TT: Home, at last This has been a wonderful week for New York-area theater, so busy that it took two columns in The Wall...

Posted November 20, 2009

TT: Almanac "Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." Frank Zappa (quoted...

Posted November 20, 2009

TT: Little girl, you've had a busy day I saw five shows this week, all of them important, so The Wall Street Journal was kind enough to give...

Posted November 19, 2009

TT: So you want to see a show? Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable...

Posted November 19, 2009

TT: Almanac "It is a funny thing about life, if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get...

Posted November 19, 2009

Cultural Workforce Forum The National Endowment for the Arts is hosting a Cultural Workforce Forum today, from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm Eastern, and has opened the event to the public through a live webcast. You can login and listen in here:Cultural Workforce...

Posted November 20, 2009

My chat with Bill Ivey As part of this fall's special topics course I'm co-teaching at UW-Madison -- Arts Enterprise: Art as Business as Art -- we hosted a public forum and a class discussion with Bill Ivey, Director of the Curb Center for Art,...

Posted November 18, 2009

Rent, buy, build, or borrow When a for-profit enterprise wants to build its capacity to do something (manufacture a product, launch a new service, provide a new option for their clients, or the like), they face a classic business question -- should we rent the...

Posted November 16, 2009

Is our fundraising writing wrong? Many arts organizations work really hard to craft the perfect fundraising message in their letters, their brochures, and their online communications. They strive for strong evidence that what they do makes a difference, they anguish over the specific words they...

Posted November 13, 2009

Arts policy, reconsidered UPDATE: We've just posted a 20-minute podcast interview with Bill Ivey online. The video of his public presentation will come later.If you're in or around Madison, Wisconsin, this Thursday, November 12, consider coming by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art...

Posted November 10, 2009

Dario Robleto Lion or Lamb, 2007-2008

Posted November 18, 2009

WAYNE'S FULL NELSON "As far as Harry was concerned, Victor Ramdass Singh was just another Nervous Camera director, who worked tirelessly to make the audience realize at every moment that the picture was indeed being directed." This passage appears in Don Carpenter's...

Posted November 16, 2009

CROP CIRCLE COP QUOTE "A police officer contacted UFO experts after claiming he saw three aliens examining a freshly made crop circle in Wiltshire...."...

Posted November 9, 2009

IYA 2009 Posters Soundtrack: Donald Fagen's "IGY"...

Posted November 6, 2009

FARBER, MANNY FILE UNDER I've been planning a post devoted to some of the screamers I've been compiling from the Farber anthology, but first Duncan Shepherd from the San Diego Reader: "It is highly salutary to read what was written about such movies before...

Posted October 30, 2009

When Necessity Feels Like Luxury The autumn weather was perfect the other night for a stroll through Midtown. So when the theater let out on 45th Street, I headed a few blocks south, cut through the holiday maze of Bryant Park, and crossed Fifth Avenue...

Posted November 19, 2009

Male = Mass Appeal Sage counsel from Amy Poehler: "Girls, if boys say something that's not funny, you don't have to laugh," she said this week at Glamour's Women of the Year Awards.Is it too great a leap to suggest that Poehler's girl-power advice...

Posted November 12, 2009

Audience, Please Exit Now Not even a half hour into the 80-minute performance, much of the row behind us gave up and left, clumping and clattering out of the theater. A short while after that, more of the crowd fled, the wood of the...

Posted November 9, 2009

The Book Tour ... ... in 140 characters, max. Garry Trudeau is a genius....

Posted November 6, 2009

Circles of Influence At Politico, Pia Catton has a fun look at the social links between the members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. As she writes, "these 26 private-sector appointees are intricately connected through years of leadership in...

Posted November 6, 2009

A Thousand Little Cuts: "The civil right is to an excellent education," she said. "It's not about having an art room." People say to me, what's the problem? Is anyone really against the arts in schools?My typical response is that it's not often one single event, it's more about the waves that wash it off the beach. Those waves have been...

Posted November 19, 2009

A Successful DC Arts-Centered Middle School to Get "Reformed" The precise term is "turned," a diminutive of "turnaround," I presume. Turnaround being the latest and greatest craze in school reform. I believe the term is used in the espionage business as well. As in she "turned rogue." So, in...

