Reading List: Fridays Are For Nerding Out On Museum Curation, Right? RIGHT?!
I hope you all enjoyed the season finale of the January 6 Committee last night - and while that is a tacky and unoriginal joke to make, I admit I was riveted the whole time, despite my avoidance of watching live to this point because… anxiety (gotta love the comforting distance of understanding historical events filtered through the snarky lens of Twitter talking heads). And I know it’s a little, itty bitty, inconsequential thing, but I’m still thinking about Rep. Kinzinger throwing to Rep. Luria by turning it over to “my friend from Virginia.” As I said on the twitter machine last night, in the midst of this awfulness, that tiny moment of bipartisan affection was… nice.
So what’s in the longread queue for the weekend? Get out your Instapaper, darlings, we’ve got some content to consume.
John Turturro, My grandmother’s botched abortion transformed three generations (The Washington Post) - Just devastating, on so many levels.
Phillip Kennicott, Richmond tore down its statues — and revealed a new angle on history (The Washington Post) - Impactful art and history of museum curation will cause you to stop in the middle of a special exhibit and do a double take at the choice of two paintings next to each other, or gasp at the incongruous context provided by a label, or think about that exhibit for weeks on end. Over the past few years, as confederate statues have come down across the country, this criticism of “but it’s history” also seemed weak to me, because of course they are historical, but that doesn’t require them to be displayed heroically and without context in the middle of a town square. So this sentence in this piece captures it well: “It is almost as if the removal of the statues from Monument Avenue opened the flood gates of history, such that curiosity now flows freely through the whole of the city, enlarging not just the scope of what is considered “historical,” but the city itself.” As Richmond grapples with its odes to the Confederacy, it makes me SO happy that these pieces—which are, in and of themselves, reflective of another time, just not the ones most think of—are being presented within our greater historical context.
Kelsey Weekman, What Happens To Christian Influencers When They Get Married? (BuzzFeed News) - NSFW in some ways, but a very interesting look at what happens when young people whose public personas are built on chastity and abstinence get married and discover that a) sex is fun and b) they are in no way prepared for those realities - and neither are their communities.
Chris Stokel-Walker, Meet the guy behind RadioShack’s horny Twitter account (Input Mag) - Also hella NSFW, but also fully places me in the “too old for this shit” category, and I laughed and/or gasped a few times throughout this piece. Like… how is this real?
Clio Chang, The French Bulldog Drama Consuming French-Bulldog New York (Curbed) - Look, sometimes we all need a post-committee hearing palette cleanser in the form of chi chi NYC doggy drama. And can someone tell me if the headline discrepancy in dashed dog names is accidental or intentional? Is there a joke I’m missing? (H/t Friend of the Missive Emily)
Get hydrated, get outside, get to being kind to yourself (ok, that sentence construct is a bit of a stretch, but you ‘get’ it.)
xoxo Amy