Required Reading

• This wins the “best troll of the week” award:

“In defense of the white male” by Roland Merullo for the Boston Globe

• Do you know about the “Utah teapot“? You’ve probably seen it lots of places but had no idea. Well, let Jesse Dunietz explain:

Yet this unassuming object—the “Utah teapot,” as it’s affectionately known—has had an enormous influence on the history of computing, dating back to 1974, when computer scientist Martin Newell was a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah.

The U of U was a powerhouse of computer graphics research then, and Newell had some novel ideas for algorithms that could realistically display 3D shapes—rendering complex effects like shadows, reflective textures, or rotations that reveal obscured surfaces. But, to his chagrin, he struggled to find a digitized object worthy of his methods. Objects that were typically used for simulating reflections, like a chess pawn, a donut, and an urn, were too simple.

One day over tea, Newell told his wife Sandra that he needed more interesting models. Sandra suggested that he digitize the shapes of the tea service they were using, a simple Melitta set from a local department store. It was an auspicious choice: The curves, handle, lid, and spout of the teapot all conspired to make it an ideal object for graphical experiment. Unlike other objects, the teapot could, for instance, cast a shadow on itself in several places. Newell grabbed some graph paper and a pencil, and sketched it.

• Historians uncovered the slave quarters of Sally Hemings at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Often incorrectly described as Jefferson’s mistress, Hemings, who was a slave, was in actuality his property under US law:

And today, Hemings’ room is being restored for eventual public viewing. Monticello’s curators are working diligently to incorporate Hemings’ life as part of Jefferson’s comprehensive story, which counters old newspaper accounts citing Hemings as Jefferson’s “concubine.”

• Moira Donegan considers Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman (1996) and calls it a “black lesbian masterpiece”:

Dunye made The Watermelon Woman on a shoestring budget of $300,000—about one tenth of which came from an NEA grant. The film received limited attention when it was originally released in the U.S., but that didn’t stop it from generating controversy when Michigan Republican Pieter Hoekstra cited it as inappropriate use of government funds. He tried unsuccessfully to get his colleagues in Congress to deduct Dunye’s $31,500 grant from the NEA budget, citing NEA funding for a series of gay and lesbian films that “most Americans would find offensive” and referring to The Watermelon Woman specifically as “patently offensive and possibly pornographic.” He seems to have objected to the film’s sex scene, an oblique, 20-second affair between Cheryl and her white love interest, Diana, that looks adorably tame by today’s standards. You can see the outline of Dunye’s stomach and part of a nipple; the whole thing is set to a soundtrack that sounds like Melissa Etheridge but isn’t.

• A curious read on fonts and the culture wars. It’s a little thin on evidence, but it does make you wonder about the role of typography, particularly in such a visual-obsessed world:

Why don’t we use blackletter anymore? The answer is literally “Hitler.” Nazi leadership used Fraktur, an archetypal variety of blackletter, as their official typeface. They positioned it as a symbol of German national identity and denounced papers that printed with anything else.

As you might imagine, the typeface hasn’t aged well in the post-war period. In just a few years, blackletter went from ordinary to a widespread taboo—the same way the name “Adolf” and the toothbrush mustache have been all but eradicated.

• This is a fantastic thread by art historian John Edwin Mason, who lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, and saw a KKK robe at Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society, which was displaying objects from its collection:

• Chase Quinn considers the US flag today:

Since moving from New York City to a predominantly white suburb of North Charleston, South Carolina, my daily exercise routine had become an unexpected source of anxiety. This was, after all, the same city where Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, had been shot in the back in broad daylight after a routine traffic stop only a few months prior.

• Arguing against the romance of study abroad. It provocatively starts:

Are study abroad programs best understood as a neo-colonial activity? In what ways might a typical neo-colonial critique, while accurate, cause us to overlook other possibilities of how study abroad does or could operate?

• Ryan Cooper lays out how New York Governor Andrew Cuomo broke the New York City subway (which has been in meltdown for years but recently has been experiencing more disruptions than ever):

So what’s behind the crisis? Probably the biggest proximate problem is overcrowding. As this New York Times analysis details, subway ridership has nearly doubled since 1990, as the city has begun to grow again — with much of that growth consisting of young people specifically seeking out the urban car-free lifestyle. But the number of subway cars has barely budged, and the miles of track have actually decreased slightly … 

A secondary problem is the aging technology, which has been in dire need of repairs and upgrades for decades. Much of the system is so outdated that the MTA has to keep up custom manufacturing and repair facilities to make and fix parts that haven’t been mass-produced for 50 years or more …

A third problem is that of the larger American problem of hideously overpriced infrastructure. One recently completed minor subway expansion up New York’s Second Avenue (the tunnels for which were already half-dug back in the 1970s) was something like two to 20 times more expensive than similar European projects.

• This news from a Swedish music festival is troubling:

Bråvalla Festival, which this year was headlined by The Killers, The Chainsmokers and Skepta, has been blighted by news of sexual crime since its inception in 2013, while last weekend saw four rapes and 23 sexual assaults reported over the course of the four-day event. In 2016, five rapes and 12 sexual assaults were reported from the event, with that year’s headliners Mumford & Sons and Zara Larsson later condemning the event and refusing to return.

• This camera malfunction created a surprising image:

Camera malfunctioned as we motored away from the dock. from pics

• Classic British humor:

Required Reading is published every Sunday morning ET, and is comprised of a short list of art-related links to long-form articles, videos, blog posts, or photo essays worth a second look.

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