Reading List, 6 February 2016 (Waitangi Day)

Make some coffee and settle in with Andy Horwitz's 'Who Should Pay for the Arts in America?' in The Atlantic:

The fact that minority and community-based groups are “plagued by chronic financial difficulties” is undisputed. But what isn’t being acknowledged is that these difficulties are the result of systemic economic inequality. It should come as no surprise that people in minority, disenfranchised, and rural communities don’t usually have access to millionaires and billionaires who they can cultivate as donors. Nor should it shock that these organizations will suffer if the public-funding system that was helping them build capacity, gain cultural legitimacy, and become sustainable is decimated.

Shorter: an interview with Alistair Hudson, director of MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) on his idea of the 'useful' contemporary art museum.

Recursive reading lists: the reading list for the American Museums and Race conference.

A quite amazing project from the New York Times, who are releasing unpublished images with in-depth coverage for Black History Month.

Art Basel director Marc Spiegler's 'Ten questions all gallerists should be asking themselves now' for The Art Newspaper. Sample: although the goal of most successful artists used to be a MoMA retrospective at 50, many artists today focus on a career patterned on that of a football player or supermodel. Many young guns monetise their market moment, not trusting the art world to support them all the way to that MoMA show.