FOCUSING ON HUMAN DIVERSITY

The conclusion I draw from these compelling ethnographic studies is that we need to move our focus from cultural, religious, or ethnic diversity to a focus on HUMAN diversity and to see that human thought and action are never entirely reducible to the terms with which we classify, categorize, and conceptualize it

 

Jackson, M  (Columbia University Press) (2016) The Work of Art
Chinese
I no longer see a clear distinction between “Western” and “Chinese” scholarship on Chinese art. DIFFERENCES IN LANGUAGE, readership, and academic environment certainly exist, BUT GLOBAL COLLABORATION AND MUTUAL LEARNING HAS BECOME THE DOMINANT TREND.
(more…)
The single-story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, TED Talk
«The title of the Art Exhibition in Biennale di Venezia 2019, MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES, could be interpreted as a sort of curse where the expression “interesting times” evokes the idea of challenging or even “menacing” times, but it could also simply be an invitation to always see and consider the course of human events in their complexity, an invitation, thus, that appears to be particularly important in times when, too often, oversimplification seems to prevail, generated by conformism or fear. And I believe that an exhibition of art is worth our attention, first and foremost, if it intends to present us with art and artists as a decisive challenge to all oversimplifying attitudes
Paolo Baratta, President of the Biennale di Venezia

Conversations

Cultural growth depends on substantive conversations  (more…)

IMG_0618

The differentiation of sex, age, and occupation are not essential to our character, but mere costumes which we wear for a time on the stage of the world.
(more…)