Posted November 13, 2009

Final USDOE Race to the Top Guidelines Released: Arts Education an Outlier I will try hard to be positive and productive with this blog. I promise.Okay, the long awaited Race to the Top final guidelines have been released. At the bottom of this entry I will provide a set of the links...

Posted November 12, 2009

A Vital Partner: The United Federation of Teachers It's not the smoothest time for teacher unions these days. They're a a pretty easy target when people wring their hands about the state of K-12 public education. But, hey, what would their critics do without them. Who would they...

Posted November 10, 2009

You Cannot Make this Stuff Up: NYC Department of Ed And Its Hypnotherapist Presumably, this blog will be subject to some criticism by the Association of Hypnotherapists. In today's New York Daily News, there is an article about the New York City Department of Education dropping almost $375,000 on the services of a...

Posted November 6, 2009

List of Blogs carrying National Arts Journalism Summit Today Thanks to those who volunteered to host a webstream of the Arts Journalism Summit at USC today. Streaming begins at 9AM pdt. See you in a few hours. (Looking for more information about the Summit? Go here. www.minalhajratwala.com/bloghttp://www.bendofbay.org http://www.palmbeachartspaper.com   http://www.centerscene.blogspot.com/  http://www.sfcv.org/node/6909http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/seeingthings/index.html http://www.AnnieStrack.blogspot.comhttp://www.mamaramabook.com/blog/www.judithingolfsson.comhttp://evansdonnell.blogspot.com/2009/10/watch-national-summit-on-arts.htmlhttp://arts-america.blogspot.com/http://moppenheim.comhttp://24seven.blogs.heraldtribune.com/10354/usc-to-hold-arts-journalism-summit/http://houseseats.uniontrib.com  www.ced.pro.brwideningthei.wordpress.comhttp://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-classical-beat  http://www.chloeveltman.com/blog/index.htmlhttp://www.joycegehl.blogspot.comhttp://blogs.tampabay.com/art www.HelloBeautifulBlog.comwww.imamuseum.org/bloghttp://clevelandclassical.wordpress.com/http://www.artsengagementexchange.org/resources/entry/national_summit_on_arts_journalism/http://www.belfry.bc.ca/news/webcast-national-summit-on-arts-journalism/www.theatrelouisville.orghttp://movement-museum.blogspot.com/ http://www.newmusicbox.org/chatter.nmbxhttp://cseries.typepad.com/celebrityseries/http://dancealamode.wordpress.comhttp://bosccoartbuzz.blogspot.com...

Posted October 2, 2009

Need Your Help: Let's Make Arts Journalism Viral - UPDATES II: UPDATE: The first blogs are beginning to sign up to stream: www.createquity.com, www.artsDC.com, http://gatheringnote www.seattledances, www.salvadorcastillo.wordpress.com. One blogger has already tried to embed the feed in Blogger and got back an error. Anyone familiar with embedding in Blogger? Leave a...

Posted September 30, 2009

ArtsJournal Turns Ten Years Old This week I gave a talk in San Francisco and I mentioned that Sunday - today - ArtsJournal is ten years old. In web terms, that makes us pretty old. Except, in the room were the editors of at least...

Posted September 13, 2009

The Upgrades That Make You Feel Worse I've been on a lot of airplanes recently. Flying isn't much fun, but I like being in other places. So in the process of travel I tend to see those around me as either obstacles to my getting where I...

Posted August 27, 2009

Great Expectations (Except When They're Not) Ken Brecher tells this story about Alexander Graham Bell. The inventor of the telephone apparently spent the last part of his life railing against the way people were using his invention. When greeting someone on the phone, he insisted, the...

Posted August 2, 2009

Loving Where You Live is Important to the Economy A colleague shared this Soul of the Community Knight Foundation/Gallup Poll research with me. It has fantastic findings for arts and culture advocates. My two favorites are After interviewing close to 28,000 people in 26 communities over two years, the...

Posted November 12, 2009

Arts Education is a Social Justice Issue In just a few hours I will introduce the San Diego Youth Symphony and Conservatory's "Celebration of Music Education" concert. It is the one time in the year when all of our 500 students perform on a single concert. We...

