Learnings from Dolly Parton, Annie Ernaux, and Collier Schorr
By Wim Langedijk for HURS
Learnings from Dolly Parton, Annie Ernaux, and Collier Schorr
HUR Reads is our definitive shortlist of the most prominent articles from around the web.
By HURS Team
1
Dolly Parton for the People
Kathryn Schulz remembers Dolly Parton as something more expansive than the Queen of Country Music: a democratic cultural force, beloved across age, class, and taste. The essay traces her extraordinary career, philanthropy, musical range, and carefully constructed persona, arguing that Parton made artifice feel like authenticity. From rhinestones to vaccines, heartbreak songs to free children’s books, Dolly belonged to everyone, and Schulz suggests, died having somehow remained eternally young.
THE NEW YORKER
Jemele Hill argues that the WNBA’s unprecedented growth has brought an equally unprecedented wave of controversy. As Caitlin Clark’s fame and Sophie Cunningham’s comments become flashpoints in broader debates over race, gender, and trans rights, players increasingly face political scrutiny and harassment. Hill contends that the league cannot simply retreat into neutrality: it must protect its players, communicate more clearly, and remain grounded in the identity and values that helped define it.
THE ATLANTIC
In A Woman’s Story, Annie Ernaux turns to the life of her mother following her death from Alzheimer’s, reconstructing a woman shaped by class, work, reading, and ambition. Mirroring her portrait of her father in A Man’s Place, Ernaux examines the fraught, enduring bond between mother and daughter, alongside the social distance created by her own ascent. The result is a precise and unsentimental attempt to honour a life without reducing it.
FITZCARRALDO EDITIONS
HTSI profiles Hanneli Rupert, the South African art-world entrepreneur transforming Homo Faber into a global platform for contemporary craftsmanship. Since taking over the Michelangelo Foundation’s cultural initiative in 2022, Rupert has expanded its reach through exhibitions, an online directory and apprenticeships, while sharpening its curatorial ambitions. This September’s Venice biennial, featuring more than 700 works from 70 countries, positions craft as both a cultural force and a corrective to digital sameness.
HOW TO SPEND IT
Collier Schorr reflects on the shifting boundaries between art, fashion, performance and photography in conversation with Kitty Grady. Discussing her Paris exhibition, her Akerman-inspired ballet and portraits of stars including Pamela Anderson and Kristen Stewart, Schorr returns repeatedly to questions of representation, authorship and the gaze. She ends with an unexpected meditation on a double-exposure Polaroid of Michelle Obama—and why some photographs are more meaningful when they remain unseen.