the terms of their copy programs. Along with each permit comes a long list of rules and regulations. The only universal rule is that copyists cannot use canvases the same size as their subjects—that would be forgery.
Other rules vary, but most include stipulations about remaining a certain distance from the art, using approved easels, working only during certain hours when museum traffic is light, and relocating if another visitor asks. No extra guards are deployed to watch a copyist, but regular guards know and enforce the restrictions. Copyists are only allowed to work on one painting at a time, and the object of a copyist's work is agreed upon in advance. Museums only control copyrights to works they own, so copyist programs apply to objects in the museums' own permanent collections. If SAM allowed copying, for instance, you still wouldn't be able to copy the visiting impressionists, but you could make versions of SAM's big Sargent, its Bierstadt, its Cranach, or its newly acquired John Singleton Copley.
The National Gallery has regular copyists, from the woman who polishes off copies of impressionist paintings to give to her children, to the serious hobbyist who spends a couple of years on a single Dutch painting. Mellon, SAM's registrar, knows these people because she managed the copyist program at the National Gallery before she came to SAM. Still, she says, the galleries are too small and the art turns over too regularly even in the collection galleries for a community like that to develop at SAM.
Copying, apparently, is a polarizing subject. It does tend to come down to those who see it as part of a museum's job and those who don't. Mary Suzor, director of collections management at the Cleveland Museum of Art, says it's a small but vital part of Cleveland's commitment to education. She has been at museums with copyist programs for 25 years and has never heard of a damaged artwork. "It's a program that takes a certain amount of time and energy to see through, but the people who want to be copyists are motivated for all the right reasons, and they really want to do whatever needs to be done to follow the rules," Suzor said.
It's notable that the larger museums that disallow copying are on the West Coast, where museums are younger and less tied to European traditions. They also have fewer significant works of old art. Copying may seem like a stodgy, outdated, white-guy thing to do, but forbidding it also smacks of imperialism—of a second-rate king hoarding the few treasures he has. And who's to say that being anachronistic is the same as being conservative? Seattle's most adventurous museum, the contemporary Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, does consider requests from copyists. After all, an artist in the galleries is a profound symbol: It demonstrates that a museum is part of the messy life cycle of art, not a graveyard.
jgraves@thestranger.com
Nice article, text below and link to it is also above when you click on the title.
No, Not Here, That's Not Possible
Why Can't Artists Be Artists at SAM and the Frye?
by Jen Graves
The first painting you encounter in the blockbuster traveling show Inspiring Impressionism at Seattle Art Museum this summer is not an impressionist painting. And it's not an older, "master" work—by an artist like Velázquez, Titian, or Hals—either. An exception was made to start the show with this otherwise unremarkable 1912 canvas by the little-known artist Louis Beroud because Beroud's painting, An Evening in the Louvre, directly illustrates the theme of the exhibition: artists learning from other artists, often by painting copies while standing right in front of them in galleries. In An Evening in the Louvre, a whiskered, white-haired Louvre janitor is beginning his work for the night, cleaning up after copyists in the gallery, whose easels and unfinished oil copies await the artists' return in the morning. This is part of how great artists learn, even artists who abandon tradition, the show reminds us. There's example after example of the impressionists' copies of master works in Inspiring Impressionism.
Well, SAM may support the premise of this show—but only in theory. SAM is the only stop on the exhibition's national tour, which also stops in Denver and Atlanta, that universally forbids painting in its galleries. The Stranger sent an intern, John Borges, to the museum posing as a great-artist-in-training, with paints, a palette, a drop cloth, and a traditional French easel, and he was escorted straight up to the administration offices and told what he wanted to do was impossible. "It seemed like the guard was rooting for me," Borges said afterward. But no dice.
Even as great historical European museums and many leading and smaller American museums allow painting in the galleries, SAM says it can't.
"We can't be all things to all people," Lauren Mellon, SAM's chief registrar, told me later. "Having a copyist program is very labor-intensive, and we don't have the resources to do it."