Posted November 8, 2009

Talking Structural Overhaul at Every Turn Last week we had the California Arts Advocates lobbyist in San Diego to present a briefing on the current political realities in Sacramento. The message I took away was simple: change is coming because every aspect of state government is...

Posted November 4, 2009

Finding Your Inner Arts Advocate Becoming an arts advocate really takes little more than getting over the hurdle of one's own reluctance. My friend and colleague Victoria Saunders articulates this very well in a piece she recently wrote for Americans for the Arts about accepting...

Posted October 3, 2009

An Artist Activist Takes On Globalization While leaders from the G-20 nations met in Pittsburgh this weekend to further pave the road to globalization, Michelle Obama shared the arts with her fellow spouses, and protesters tried to interrupt the meeting, one artist quietly and clearly detailed...

Posted September 28, 2009

Fred Wilson Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} Lecture at the Nasher Museum of ArtOctober 27, 2009 He was affable, humorous...

Posted October 27, 2009

They came, they saw, they showed. Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} As it wound down its run towards its final weekend, the group...

Posted October 23, 2009

A Lure of Language Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal";...

Posted October 18, 2009

Michael Pollan in Madison and the culture of food Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Using a box of Froot Loops...

Posted September 29, 2009

On newspapers, music magazines, and Quincy Jones The web-based culture magazine The Curator kindly published this piece on mine in August exploring the future of music magazines and the difference between them, the music industry they cover, and all the buzz over the fate of newspapers....

Posted September 20, 2009

Ad Libs Though I have previously complained about people e mailing me personally with items that they should really post as comments, I have to admit that my afternoon was made when I received a personal phone call comment from Leila Getz...

Posted November 19, 2009

Special Sauce It was cold, wet and windy in Manhattan on Friday night. I probably should have gone to see the Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall, but what I really wanted to do was dust on the minimum mineral make-up required to...

Posted November 18, 2009

"And then one night, Margo Channing came to play in 'Remembrance' and I went to see it." I'll be stepping in for someone on an OPERA America "Making Connections" panel tomorrow night, Shock of the Day being that the panel is on social media. My co-panelists are Brian Dickie, General Director of Chicago Opera Theater, and Erik...

Posted November 17, 2009

I dreamed the press would be forgiving A few awkward publicist things on a gloomy Wednesday!First, a journalist forwarded the following (amazing) press release the other day:Susan Boyle will return to the states this month to perform the title track off her forthcoming album 'I Dreamed a...

Posted November 12, 2009

Of course I'm awfully glad that mother had to marry father I went to WhiskyFest NY with my dad last night (because WhiskyFest is the new Bronx Zoo?).  This photo is blurry, but you may notice the crowd at the Marriott Marquis last night bears an uncanny resemblance to Lincoln Center's...

Posted November 11, 2009

The Dinner Party Last week I was at a dinner party when a guest to my left suggested I update my thinking about the gender gap from a glass ceiling to a window. Something on par with the views afforded by the...

Posted November 16, 2009

Get Hooked When it comes to the new music/experimental side of my iTunes library, it doesn't often happen that a once-heard track echos in my ears as I walk the city streets. But trips outside the boundaries of my professional genre areas...

Posted November 12, 2009

Better Know a Meme Do internet memes perplex you? Do you just not care enough to follow (or do you need your kids to explain) that thing with the cats, that squirrel, or Kanye at the mic? Well, there's a site that will...

Posted November 11, 2009

What's in Your RSS Feed? In (finally) setting up a blog aggregator for myself a couple weeks ago, I realized how far behind I've fallen since the days when my Friday Informer deadlines kept me on a regular hunt for great online content. However,...

Posted November 11, 2009

Epic Advertising Yes, the "Painfully Honest and Epic Mobile Home Commercial" is more, um, well, more everything. [via BoingBoing] But the one designed by Rhett and Link of "I Love Local Commercials" for Ray's Midbell Music of Sioux City, Iowa, capitalizing...

Posted November 4, 2009

Dystopia, my old friend Can you stage the internet? I'm just back from the sweetest, saddest performance I've seen in ages - and also the first that, in barely more than an hour, tells the story of the web's utopia turning to dystopia. Chris...

