If you’re reading this post, then hopefully it means you’ve got an interest in arts and culture, with a dash of feminism and a twist of digital.
Now the Broad wouldn’t want to encourage you to go elsewhere for your news and views (or fill up your inbox any further), but given how many places you can get your fix of arts and culture, it would be remiss of me not to offer up a few suggestions.
Bookshops
Book lovers can find lots of inspiration at their local bookstore, whether it’s independents like Gleebooks, Readings or Better Read Than Dead, or the big chains with their newsletters. You’ll get an instant full-colour shopping list of new titles coming out and usually a head’s up on author talks and book-related discussions happening in-store in the coming months.
Literature Sites
If you’re looking for a daily literary fix, the Broad recommends LitHub to you. Think of it like a glorious secondhand bookshop, with shelves heavy with classics, well-thumbed popular novels, literary novels, picture books and non-fiction books and a friendly, knowledgeable book-loving owner in the middle. There’s a daily newsletter you can sing up that will deliver all sorts of literary and book-related news. Looking for the best TV adaptations of books? Book-related news? Literary criticism? The critics’ take on new releases? Podcasts? LitHub has all this and plenty more. If you’re venturing to the site for the first time, best to set aside a few hours to delve into all it’s goodness.
Of course you don’t need to stick with the arts and culture newsletter from mainstream media outlets. It’s one of the great things about the web – finding a like minded niche for your particular arts and culture fix. (It is also one of the worst. And we’re all well aware of being in the bubble. But we’re not going to discuss politics this week.)
BrainPickings, curated by Maria Popova, is another cornucopia of articles and inspiration covering a wide selection of topics including art, science, philosophy and creativity.
News Sites
All the large news sites from The Guardian to The New York Times, have their own dedicated arts and culture newsletters and some break them down into book, music, art, podcasts and so on, which is fantastic if you want to narrow your coverage of the arts. Naturally, you’ll get a regional focus so expect TV and movie releases to relate to the UK with The Guardian, for instance, or the US with The New York Times.
Arts & Culture Blogs
There are a dizzying number of arts and culture-related blogs (and time is precious) so you need to be sure you’ll read something regularly if you’ve subscribed. Have a look through the suggestions on Anabel Roque Rodriguez’s blog and if you’re brave, there’s a list of 100 arts blogs on this Feedspot list. While this one has a list of Australian arts blogs.
Some of the more unexpected sources of arts and culture news is the Smithsonian magazine website and, not surprisingly, it tends to take a scientific and historical approach to its arts coverage. There are articles on why renowned Edvard Munch painting The Scream is fading, historic Mexican cookbooks new available online and how 3D models are providing a glimpse into ancient Greece.
Google Arts & Culture
It’s no exaggeration to say that Google is into almost everything and so too with its arts and culture portal. There are digitised artworks to discover, articles on art exhibitions such as the Brazil open air art exhibition, Inhotim, videos exploring renowned artists and their works, historical themes like the Black History Month collection and so much, much more. There’s also a Harry Potter series and another series of articles looking at how to protect art in the age of climate change.
Journals, Blogs and More
Taking more of an industry perspective, The Arts Journal pulls in news and articles across the board from visual arts and theatre to dance, media and music from a variety of sources around the globe. There’s a newsletter, with daily or weekly missives.
And just to throw a handful more at you before closing this post, I’ll mention the Russian Art & Culture site, where you can discover Gulag Art, a contemporary Russian heavy metal band, all about the life of a Russian Dior model and how the siege of Leningrad was depicted in art. HuffPost has an arts and culture site that has photo collections, coverage of TV and books and general art-related news. And one final list from BlogSpot of culture blogs covering all manner of topics from places around the globe.
A Note on a Mother Daughter Memoir
Finally, over coming weeks, the Broad plans to bring you a note on a book by a woman writer you may not be aware of. The Broad is part of a wonderful women’s writing Facebook group and did a call out recently for writers and their work in to include in blog posts. And look out for some upcoming interviews in the Creative Women at Work series.
This week I’ll introduce you to Christina Houen, a writer and professional editor, with a PhD in life writing, who works in the Border Ranges in northern New South Wales. Christina’s fictionalised childhood memoir, This Place You Know, about her early childhood in Hay is the story of the mother-daughter bond forged in the hardship of saving the family farm from the ravages of drought and neglect.