With last year's announcement by Mimi Gates that a massive influx of donations of art would catapult SAM to the status of "major museum," and given the fact that SAM still has an additional physical expansion built into its future plans in the new building it shares with Washington Mutual, will there ever be a time when SAM could accommodate copyists?
"It is not practical for this institution," Mellon said flatly.
Resistance like this makes Gary Faigin crazy. Faigin is an old-fashioned painter and artistic director of the Gage Academy of Art in Seattle. He's always trying, to no avail, to get his students in to paint at SAM—and at the Frye Art Museum, a Seattle repository for late 19th-century and early 20th-century German and Austrian painting.
"It's just an attitude thing," Faigin said. "The older museums are just more hip to the fact that this is part of the deal—it's part of your service to make this possible. The idea that it puts the art at risk, or that it blocks other visitors, or the chemical smell—well, all of that that seems reasonable if you started out feeling like you didn't need to do it. If you consider it a part of your mission, you work it out, just like all these other museums."
Both Mellon and Frye registrar Annabelle Larner said the European tradition is only practiced in a few major museums in the United States, those with extensive resources. (The Stranger's intern was bounced even more emphatically from the Frye.) But that's not really true. A quick search revealed copyist programs—programs that allow individuals into the galleries in order to copy in wet mediums—at the following museums: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, along with the ones you'd expect—the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. The Art Institute of Chicago allows students of its school to copy. The High Museum of Art permits the practice for special occasions (usually for school groups)—special occasions like Inspiring Impressionism, where the show started its tour last winter. A class of students copied a Murillo from an earlier exhibition of Louvre paintings. Their copies were exhibited concurrently with Inspiring Impressionism.
When it comes to resources, a copyist program can be done on a shoestring—as at Denver, where a small portion of an education department staff member's time includes overseeing the vetting of applicants. The most extensive program, at the National Gallery, where 10 easels are maintained and loaned out, still amounts to only about a quarter of a full-time job, according to the current manager, Carol Nesemann.
On a trip to Vienna this summer, Pamela Belyea, Faigin's codirector at Gage and his wife, happened to see a copyist drop her paints to the floor in the vaunted Brueghel room at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. "Nobody batted an eye, they just wiped it up," she said. "It is ridiculous how challenging it is to find an avenue for art students to copy at the Seattle Art Museum or the Frye Art Museum. As a museum, if you actually believe you're creating a community of artists, then you have to crack the door open a little."
Considering that there probably isn't a single room in an American museum as precious as that room packed with Brueghels—or very few—why are some American museums so uptight?
"That's a good question," said Portland Art Museum director of collections Donald Urquhart. He quickly added that he didn't think "uptight" was necessarily the right word—Portland Art Museum forbids copying in paint, too. So do the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Getty. All three institutions say they're protecting their art and their patrons.
There are risks and irritations involved in copying. Paints could splatter, rickety easels could fall into works of art, and other visitors' views could be blocked. But that's why museums control the terms of their copy programs. Along with each permit comes a long list of rules and regulations. The only universal rule is that copyists cannot use canvases the same size as their subjects—that would be forgery.
Other rules vary, but most include stipulations about remaining a certain distance from the art, using approved easels, working only during certain hours when museum traffic is light, and relocating if another visitor asks. No extra guards are deployed to watch a copyist, but regular guards know and enforce the restrictions. Copyists are only allowed to work on one painting at a time, and the object of a copyist's work is agreed upon in advance. Museums only control copyrights to works they own, so copyist programs apply to objects in the museums' own permanent collections. If SAM allowed copying, for instance, you still wouldn't be able to copy the visiting impressionists, but you could make versions of SAM's big Sargent, its Bierstadt, its Cranach, or its newly acquired John Singleton Copley.
The National Gallery has regular copyists, from the woman who polishes off copies of impressionist paintings to give to her children, to the serious hobbyist who spends a couple of years on a single Dutch painting. Mellon, SAM's registrar, knows these people because she managed the copyist program at the National Gallery before she came to SAM. Still, she says, the galleries are too small and the art turns over too regularly even in the collection galleries for a community like that to develop at SAM.