Posted November 4, 2009

Only here for the ecstasy It has been a while since the performance monkey put paw to keyboard, but he has still been, y'know, seeing stuff in theatres. Some of these things have been terribly cool, and have involved magical oracles, properly good nervous breakdowns...

Posted October 30, 2009

No half measures There was no halfway house with Pina Bausch. As my editor remarked earlier today, you were either a devotee or sceptic, and if a devotee you were very devoted. There will be many tributes to Pina Bausch in the next...

Posted June 30, 2009

'Pick up the gun and shoot the bastard!' I was much tickled this afternoon to read the performance artist and lecturer Lois Weaver recalling a visit to David Hare's play The Secret Rapture. Her colleague Peggy Phelan, a reluctant co-attendee at the matinee performance ('this sea of the...

Posted June 28, 2009

Swan in a neck brace We critics - dressed in our usual dowdy - were discombobulated when we arrived at Sadler's Wells last week for English National Ballet's tribute to Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. There was a red (actually black) carpet, and a healthy jostle of...

Posted June 25, 2009

Fairy Tales of Birmingham It's not every day that I'll take the trouble to go to Birmingham to hear a piece of contemporary music - or to do anything else, as the train fare is 20 per cent more than the fare from Oxford...

Posted November 17, 2009

Incest without the Morris Dancing photo credit: Johan Persson / ENOI've recently been to a performance in London where I imagine  the audience reaction resembled that of the audience at the Paris première of The Rite of Spring on 29 May 1913. Indeed, the second...

Posted November 12, 2009

That Bloomsbury Voice Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could hear the voice of Boswell, or of Mme de Lieven. Or if we had recordings of the voices of Hume, Gibbon and Macaulay? Or, to enter the realm of the possible, of...

Posted November 6, 2009

That boy's magic horn Tired of commuting to London for my daily culture-fix, it was wonderful to drive only as far as Oxford last week for the opening of the 2008 Oxford Lieder Festival, www.oxfordlieder.co.uk. This is the brainchild and labour of love of...

Posted October 24, 2009

Brecht's problem play Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children is a problem play, and the National Theatre's new production has had more than its share of troubles, with a press night postponed because the actor playing the second lead, the chaplain, either quit...

Posted October 6, 2009

The New Museum For African Art Is Rising It's been a long road, but the Museum for African Art is really coming into its own: the opening of its new building, on Fifth Avenue and Central Park North in New York, a year or so from now, will...

Posted November 20, 2009

Catching Up: A News Collection A few developments that need no comment: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, can rest easy: A jury has rejected the attempt by Alfred C. Glassell Jr.'s daughter to break his will, which left half of his fortune to the...

Posted November 19, 2009

What Is The Most Stolen Art Work? Try To Guess Several days back, I began a post about art theft by saying that it boggles the mind in general. I just learned something even more startling -- the identity of the most stolen work of art in recorded history. The subject came...

Posted November 18, 2009

Prepare To Be Amused: A Sustained Look At Trompe-l'Oeil Among the many reasons I wish I were in Italy right now is Art and Illusions: Masterpieces of Trompe-l'oeil From Antiquity To The Present, which is on view at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence until Jan. 24. (It started last month.)...

Posted November 17, 2009

Monuments Men Foundation "Finds" A Monuments Woman Robert M. Edsel's second book about World War II looting, The Monuments Men, came out in September, and as someone who in years past has written much about the subject myself (here, here, and here, to name a few), I wanted to...

Posted November 16, 2009

Knowing the Plot The other night I was at the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg's production of "Life and Fate -- I'll post my roundup of the Lincoln Center Festival's Eastern European theater early next week, after I've seen Pushkin's "Boris Godunov" on Sunday --...

Posted July 24, 2009

Dance That Isn't Ballet But Is Still Dance OK, here's part two of my recent dance roundup, devoted to dance that isn't ballet and as such is usually ignored or dismissed by ballet-oriented critics but is still dance, darn it! As the noted dance critic Stuart Smalley might...

Posted July 19, 2009

The failings of arts journalism, in print and on the internet My latest posting to ARTicles, the blog of the National Arts Journalism Program, in which I bloviate on some phrases in a Doug McLennan commentary on the decline of traditional arts journalism....

