If The U.S. Constitution Isn’t A Sacred Document, What Is It?
“Sealed in moisture-controlled, bullet-proof glass containers that are on display in a special rotunda at the National Archives Museum in Washington DC by day and lowered into a multi-ton bomb-proof vault by night, the Constitution is to the US what the Bible was to medieval Europe or the Qur’an to today’s Islamic State, albeit with certain differences.”
Yes, We Can – And Should – Enjoy The Music Of Richard Strauss
“It seems more and more obvious that the composer’s critics were merely looking for the wrong things.”
The Star Violinist Who Defies Putin’s Russia – And Thinks Western Orchestras Should Too
“She agreed to play in the concert but prepared a gesture of protest that was characteristically elegant. She commissioned an encore for solo violin from a Georgian composer, Igor Loboda, titled ‘Requiem for Ukraine,’ which she performed after her concerto — as Mr. Gergiev stood in the wings.”
What’s It Like To Write A Composition About Frank Gehry’s House?
“The new piece, for four musicians, tries to evoke the Gehry home with means both literal and conceptual. As with much of his music, Norman acknowledges, there’s a chance that some listeners will find ‘Frank’s House’ as unpleasant as those neighbors in 1978 found Frank’s house.”
Google Celebrates Langston Hughes’ Birthday With A Wonderful Google Doodle
Hughes “travelled to West Africa and Europe, before returning to the US taking various jobs before meeting the poet Vachel Lindsay while working as a busboy at a Washington hotel. Lindsay was impressed with Hughes’ work.”
Theatre Too Big To Fail (Perhaps Unfortunately)
“There does seem something odd about ACE’s long-standing tradition of hurling ever more money at buildings and organisations that lurch from crisis to crisis. There are plenty of small, nimble organisations with absolutely no desire to empire-build by adding another auditorium or indeed any auditorium at all, but who get by on very little funding; who with a little bit more, they could be real power houses, despite, or perhaps because of, their diminutive size.”
Keeping Music Alive
“Making sure our music survives is about a lot more than just writing it down. It has to do with teaching our harmonic language and melodic style to those who learn from us. It has to do with nuance, experience, storytelling, and subtlety.”
As Lawsuit Shows, It’s Hard Out There For An Independent Movie Producer
“Indie producers typically raise money from a pool of investors, and look to partner with studios that can market and distribute their projects. But their movies often have trouble finding an audience in a marketplace dominated by big productions. It’s a bit of a gamble, and unlike a corporation, independent producers often don’t have the deep pockets necessary to weather a movie that bombs.”
Moscow Library Containing 14 Million Books And Many Rare Historical Documents Goes Up In Flames
“It was founded in 1918 and holds documents from the League of Nations, UNESCO, and early parliamentary reports dating back as far as 1789.”
When People Say ‘Think Of The Children,’ They’re Not Being (Purposefully) Manipulative
“The notion of ‘harmless wrongs’ or ‘victimless crimes’ is more complicated that you might think. Although logically possible, victimless crimes are psychologically rare. Perceptually speaking, if you see something as wrong, you almost certainly see it as harmful. The absence of victims occurs only in the absence of immorality.”
When The Time Comes To Combine Your Libraries
“In some way that wasn’t apparent to me before they sat on the side table, waiting to be sorted, I could see these were the books that had kept him company in those years before he knew me, the books that had helped him turn into him. This hadn’t quite been apparent to me before I took them down to move them.”
Indies Are Back With Force (And Bidding Wars) At This Year’s Sundance
“One factor in this year’s resurgence of sales may be the magic glow shed on Sundance by the fact that two of its 2014 selections – Whiplash and Boyhood, by festival regular Richard Linklater – are among the best picture contenders at the Academy Awards. But the marketplace has changed, with distributors hungry to buy titles for video-on-demand services.”
It’s 2015, And TV Now Has Exactly One Show About An Asian American Family
“Mr. Huang has been vocal in opposition to some of the differences between the show and his book. But producers and writers were, broadly speaking, true to his story of cross-racial solidarity. ‘The new generation of people, I think, are ready for this show,’ Hudson said.”
Geraldine McEwan Was Miss Marple (And Miss Jean Brodie As Well)
The actress – whose death at age 82 trended on Twitter – had a career that “spanned decades on the small screen and in theatre and films, including box office hits such as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves starring as the witch Mortiana. She won a Bafta for best actress in 1991 for her role in the TV serial of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.”
Can An Australian Director Take Washington, D.C.’s Hirshhorn Global?
Melissa Chiu: “Building on the Hirshhorn’s international presence doesn’t preclude us from having a vital engagement with our more immediate community. I’m very aware that we can create energy around our programming only from building a loyalty and interest in the museum.”
So, How Do We Fix Ballet’s Diversity Problem?
“Every dancer has her head positioned at the same angle, all in perfect rows, symmetrical, identical. Some productions include uniform wigs for all of their dancers. This aesthetic can still be seen on full display with the Russian companies today, and is one of their signature artistic strengths. Is racism therefore subconsciously built into the very structure of classical ballet?”
The Cello From 1694
“It’s from Cremona, the period and the place of the golden age of instrument making. Everything was right about the instrument, the arching, the varnish. It was in, for a cello of that age, impeccable condition. … [But] this cello took quite a while to sort of come into its own soundwise.”
Conductor Dies After Heart Attack Onstage
“The 59-year-old was conducting at a concert given by a Swiss youth orchestra in Lucerne, when he fell dramatically to the ground. An audience member rushed to his aid, but the musician died in an ambulance on the way to hospital.”
Report: Watching TV With Subtitles Is A Bad Experience
User feedback said live subtitles made viewing “frustrating, and, on occasion, unwatchable.” The report highlighted “serious recognition errors” in subtitling software, which led to mistakes such as the phrase “be given to our toddlers” translated as “be given to ayatollahs”.
Why Debates About Today’s Big Issues Have So Little Historical Context
“In contrast to earlier centuries, when the historian’s craft had been the preserve of amateurs such as Gibbon and Macaulay, the 20th century was the era when history professionals emerged – men and women who earned their living from teaching and writing history as employees of universities. Like other professionals, they sought advancement by becoming unquestioned masters of a small terrain, fenced off by their command of specialist archives. The explosion since the 1970s of new subdisciplines – including social history, women’s history and cultural history – encouraged further balkanisation of the subject. Academic historians seemed to be saying more and more about less and less. In consequence, the big debates of our day lack the benefit of historical perspective.”
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Constable Painting Bought For $5,300 Sells For $5.2 Million
“The award for the most compelling market tale undoubtedly goes to the third highest-selling painting, a rediscovered John Constable landscape, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831), that sold for $5.2 million, far exceeding its $3 million high estimate. The consignor had acquired the work at Christie’s London in July 2013, and paid a mere $5,300 for it.”
The Psychology Of Wearing Glasses
When constant-use glasses were first introduced at the start of the 18th century—before, eye assistance was relegated to occasional-use monocles and, presumably, power-squinting—spectacle wearers were mysterious folk. “What were these secret weapons they had on their face? What is this person doing with this device on? Are they trying to capture my soul or something?”
Pop Music As Serious Art (So Tell Me Something Else I Don’t Know?)
“Pop has long been resident in the hallowed halls of academe. Pop music studies have a place in university music faculties on almost equal terms with classical and world music. It has its own journals, distinguished elder statesmen and iconoclastic upstarts. Pop’s arrival at the top table is part of the revolution that swept through universities in the Seventies with the arrival of cultural studies.”
Think Theatre Isn’t Evolving Fast Enough? Nicholas Hytner Begs To Disagree
“I think this new crowd have found ways of producing, ways of finding spaces and turning them into theatres that is unprecedented. They’ve got lots of things to say, they say it in all sorts of different ways, and they find all sorts of ways of saying it.”