Copying, apparently, is a polarizing subject. It does tend to come down to those who see it as part of a museum's job and those who don't. Mary Suzor, director of collections management at the Cleveland Museum of Art, says it's a small but vital part of Cleveland's commitment to education. She has been at museums with copyist programs for 25 years and has never heard of a damaged artwork. "It's a program that takes a certain amount of time and energy to see through, but the people who want to be copyists are motivated for all the right reasons, and they really want to do whatever needs to be done to follow the rules," Suzor said.
It's notable that the larger museums that disallow copying are on the West Coast, where museums are younger and less tied to European traditions. They also have fewer significant works of old art. Copying may seem like a stodgy, outdated, white-guy thing to do, but forbidding it also smacks of imperialism—of a second-rate king hoarding the few treasures he has. And who's to say that being anachronistic is the same as being conservative? Seattle's most adventurous museum, the contemporary Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, does consider requests from copyists. After all, an artist in the galleries is a profound symbol: It demonstrates that a museum is part of the messy life cycle of art, not a graveyard.
jgraves@thestranger.com
Friday, August 08, 2008
Hector
Hector passed away peacefully at 9.55 am Monday, August 4th, 2008 at the vets office.
You were the best little dog and I will miss you and think of you often. No more pain sweet one.
We are doing okay, it is sad to watch little Peeper look for him every day.
Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge
When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food and water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable. All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by.
The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing: they miss someone very special to them; who had to be left behind. They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. The bright eyes are intent; the eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to break away from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster. YOU have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.
Sunday, August 03, 2008
Got $2,200? In this world, you're rich
From MSN, click on the title above for a link to article.
A global study reveals an overwhelming wealth gap, with the world's three richest people having more money than the poorest 48 nations combined.
The richest 2% of the world's population owns more than half of the world's household wealth.
You may believe you've heard this statistic before, but you haven't: For the first time, personal wealth -- not income -- has been measured around the world. The findings may be surprising, for what makes people "wealthy" across the world spectrum is a relatively low bar.
The research indicates that assets of just $2,200 per adult place a household in the top half of the world's wealthiest. To be among the richest 10% of adults in the world, just $61,000 in assets is needed. If you have more than $500,000, you're part of the richest 1%, the United Nations study says. Indeed, 37 million people now belong in that category.
Half live on less than $2 a day
Sure, you can now be proud that you're rich. But take a moment to think about it, and you'll probably come to realize that the meaning behind these numbers is harrowing. For if it takes just a couple of thousand dollars to qualify as rich in this world, imagine what it means to be poor.
Half the world, nearly 3 billion people, live on less than $2 a day. The three richest people in the world –- Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, investor Warren Buffett and Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú -- have more money than the poorest 48 nations combined.
Even relatively developed nations have low thresholds of per person capital. For example, people in India have per capita assets of $1,100. In Indonesia, capital amounts to $1,400 per person.
The study's authors defined net worth as the value of people's physical and financial assets, less debts.
"In this respect, wealth represents the ownership of capital," the authors say. "Although capital is only one part of personal resources, it is widely believed to have a disproportionate impact on household well-being and economic success, and more broadly on economic development and growth."
That said, it's interesting to look at how those at different economic levels manage their capital.
Property, particularly land and farm assets, are more important in less developed countries because of the greater importance of agriculture and because financial institutions are immature.
The study also reveals the differences in the types of financial assets owned. Savings accounts are strongly featured in transition economies and some rich Asian countries, while stock and other types of financial products are more commonplace in Western nations.
The authors say there is a stronger preference for saving and liquidity in Asian countries because of lack of confidence in financial markets. That isn't so much the case in the United States and the United Kingdom, which have private pensions and more-developed financial markets, they say.
High incomes, negative net worth
Surprisingly, household debt is relatively unimportant in poor countries because, the study says, "while many poor people in poor countries are in debt, their debts are relatively small in total. This is mainly due to the absence of financial institutions that allow households to incur large mortgage and consumer debts, as is increasingly the situation in rich countries"
Meanwhile, "many people in high-income countries have negative net worth and -- somewhat paradoxically -- are among the poorest people in the world in terms of household wealth."