Posted July 19, 2009

One Kind of Dance Late spring and early summer are considered by some to be the high point of the New York dance season, and the reason is simple: New York City Ballet is having its spring season at the New York State Theater...

Posted July 18, 2009

Pina Bausch and the Definition of Dance I hesitated to write about Pina Bausch immediately after her death. First, I had long had reservations about her work, though mine were a little different from those of some others. Then second, I decided I should watch Pedro Almodovar's "Talk to...

Posted July 5, 2009

Where Did the Vampire Squid Come From? I didn't want to post this item, especially because I have no interest in writing anything that might be misconstrued as a defense of Goldman Sachs. But has anybody besides my staff of thousands -- Bill Osborne, to be precise...

Posted November 18, 2009

Lynne Stewart Is Looking at 28 Months This is very bad news. Here's why....

Posted November 17, 2009

The Outsider Dave Teeuwen's Interview with Graham Masterton on William S. Burroughs is a gem -- every last word of it -- and especially the remark that Burroughs said "he felt as if he had never lived the life he was supposed...

Posted November 3, 2009

And Now for a Change of Pace From Video Poetry and Video Fictions, courtesy of Richard Kostelanetz, who produced the visual content in 1989, and Seth G. Samuel, who composed and performed the music in 2009. Postscript: Nov. 2 -- A change from the change ... and...

Posted October 26, 2009

Straight From the Horse's Mouth Here's the truth, simply stated ... bookstores are suffering from a serious crisis of falling sales. Don't believe a single zero of all those editions claimed to be 100,000! 40,000! ... even 400 copies! just for suckers! Alack! ... Alas!...

Posted October 25, 2009

Coming to a big screen near you... Frederick Wiseman's La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet--soon it will be all up and down the West Coast and in select cities in other parts of the country. Its stay at the Film Forum here in New York has...

Posted November 18, 2009

Go: Tere O'Connor and company's "Wrought Iron Fog" at Dance Theater Workshop Treat yourself, if you're so lucky: you only have till Saturday, and Wednesday, the house was packed. Some critics have been ambivalent--Gia Kourlas in the NY Times and Kathleen O'Connor at Danceviewtimes. I was enthralled, and set free for...

Posted November 13, 2009

Armitage toys with Africans; Han Tang Yuefu Music and Dance Ensemble brings ancient debauchery to life Karole Armitage is a choreographer who misses more than she hits, but even that bumpy track record didn't prepare me for Itutu, playing BAM for a mercifully short run this week. Here are the first few paragraphs of my...

Posted November 5, 2009

A subdued Garth Fagan Mudan 175/39 by Garth Fagan. Photo by Paula Summit.I don't think this year's Joyce season is the best showing of Fagan's work. There's only one premiere--the lovely Mudan--but even that wouldn't be a problem if the rep didn't also...

Posted October 31, 2009

Spooky shows from Bill T. Jones and Joe Goode I asked my friend and Foot colleague Paul Parish whether I could paste some of his review last week of Bill T. Jones's and Joe Goode's latest shows--Jones's is the big Lincoln fete we New Yorkers will be getting...

Posted October 25, 2009

Elsewhere Dear Readers, I will be working in Copenhagen NOV 17 through NOV 30 and not posting on SEEING THINGS until my return. Meanwhile, please continue to send your Comments on the pieces already posted, especially recent reviews and all...

Posted November 14, 2009

Morphoses Falters Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company / City Center, New York City / October 29 - November 1, 2009 Christopher Wheeldon's Rhapsody Fantaisie Photo: Erin Baiano Three years ago, when Christopher Wheeldon left the security of his position as Resident Choreographer at the...

Posted November 10, 2009

Wiseman's Lens on Dance Frederick Wiseman's La Danse: Le Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris / Film Forum, NYC / November 4-17, 2009 The Paris Opera, as seen in Frederick Wiseman's La Danse: The Paris Opera BalletCourtesy of Zipporah Films The ticket line at Greenwich...

Posted November 2, 2009

ABT's Experiment American Ballet Theatre / Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City / October 7-10, 2009 Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center's main concert venue, lacks an orchestra pit, wing space, and a floor suitable for dancing. Musicians performing there stay...

