“The Smithsonian Institution has appointed Albert G. Horvath, its current senior finance official, as its acting leader for the first half of next year, until the incoming secretary, David J. Skorton, can take up his position in July.”
Archives for October 2014
A New Golden Age Of Storytelling
“This is the opportunity we all have in front of us: to redefine storytelling for an always-on world. It is a new Golden Age with an ever-changing set of disruptive technologies that offer creative talent the opportunity to try new things and figure out what works.”
Weird Fiction, Weird Writers
“For a fiction writer, editing an anthology offers multiple lessons. You learn directly from the stories, but also from the lives of the writers and from the process of acquiring the stories. The information you gather seems more like intelligence, because you’re often a detective trying to solve an inexplicable case.”
750-Year-Old City From Genghis Khan Era Discovered
“Archaeologists with the Saratov Regional Museum of Local Lore have discovered the Christian quarter of Ukek, shedding light on the Christian people who lived under the Khan’s rule. Ukek was a multicultural city, where a variety of religious beliefs were practiced including Islam, Christianity and Shamanism.”
Turmoil At West Australia Opera
“The company was recently heavily criticised for proposing a two year embargo on staging Bizet’s Carmen due to its depictions of smoking in an ill-judged attempt to curry favour with their new corporate sponsor, Healthway. Now it has been announced that the company’s Artistic Director Joseph Colaneri and Chorus Master Joseph Nolan will both no longer be working with the company.”
The Strange History Of The Ouija Board
It started with a pair of spiritualists in post-Civil-War New York; became a ubiquitous family pastime that was considered good, clean fun (and great for a date); and had its reputation ruined by The Exorcist. (It also told its first manufacturers what it wanted to be called.) (includes podcast)
Ten Years On, Theo Van Gogh’s Murder Still Haunts The Netherlands
A decade ago Sunday, the filmmaker, media figure and right-wing provocateur was shot and had his throat slit by a young Moroccan Dutchman who claimed he was defending the name of Allah. “In this tidy country of 17 million, which prides itself on tolerance, the murder opened a raw and polarizing debate … which is still raging.”
A Kashmiri “Hamlet” Becomes Bollywood’s Most Praised, And Most Attacked, Movie Of The Year
Haider, an adaptation of the Shakespeare play set amid the bloody 1990s conflict in Kashmir, has won rapturous praise from Indian cinephiles and film critics – and has enraged Hindu nationalists, who accuse the movie of glorifying terrorists and justifying ethnic cleansing. (Hmm, where have we heard that sort of thing before?)
What Ancient Greek And Roman Statues Look(ed) Like In Color
Most people assume that classical statuary was mostly of pure white marble, a sort of pure source of Western civilization. But scholars have known for at least a century that most Greek and Roman statues were brightly painted – and now an exhibition in Copenhagen is trying to reconstruct their original appearance.
Peter Sellars To Stage His First Dance Work
“[He] has directed operas and theater, collaborated with Toni Morrison and staged St. Matthew’s [sic] Passion with the Berlin Philharmonic. Now, he will turn his attention to Flex, a Brooklyn-born form of street dance, in a commission from the Park Avenue Armory [in New York].”
The History of Gay Publishing in One Career
An interview with Michael Denneny, who co-founded the pathbreaking literary magazine Christopher Street and was the first man to make a career out of editing and publishing serious gay novels.
Bradley Cooper Plays A Man Who’s Haunted Him For Decades
Starring in The Elephant Man on Broadway “is serious business for the actor: a scoop of earth following his gradual but precipitous soar into the showbiz stratosphere, with its thinner, giddy-making air.” It’s also a role he’s been fixated on since age 12.
The Town That’s Discovering It’s Built Out Of Jewish Tombstones
“Back in May, construction work for a new supermarket began in the center of Brest, a city in Belarus on the border with Poland. In a turn of events that wouldn’t seem out of place in a horror film, more than 450 Jewish gravestones have since been discovered in the foundations of the houses that have been demolished to make way for the store.”
Carnegie Hall To Offer Free Livestream Of Recitals
“Starting next week, Carnegie Hall will go global, partnering with the six-year-old classical-music portal medici.tv to stream [four] concerts … All will be streamed live and remain available for 90 days. And all of them will be free.”
Crisis Management, PR Firm, Speakers Bureaus Drop Jian Ghomeshi
With a second woman coming forward by name to accuse him of assault and a former Q producer giving details of sexual harassment, both Ghomeshi’s longtime PR reps and top crisis-management firm Navigator have dropped him as a client, as have two firms who booked him for speaking engagements.
One Woman Defends Jian Ghomeshi, Saying Everything He Did With Her Was Consensual
“I do want people to know how thorough our consent talks were.” So (naturally) she contacted Dan Savage. Dan offers a transcript of his interview with her and offers his attempt to square her account with those of his accusers.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.30.14
Curlew River: Britten’s madwoman as samurai
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2014-10-30
Early Word On “Mr. Turner” – Movie, Good; Art, Bad
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2014-10-30
David Byrne: Big Money is Killing Art
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2014-10-30
Angry bird
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2014-10-30
Remembering Tony Staniland
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2014-10-30
Chica Chica Boom Steps?
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2014-10-29
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A School Behaves Like An Orchestra, And An Orchestra Behaves Like A School
“Both initiatives underscored the extent to which the difficulties facing classical music in the 21st century are forcing venerable institutions to adapt, if not reinvent themselves.”
How Do We Revive A Language When There Are No Native Speakers Left?
“It’s hard to find information on Tongva. There are no audio recordings of people speaking the language, just a few scratchy wax cylinder recordings of Tongva songs. There are additional word lists from scholars, explorers, and others dating from 1838 to 1903.”
Bookstore MFA
“At some point, it’s just you and the poems. You haven’t been told to read a poem, you haven’t been assigned a poem to critique, you haven’t been told a book’s really great, so you’re just picking up books that either speak to you or don’t. You’re just looking through book after book after book trying to find something engaging.”
D.C. Isn’t That Exciting A Town, But The Hirshhorn Museum’s New Director Has Big Plans
“I hope this means we are able to come up with another kind of new bold vision that has the potential to be a real game-changer in terms of contemporary art and the way technology impacts contemporary art.”
Does Going On A World Tour Make A Symphony World Class?
“In Chicago Symphony lore, it was the orchestra’s first-ever overseas tour — a massive six-week, nine-country, 15-venue, 25-concert trip led by music director Georg Solti in 1971 — that vaulted it to world-class status while changing cultural perceptions of Chicago, with the orchestra greeted by a ticker-tape parade upon its return home.”
How’s Modern Dance Doing In Vietnam?
“We have a history of war, but we are not trying to promote that, but rather bring the feeling of what we have through contemporary dance, through the eyes of a young generation.”
Galway Kinnell, Poet Of Nature, Religion And Human Rights, Dead At 87
“He also wrote frequently about death. ‘The Book of Nightmares’ was inspired by the horrors of the Vietnam War. But as angry as he could be, he sometimes considered mortality more gently and wistfully.”
Stan Lee, Creator Of ‘X-Men’ And ‘Spider-Man’ And Other Comics, Beats His Namesake Company In Court
“The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals finds Stan Lee Media Inc.’s claim of owning Spider-Man, the X-Men and other characters to be ‘implausible'”