But let's not feel too bad about ourselves, even if we do have a negative savings rate. The average wealth in the United States is $144,000 per person. In Japan, it's $181,000. Overall, wealth is mostly concentrated in North America, Europe and high-income Asia-Pacific countries. People in these countries collectively hold almost 90% of total world wealth.
The world's total wealth is valuated at $125 trillion. Although North America has only 6% of the world's adult population, it accounts for 34% of household wealth.
So be grateful for where you live in the world; it directly correlates to how much you have. But don't bask in superiority: The fastest-growing population of wealthy people is in China.
Look out when this population transitions from saving to spending. It's going to dramatically change the composition of the world economy, and it may just help prevent the world from becoming more of an plutocracy than it already is.
A global study reveals an overwhelming wealth gap, with the world's three richest people having more money than the poorest 48 nations combined.
The richest 2% of the world's population owns more than half of the world's household wealth.
You may believe you've heard this statistic before, but you haven't: For the first time, personal wealth -- not income -- has been measured around the world. The findings may be surprising, for what makes people "wealthy" across the world spectrum is a relatively low bar.
The research indicates that assets of just $2,200 per adult place a household in the top half of the world's wealthiest. To be among the richest 10% of adults in the world, just $61,000 in assets is needed. If you have more than $500,000, you're part of the richest 1%, the United Nations study says. Indeed, 37 million people now belong in that category.
Half live on less than $2 a day
Sure, you can now be proud that you're rich. But take a moment to think about it, and you'll probably come to realize that the meaning behind these numbers is harrowing. For if it takes just a couple of thousand dollars to qualify as rich in this world, imagine what it means to be poor.
Half the world, nearly 3 billion people, live on less than $2 a day. The three richest people in the world –- Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, investor Warren Buffett and Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú -- have more money than the poorest 48 nations combined.
Even relatively developed nations have low thresholds of per person capital. For example, people in India have per capita assets of $1,100. In Indonesia, capital amounts to $1,400 per person.
The study's authors defined net worth as the value of people's physical and financial assets, less debts.
"In this respect, wealth represents the ownership of capital," the authors say. "Although capital is only one part of personal resources, it is widely believed to have a disproportionate impact on household well-being and economic success, and more broadly on economic development and growth."
That said, it's interesting to look at how those at different economic levels manage their capital.
Property, particularly land and farm assets, are more important in less developed countries because of the greater importance of agriculture and because financial institutions are immature.
The study also reveals the differences in the types of financial assets owned. Savings accounts are strongly featured in transition economies and some rich Asian countries, while stock and other types of financial products are more commonplace in Western nations.
The authors say there is a stronger preference for saving and liquidity in Asian countries because of lack of confidence in financial markets. That isn't so much the case in the United States and the United Kingdom, which have private pensions and more-developed financial markets, they say.
High incomes, negative net worth
Surprisingly, household debt is relatively unimportant in poor countries because, the study says, "while many poor people in poor countries are in debt, their debts are relatively small in total. This is mainly due to the absence of financial institutions that allow households to incur large mortgage and consumer debts, as is increasingly the situation in rich countries"
Meanwhile, "many people in high-income countries have negative net worth and -- somewhat paradoxically -- are among the poorest people in the world in terms of household wealth."
But let's not feel too bad about ourselves, even if we do have a negative savings rate. The average wealth in the United States is $144,000 per person. In Japan, it's $181,000. Overall, wealth is mostly concentrated in North America, Europe and high-income Asia-Pacific countries. People in these countries collectively hold almost 90% of total world wealth.
The world's total wealth is valuated at $125 trillion. Although North America has only 6% of the world's adult population, it accounts for 34% of household wealth.
So be grateful for where you live in the world; it directly correlates to how much you have. But don't bask in superiority: The fastest-growing population of wealthy people is in China.
Look out when this population transitions from saving to spending. It's going to dramatically change the composition of the world economy, and it may just help prevent the world from becoming more of an plutocracy than it already is.
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