Posted October 16, 2009

Decreation Indeed The Forsythe Company / BAM Howard Gilman Opera House / Brooklyn, NY / October 7-10, 2009 William Forsythe made his name creating ballets with an eye to pushing the art conspicuously forward, as Balanchine had done. Nowadays he makes concoctions...

Posted October 13, 2009

Our Great-Grandfathers' Butts At this unsure moment, sex doesn't seem to be on everyone's lips. A decade ago, the bodies politic were forever getting it on, at least in the then-pulsating media and groovy groves of academe. But now the topic has cooled...

Posted October 26, 2009

Archie Date Update A while back, when it was "leaked" that the 600th issue of Archie comics would be a wedding announcement, I myself made a modest proposal. Today, the New York Times published an Archie follow that pulls my facetious wishful thinking...

Posted October 6, 2009

The Best Pesto A Modest Lesson in Journalistic AdviceIt may be odd for a former restaurant critic to claim that he always thought anyone could cook anything well, but it's true. Cooking in a restaurant shouldn't be rocket science, yet it certainly isn't...

Posted September 22, 2009

Next Round: Bill Viola Versus the Pope Who Would Expect a Video Artist To Be a Hero?   Every week's cultural and political news is actually a puzzle to be solved, a jigsaw set with antagonistic pieces. Here's one part of the puzzle that I find heartening,...

Posted September 14, 2009

Has 'Project Runway' Jumped the Sharkskin? And Other Crucial Parts of the Culture Puzzle I've never been a fan of purely reactive writing. Most of it banishes those errant ideas and images that have no obvious connection to the fake trend or genuine outrage of the...

Posted September 13, 2009

Three Films about 11/9 Briefly, three German films to celebrate the 20th anniversary of 11/9/89.First, The Tunnel (Der Tunnel), a TV film first broadcast in 2001, about a group of young people trying to leave East Berlin.  Some make it across just as the...

Posted November 9, 2009

Long Slog Yes, loyal reader, Serious Popcorn has been suffering from neglect lately.This is because I have spent the summer and autumn slogging through the final revisions of my book, now tentatively titled America's Cultural Footprint: The Good, the Bad, and the...

Posted October 25, 2009

3 Billion Fans, and None in Newark? Do Americans live in a "parallel universe" separate from the rest of humanity?  To judge by this item from Agence France-Presse, the answer is yes.Imagine Brad Pitt being stopped in an airport and questioned by people who don't know who...

Posted August 17, 2009

This is Not Nostalgia Invited by the Wall Street Journal to do a short piece on Woodstock, this is what I came up with:"Both a Dream and a Nightmare"The 1969 Woodstock festival wasn't held in Woodstock, N.Y., but in a dairy-farming hamlet 43 miles...

Posted August 15, 2009

Nailed How do you know who your friends are in Washington?  They're the ones who stab you in the chest.That old joke captures the hard-edged quality of political combat in the nation's capital better than most Hollywood films, perhaps because Hollywood...

Posted August 9, 2009

Public Concert, Private Music When Doug McLennan asked me to write this blog, he told me that the most successful ones connect the writing to the experiences the blogger has in daily life. I write about building arts communities, and for several weeks...

Posted November 5, 2009

Drive-by Opera In the Epilogue to Alex Ross's marvelous book, The Rest is Noise, he writes "Extremes become their opposites in time." Although he is making a completely different point than I want to focus on, I agree with him entirely.Opera began...

Posted September 25, 2009

A Battle with (and for) Bruckner's Music This entry continues my exploration of Bruckner's Fourth as revealed by two recordings by Bruno Walter, along with a little bit of thinking about remembering to keep "art" first in "arts communities." You can read the previous entries on this...

Posted September 12, 2009

Having Coffee with Bruno Walter In my last entry I wrote the following:I want to start this series of blogs on personal artistic development and its relationship to building communities. Naturally, there are many interpretations of the word "community" - ranging from shared geography to...

Posted September 8, 2009

The End of Summer - This Time The evening chill announces that the Michigan summer is ending. Even on sunny days there is a little spark in the air that, somehow, connects itself to October more closely than to June.  The economic convulsions of last year are...

