‘The Tension Between Taylor Swift’s Legs and the Arctic Melt Is Not Just a Journalistic Problem, It’s a Problem for Our Society’

IDEAS Posted: March 6, 2014 12:59 am

So said Alain de Botton in a talk at the Brooklyn Academy of Music about the way we consume news today.

Remodeling
In the cadenzas Beethoven wrote for his C-Major Piano Concerto, opus 15, higher high-notes are utilized than those in the concerto itself. The cadenzas were... [read more]
AJBlog: PianoMorphosis | Published 2014-07-30
Among the lighthouses
Mrs. T and I recently spent two tranquil days in Gloucester, the Massachusetts harbor town where Edward Hopper spent a fair amount of time in... [read more]
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-30
Snapshot: A visit to Edward Hopper’s studio
An excerpt from a rare film documentary showing Edward Hopper at work in his New York studio in 1965: (This is the latest in a... [read more]
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-30
Almanac: Tennessee Williams on loneliness
“We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.” Tennessee Williams, Orpheus Descending... [read more]
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-30
Community Engagement ≠ Charity
A couple of weeks ago my blogging buddy Trevor O’Donnell posted one of his parting essays, “Community Engagement is a Lousy Way to Sell Tickets.” [Disclosure:... [read more]
AJBlog: Engaging Matters | Published 2014-07-30
The Peter Gelb furor (2)
Deadline approaching, as most of us know — July 31. Armageddon day. If Peter Gelb and the unions can’t come to an agreement, Peter says... [read more]
AJBlog: Sandow | Published 2014-07-30
St. Louis: Ka Nefer-Nefer Case Ends With A Whimper
U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan, who has been hounding the St. Louis Art Museum to return an Egyptian mask it purchased in 1998 for about a... [read more]
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-07-30
Retirement For Emily Rafferty?
In many New York art circles, Emily Rafferty was, as president, as much associated with the Metropolitan Museum as the director, even though she had... [read more]
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-07-29
Come again some other day
Mrs. T and I are staying at an inn that overlooks Maine’s Penobscot Bay. Our purpose in coming here was to relax, eat lobster, and... [read more]
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-29
Lookback: Marlon Brando’s “genius”
From 2004: A few film actors—Bogart, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Marilyn Monroe, possibly Robert Mitchum, certainly John Wayne—have succeeded in constructing personas so magnetic as... [read more]
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-29
Almanac: C.S. Lewis on inverted gluttony
“She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little... [read more]
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-29
John Luther Adams’ outdoor music needs to come indoors
The Crossing tunes up for Sila Applause seemed inadequate and inappropriate, like some weird contrivance of civilized life at the end of John Luther Adams’... [read more]
AJBlog: Condemned to Music | Published 2014-07-29
Parklandia: Stretching, Striving To What End?
Most art museums seem to be stretching for “relevancy” these days, whatever that really means. And so we have, at the Portland Art Museum in... [read more]
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-07-29
Performance measures, indices and rankings
Ok, not a blog post title likely to set your pulse racing, but with so much discussion in the arts world the past few years... [read more]
AJBlog: For What it’s Worth | Published 2014-07-29
Osipova and Vasiliev Debut World Tour at California’s Segerstrom Center
In the promotional image for “Solo for Two,” the first independent concert tour from dance superstars Ivan Vasiliev and Natalia Osipova, the formidable Russian dancers... [read more]
AJBlog: Fresh Pencil | Published 2014-07-28
The Return of the the Clientele
IT’S something I never expected: Another tour by the spooky, chiming English folk-rock band The Clientele, who sort of broke up a few years ago.... [read more]
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-07-28
The sound of friendship
Today Mrs. T and I are vacationing on the coast of Maine. We’re also in the pleasant and singularly appropriate process of jointly rereading Patrick... [read more]
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-28
Just because: Sir Thomas Beecham conducts Mozart
Sir Thomas Beecham leads the Montreal Symphony in a 1956 performance of the finale of Mozart’s “Prague” Symphony: (This is the latest in a series... [read more]
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-28
Almanac: Edward Rothstein on the human context of classical music
“If music is treated as if it had no grounding in the concrete world of persons and politics, if it is treated as purely a... [read more]
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-28
Monday Recommendation: Ahmed Abdul-Malik
Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Spellbound (Status) Of Sudanese heritage, the bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik (1927-1993) was born Jonathan Timms in Brooklyn. After working with Art Blakey and Thelonious... [read more]
AJBlog: RiffTides | Published 2014-07-28
Off To Ystad
The Rifftides staff leaves tomorrow morning for Ystad on the southern Baltic coast of Sweden. The ancient seaside town will host the Ystad Jazz Festival... [read more]
AJBlog: RiffTides | Published 2014-07-28
Detroit Creditors Stir Up More Trouble
Just when things were looking good for the Detroit Institute of Arts, what with pensioners approving the “grand bargain” that allows the DIA to buy... [read more]
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-07-28
Pay Attention to the Show! (Or What You Will)
I’m sitting on a blanket on the lawn of the Boston Common, sipping my Pinot Grigio out of a water bottle (like half the audience)... [read more]
AJBlog: We The Audience | Published 2014-07-28
Hypnotic Brass on tour, clan-dad Cohran in Chicago
While Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, comprising eight sons of jazz-beyond-jazz seer Kelan Phil Cohran, was tearing it up in the midst of its Bad Boys of Jazz... [read more]
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz | Published 2014-07-27
What is the Ivy League For?
SOMETIMES a writer is attacked so widely and vigorously I can tell he’s right. That’s the case with William Deresiewicz’s New Republic essay about the... [read more]
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-07-26
Bourgeois blues
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I file the first of two reports from Ontario’s Shaw Festival. This week I discuss a rare North... [read more]
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-25
Almanac: Anthony Trollope on rectitude
“He was not so anxious to prove himself right, as to be so.” Anthony Trollope, The Warden... [read more]
AJBlog: About Last Night | Published 2014-07-25
Happy 24th Of July
Today’s cycling expedition through eastern Washington’s Naches Valley took me where orchard country and cattle country merge for a few miles. Waving above a prosperous... [read more]
AJBlog: RiffTides | Published 2014-07-25
Big Questions Re: Museum of African Art’s New Dream
There was alarming news in the article in Wednesday’s New York Times about the Museum for African Art here in NYC, and it wasn’t ab0ut the... [read more]
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-07-25
What is Creative Placemaking?
This whole conversation began as a means to talk about creative placemaking. What is it? What is its role and why should we care? We’ve... [read more]
AJBlog: Field Notes | Published 2014-07-25
Scott Burkholder & Ali Fadlallah: A Conversation
This week we will be featuring conversations with leaders working in communities. Scott Burkholder is an entrepreneurial minded, art promoting engineer based in Baltimore. He oversaw the business... [read more]
AJBlog: Field Notes | Published 2014-07-25
Celebrating the Power of SLAKE
HERE at CultureCrash, we’re longtime fans of the Los Angeles literary magazine Slake, which put out four smart, handsome, forceful issues full of art, fiction,... [read more]
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-07-24
Koons, Whitney, Wynn and My “Greater Fool” Theory of Trophy Art
L to R at Jeff Koons press preview: Whitney director Adam Weinberg, Pompidou Center director Alain Seban, KoonsPhoto by Lee Rosenbaum Having dutifully ingested the... [read more]
AJBlog: CultureGrrl | Published 2014-07-24

Visit AJBlogCentral