Corcoran Dissolution: Whither the Art-Sale Proceeds?
AJBlog: CultureGrrl | Published 2014-03-04
What would a Minnesotan orchestra look like? A reverie on place
AJBlog: Speaker | Published 2014-03-04
NEA: “Level Funding” for FY 2015
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-03-04
Chamber Music For the People
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-03-04
Diversity? Just do it
AJBlog: Performance Monkey | Published 2014-03-04
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“Choosing when to stop altering a piece can be a highly individual decision, as idiosyncratic and personal as style, and there are instances in which a work is never fully done, at least in its creator’s mind.”
While details of most biennial works of art were still under wraps as we went to press, some buzzwords were already in play: “hybridity”, “fluidity”, “criticality”, “collectivity” and “interdisciplinary”.
“A few months ago, Bloomberg laid off its theater critic and dismantled its culture desk to focus simply on “luxury.” USC’s Annenberg School is shutting down its Getty Arts Journalism fellowship program. Harvard’s Nieman Fellowship in Arts & Culture Reporting no longer exists.”
Currently, the average ticket price for Wilma Theatre shows is between $31 and $35. “But houses are running at about 70 percent of paid capacity. The thinking is that while the theater will reap a lower per-ticket price, more tickets will be sold. The goal is to fill houses to 90 percent, with total earned ticket income therefore expected to remain at current levels.”
Jeff Bezos, who grew up reciting lines from Star Trek, at one point considered calling the company MakeItSo.com, after the iconic command of his hero Captain Jean Luc Picard.
“With rote work, you get a feeling of accomplishment, but you haven’t exerted a lot of mental activity. It gives you a feeling of fulfillment, but there’s not frustration or stress.”
Spritz Inc. is attempting to redesign reading–and renaming it “spritzing”–by streaming one word at a time at speeds varying between 250 and 1,000 words per minute. Words are centered around an “Optimal Recognition Point” in a special display called the “Redicle.”
“New York State public schools administrators aren’t taking art seriously, according to a new report filed by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli last Tuesday. The audit sampled 310 students who attended 166 public high schools from 2007 to 2011 and found that between 46% and 64% of them graduated without ever meeting the the minimum arts education requirements.”
“They are not under present existential threat. Further: their shrinkage, were it to accelerate, is likely to be less culturally significant than many of us believe. For instance, academic literary criticism could fade while literature itself (and its effects on the world) prospered.”
The 86th Academy Awards were seen by 43 million Americans Sunday, drawing the biggest audience of any entertainment program since the finale of hit sitcom “Friends” in May 2004, according to estimates by ratings service Nielsen.
“Creative arts therapy, also known as expressive therapy, includes dance, drama, art and music, according to Ehrman-Shapiro. She said not just any artist can be a therapist. For dance therapy, it requires a master’s degree and more than 3,000 hours of supervision from a dance therapist, just like a social worker.”
“In 1938, one of Granados’ sons sold the original opera to a prominent New York musician and publisher for $300 to raise money for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War. Other family members wanted it returned. The question of ownership remained the subject of litigation for decades until 1970 when the opera was reported destroyed in a warehouse fire in New York.”
“As well as being known for his radical reinvention of the operatic form, fusing electronic music into his operas and theatre works, Ashley also co-founded the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music in 1958 alongside Gordon Mumma, before creating the performing arts event ONCE Festival in the 60s. He won the John Cage Award for Music from the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts in 2002.”
“At U.S. Starbucks stores, nearly one-third of the transactions are now handled with the company’s pre-paid cards — which act as tiny de facto savings accounts. How long before Starbucks takes this to the next level?”
He says flat-out that it’s because of the distance: “Despite how rewarding the experience has been it has proved difficult on a personal level to be so far away from family and friends.”
Andrew O’Hehir: “The 2014 Oscars may be mercifully remembered for who won what, rather than for Ellen DeGeneres’ labored pizza-delivery gag or the star-studded selfie that allegedly ‘broke Twitter’ and may finally have convinced an entire generation of young Americans that social media is hopelessly lame.”
“Jenin, a camp in the north of the West Bank with more than 16,000 registered Palestinian refugees, is at the heart of a cultural resistance movement. … And tucked away within the camp is Freedom theatre, founded in 2006 by Juliano Mer Khamis, who believed in using cultural resistance to fight against occupation. He was killed in 2011 by a masked gunman outside his theatre.”
“Our moment-to-moment psychological reactions to the threat of illness, [some researchers] suggest, … may explain many of the basic differences we observe between cultures. How does your culture behave toward strangers? What kind of government do you live under? Who are your sexual partners? What values do you share? All of these questions may mask a more fundamental one: What germs are you warding off?”
“Try offering your child ‘a piece of fruit’, and then when he accepts, handing him a chili pepper.”
“United States officials said that they began tracking the life-size, 1,700-pound statue last year after they were alerted that it had been exhibited for sale at the Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan by Phoenix Ancient Art.” (Why is so much art crime lately in Queens?)
“Heavy rains over the weekend provoked several collapses at the archaeological site of Pompeii, highlighting once again the fragility of one of the world’s most famous open-air museums.”
“The Supreme Court said that it would hear a class action lawsuit filed in 2010 by former employees of Amazon contractor Integrity Security Systems who claim that, under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), they deserve back pay for the time” – 15 to 30 minutes each way – “they spent in security checks at the beginning and end of the day, which the warehouse mandated to prevent employee theft.”
“We composers, we’re scavengers. Beethoven was a scavenger, Bach too – that’s one of the joys of being creative. Stravinsky is rumoured to have said that ‘a good composer borrows, a great composer steals’. That may be apocryphal. But it’s not without truth.”
Well, that what Heather Havrilesky argues: “Reading [Richard] Bach’s novella can feel like pinpointing the exact moment in American history when our disillusionment and outrage at society’s massive, grand-scale failures yielded to a new kind of personal arrogance, a championing of the individual over the group no matter the cost.”
Andrew O’Hagan recounts the fiasco that was his attempted collaboration with Julian Assange, the worst autobiography subject ever.
