“So the cable industry, if it can consolidate, gets access to the most important pipe coming into people’s homes (after power and water) and the fewer cable companies there are, the more unified the rate structure might appear.”
Archives for February 13, 2014
Researchers Attempt To Quantify “Cool” (It Ain’t What It Used to Be)
The overarching concept to which the word “cool” once referred is no longer what the colloquial usage of the word “cool” now refers.
Here’s The First West End Theatre Production To Raise £1 Million By Crowdsourcing
“Jamie Hendry Productions, which is producing the show, set out to raise £650,000 using an online platform the company created specially for the project, with investment available at £1,000, £2,500 or £5,000.”
Nuclear Testing Proves A Leger Painting At Venice Guggenheim Is A Fake
The painting’s authenticity was first suspected by the art historian Douglas Cooper in the 1970s and the work, supposedly from Léger’s “Contraste de formes” series of 1913-14, was never exhibited or catalogued as a result.
Why Do We Still Need Galleries In The Age Of Mega-Art Fairs And The Internet?
“The real reason galleries need to exist isn’t to help their owners’ bottom lines or to coax work out of artists; it’s not about those artists’ profile and pride; it’s not even about collectors and clients. It’s about the general public—or at least a dedicated public of art lovers—who in the long run, maybe the very long run, will be the most powerful players in the art game.”
A New Call To Re-fund California’s State Arts Support (For $25 Million)
“If adopted, the measure would end a streak of 11 consecutive years in which California governors and legislators have allocated just $1 million to the arts council from the state’s tax-fed general fund — a level that consistently has left the Golden State last in the nation in per capita funding of its state arts grant making agency.”
The Creativity Question (Are We Asking The Right Things?)
We believe that creativity researchers have been asking the wrong question. We ask, “Is creativity important?” The answer is clearly yes. The real question is, “Is creativity MORE important than all of the other attributes that demand our time, attention, and resources?”
What Might George Gershwin Have Accomplished If He Hadn’t Died At 38?
There seems no outer limit to what he might have accomplished; the trajectory he dreamed of was always, only up.
Binge TV Watching As “Restorative Experience”
“The term ‘restorative experiences’ was coined by University of Michigan psychologist Stephen Kaplan. He wanted to understand why walks in the park, or even looking at a picture of a landscape, can recharge your mental batteries.”
Crowdfunding Is Great. But Can It Replace Artists’ Day Jobs?
“In our excitement over the creative projects made possible by crowdfunding, we shouldn’t forget that a flourishing creative middle class requires good jobs for arts workers and healthy arts institutions.”
How Fast Can You Read? Here’s A Test
“If you maintained this reading speed, you could read War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy in 11 hours and 1 minute,” I am told. Well, I think if I maintained that speed, my brain would combust, and I was cheating a bit…
Why The Literary “Hatchet Job” Prize Doesn’t Work In Today’s Culture
“The Hatchet Job – as all self-styled rebellions and expressions of naughtiness do – relies on the idea of a flourishing literary culture, peopled with literary colossi wielding influence with every metaphor they scrutinise, pontificating weekly in seemingly endless literary sections, dominating the stage on television arts shows, venerated across the land. Oh. Right.”
The Metropolitan Opera’s Big Problem
The Met “filled just 79% of the seats in that huge, red-velvet covered house, and made only 69% of their projected box-office revenue. For all the millions who watched the cinema broadcasts, those are astonishingly low figures for the world’s most expensive opera house.”
Arts World Welcomes Nomination Of Jane Chu To Lead NEA
Chu “has a reputation for fundraising prowess and executing major projects in times of fiscal uncertainty.”
Blogger Decodes Hidden Music In Hieronymus Bosch Triptych
Posting on her Tumblr, a self-described “huge nerd” called Amelia explained that she and a friend had been examining a copy of Bosch’s famous triptych, which was painted around the year 1500. “[We] discovered, much to our amusement,” she wrote. “[a] 600-years-old butt song from Hell.”
How Goodreads Became A Successful Social Networking Site
“We launched the site thinking it would be a good way to find books through your friends. We didn’t fully anticipate the strength of the communities that cropped up, where people were friending not just people they knew in real life but people they had been meeting on the site.”
Why Writers Are Epic Procrastinators
“Most writers manage to get by because, as the deadline creeps closer, their fear of turning in nothing eventually surpasses their fear of turning in something terrible. But I’ve watched a surprising number of young journalists wreck, or nearly wreck, their careers by simply failing to hand in articles.”
Iran Executes Poet for ‘Waging War on God’
Hashem Shaabani, a writer who composed verse (mostly apolitical) in both Persian and Arabic, was convicted by a tribunal last July of “waging war on God” and “spreading corruption on Earth.” He is a member of Iran’s Arab minority and founder of an institute promoting Arab culture; two years ago he confessed on state television to “separatist terrorism.”
Germany to Create Independent Center To Find Nazi-Looted Art
“Germany will set up an independent center to comb museum collections for art looted by the Nazis, the country’s culture minister said, shortly before representatives for the son of an art dealer tied to Hitler disclosed another hidden cache of paintings.”
MoMA Won’t Save the Folk Art Museum, But It’ll Keep the Façade (Someplace)
“‘We will take the façade down, piece by piece, and we will store it,’ Glenn D. Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, said in an interview last week. ‘We have made no decision about what happens subsequently, other than the fact that we’ll have it and it will be preserved.'”
Ballet Grand Dames to Today’s Dancers: Quit Yer Bellyachin’ (We Danced Through the Blitz)
“Two grandes dames of [British] classical ballet” – Gillian Lynne and Beryl Grey – “have ridiculed repeated claims that today’s dancers are driven to exhaustion and starvation and say pushing them to the limit is the nature of the art.”
Dance Critic to Grand Dames: Quit Yer Kvetchin’ (Today’s Dancers Are Better Than You Were)
Judith Mackrell: “There’s no doubting the heroic stamina and toughness of generations like theirs but it is important to point out that ballet has itself got tougher. In the 21st century, dancers – like athletes and sportspeople – are pushed to higher levels of achievement, speed and strength. They also dance a much more varied repertory than Lynne and Grey ever did.”
Levine Times Six at the Metropolitan Opera Next Season, Plus a Hot-Button Score
The company’s music director, still in his first season back after a two-year sick leave, will double his conducting load next season as his health continues to rebound. Also, the Met will stage a major contemporary opera that caused some ferocious public battles not all that long ago.
‘There’s a Sort of Roundhead Bullshit Around Culture’, Says New Almeida Director Rupert Goold
“I’m a populist, basically. I think a lot of culture is boring, and I like people to have a good time at my shows. There’s a sort of Roundhead bullshit around culture: the more serious and difficult it is, the more it hurts you and your audience, the more worthwhile it is. It’s a form of bullying.” (Note to Americans: “Roundhead” = “Puritan”)
When London Theatre Stopped Being Posh
Tony Robinson recalls when the ’60s counterculture, ’70s identity politics and the closing of the Lord Chamberlain’s censorship office led to the birth of alternative theatre.