End-of-year readings

Contemplating the lake and mountains of Ioannina, Greece.

Four texts I read in these last weeks and have stayed with me:

Patti Smith, How does it feel

Achille Mbembe, The age of humanism is ending

Adam Curtis on Why self expression is tearing society apart

Sarah Swong and Jennifer Gersten, Notes towards a movement: classical music in Trump's America

Wishing for a humane 2017.

Unwilling actors in centre stage

The New Americans Museum. Panel vandalised.
(image taken from the museum's Facebook page)

Not surprisingly, after the elections, the Tenement Museum in New York, a museum that tells America’s urban immigrant story has seen an “unprecedented number” of negative comments by visitors about immigrants.  It’s not an isolated incident. Other museums, such as the Idaho Black History Museum or The New Americans Museum, recently suffered racially charged vandalism on their premises.

Beware politicians who bring out the worst in us, one might think. But one might also add, beware museums which fail to see the politics in what they do. This was what I thought when reading the first paragraph in Zach Aaron’s (a Tenement Museum board member) response to the negative comments from visitors: