End Of The Year Thoughts On Museums And Money
Source: Real Clear Arts | Published on 2013-12-31
‘JFK Customs destroyed 11 of my instruments’
Source: Slipped Disc | Published on 2013-12-31
Trinity Wall Street re-defines downtown
Source: Condemned to Music | Published on 2013-12-31
“Rembrandt”? Probably Not: Worcester Art Museum’s Own Version of “American Hustle…
Source: Culturegrrl | Published on 2013-12-31
“No published works will enter our public domain until 2019. The laws in Canada and the EU are different – thousands of works are entering their public domains on January 1. What books and plays would be entering the public domain if we had the pre-1978 copyright laws? You might recognize some of the titles.”
“But have you ever wondered why so little of the future promised in TED talks actually happens? So much potential and enthusiasm, and so little actual change. Are the ideas wrong? Or is the idea about what ideas can do all by themselves wrong?”
“Although the spare and modern design marks a clear improvement over Metro’s wildly uneven status quo, it is also overly restrained, even bloodless. What it’s lacking more than anything is the colorful, informal exuberance that has always animated the most significant L.A. architecture and design.”
“Clearly, gender-based award categories are essential to maintaining even a tenuous presence for talented women in Hollywood.”
“At some point, Banksy crossed the line between success and establishment hack. He should have seen it coming. The art world, with its unforgiving addiction to novelty, always sneers at popular success. The critical backlash was two fold.”
Alice Munro, of course. But the rise of Ballet BC and the return of Ben Heppner too…
“Non-standard English is linguistically the equal of the standard version – in fact, dialects tend to be more sophisticated grammatically than standard (as in the plural “youse” of many non-standard dialects where standard has just one confusing form). Yet standard continues – even now – to be prized as the “correct” form, and any deviation is considered to be wrong, lazy, corrupt or ignorant.”
Why did the industrious and dutiful German musician abandon his duties? Was he tired of the job or even depressed? In light of the sensational find, German music journalists have been quick – perhaps too quick – to talk about “Bach’s burn-out.”
“People find the Netflix approach to talent and culture compelling for a few reasons. The most obvious one is that Netflix has been really successful.”
“The media has long had its struggles with the truth–that’s nothing new. What is new is that we’re barely even apologizing for increasingly considering the truth optional. In fact, the mistakes, and the falsehoods, and the hoaxes are a big part of a business plan driven by the belief that big traffic absolves all sins, that success is a primary virtue.”
Andrew Patner: “The calendar year gives a frame for comparisons and evaluation even in a healthy scene, such as Chicago has now, where narrowing great performances and presentations to 10 is not easy.”
“As it aged — past 30, then 35, then 40 — the production came to seem less charming than vaguely pernicious: a symbol of the deep-seated resistance to change, the allergy to experimentation and newness, that remains at the core of opera’s American mainstream.”
“The alternative press comes at a very specific point in American history, and its demise does, too. People are going to look at it as completely a technological issue, which is totally reductive. By the time the Internet arrives, the alternative press had already given it up. It had lost its mission.”
“In architecture, 2013 was the year great wealth transformed the urban landscape. And nowhere was this more true than in New York City.”
“Everything has expanded by a factor of a million since we turned it on in 1973. The number of machines on the network, the speeds of the network, the kind of memory capacity that’s available, it’s all 10 to the sixth. I would say that there aren’t too many systems that have been designed that can handle a millionfold scaling without completely collapsing. But that doesn’t mean that it will continue to work that way.”
“Reading about the truly insane things audiophiles will do in pursuit of the perfect sound, I can’t help reflecting back on that unfortunate period in my life when I almost fell down the same rabbit hole.”
“Iranian cabs afford passengers a degree of anonymity, paving the way for uninhibited conversations and a new play.”
Tiler Peck, for instance, bangs hers against a cinder-block wall. (It keeps them quiet.)
“In 1973, Raimundo Pereira do Nascimento, known as ‘Nonato,’ walked into the Manaus Opera House with a contract to hang drywall and help with some restoration work. His deal was for three months, but he stayed on – and over the past 40 years he has held almost every job in the house, from box office clerk to usher to backstage technician.”
“An Italian theatre manager rammed his car into the iron gates of an entrance to the French presidential palace Thursday to protest against subsidy cuts for his Paris venue, police said. The action was seen as largely symbolic since Attilio Maggiulli ‘only succeeded in lightly hitting the grills at slow speed,’ a police source said.”
David Patrick Stearns: “Empires rose and empires fell, but if there was one thing the world could depend on, it was the 8 p.m. curtain time for theater, opera, and classical music performances. That, however, was back in the 20th century.”
Dear old Georg Frideric was quite a fascinating character: prosperous, gluttonous, gifted, truculent, generous, sometimes glowing with happiness – much more than the pious gentleman who composed oratorios like Messiah.
“[She] was a film and stage star in Europe in the 1930s, traveled from Hollywood to Broadway in the 1940s and continued to win audiences in cabaret performances well into her 90s.”
“Mother of God, become a feminist!” sang Pussy Riot in the protest that made them world-famous. But “is it just a crazy oxymoron to imagine the Virgin Mary, to whom a very large proportion of traditional Christian ritual and prayer is addressed, as a feminist heroine?”