Posted September 3, 2009

Far downtown weekend adventures Far out improv, high concept contemporary composition, new jazz scholarship and "cut loose" music from Guadeloupe flood Lowest Manhattan (all the way to Staten Island) this weekend. The folks who bring us the Vision Festival stage 28 hours of multidisciplinary improvisation starting tonight...

Posted November 20, 2009

Trouble -- or transition -- at Jazz.com? Stepping down from presiding over Jazz.com two years after its launch, editor, author and pianist Ted Gioia isn't saying much about what's up with the site that has become a major web resource and destination. Naturally, this leads to wondering what has...

Posted November 19, 2009

Wynton le Chevalier Marsalis A survey in my latest City Arts column of the music of trumpeter-composer Wynton Marsalis, in the jazz spotlight for 25 years. Founder and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, educator, activist, humanitarian, winner of a Pulitzer and multiple Grammies,...

Posted November 19, 2009

The critics play Writer-guitarist Greg Tate was shy about conducting Burnt Sugar at the Blue Note last night, not stepping out front of his troupe to guide them (kinda like President O waiting for Congress to decide what to do), but the late...

Posted November 17, 2009

Performance night of beyond-jazz critics Monday 11/16, NYC: writer-guitarist-conductor Greg Tate's Burnt Sugar plays the Blue Note, and the late journalist-reedsplayer Robert Palmer is celebrated by biographer-world musician John Kruth, historian-memoirist-social commentator-radio producer-singer-songwriter Ned Sublette, and the Master Musicians of Jajouka with at Le Poisson Rouge. Are...

Posted November 15, 2009

we could be heroes Rebirth Brass Band snare drummer Derrick Tabb is nominated for a CNN 2009 "Heroes" award. He deserves it. Vote him in here.You'll feel heroic too.Here's my testimony on his behalf: I remember in 2007, when Tabb and his brother,...

Posted October 12, 2009

heeding the wake up call Can arts journalism -- can arts, can journalism--adapt to changing technologies, new media, and a multi-tasking, screen-oriented, thumb-typing audience without losing its way, killing its aesthetic and going broke?Can very smart professionals get together and discuss this issue via...

Posted October 2, 2009

war (what is it good for)? Well, the hate mail has already begun flowing in: I expected it, having written something positive about Jazz at Lincoln Center in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. One email ranted on about how "google news and custom search aggregation" has...

Posted September 25, 2009

De Latin Delight of DeLay I missed the spectacle of Tom DeLay, former Texas Republican Congressman, now rhinestone cowboy, shaking his ass, sliding on his knees, and playing air guitar to "Wild Thing," on Dancing with the Stars, as investigators mulled money-laundering charges against...

Posted September 24, 2009

(jewish) new year's resolution I've said it before. I'm saying it again now. I'm going to take up blogging again in earnest and with respect for what the enterprise offers. Not every day, perhaps. But for real. And I'll get back to posting some...

Posted September 23, 2009

Farewell I remember a moment during the summer of 2002, when I looked at my wife and told her that I needed to make a change in my professional life. I had been managing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for seventeen years--a...

Posted October 30, 2009

Declining Arts Participation: A Topic for Broad-Based National Dialogue Earlier this year the National Endowment for the Arts released its 2008 Arts Participation Survey, and the picture it paints is worrisome. The study was done in May, 2008, six months into the recession, and certainly we can draw a...

Posted October 23, 2009

The Case for Subsidizing Ticket Prices If you go to symphony concerts in Europe or South America, you see audiences that tend to be more diverse than ours in the United States--more young people, more ethnic diversity, more apparent diversity of economic and demographic background. Since...

Posted October 16, 2009

Artistic Authority in Orchestras: A Tricky Balance I appear to have caused some confusion in the past with my comments about orchestra board members who try to wield too much authority in programming decisions, and conversely about conductors who adopt an autocratic, almost dictatorial stance, saying, "I...

Posted October 9, 2009

The Music Director Search: Integrity and Commitment In last week's blog, I began a discussion of some of the questions I am most frequently asked by orchestras engaged in music director searches. This week, I am continuing that subject.What do we do when we start getting local...

Posted October 2, 2009

Monsieur B. Love of Berlioz originates, I think, in wonder at and delight in his musical imagination.  Of course, one wonders at and delights in the imagination of every creative artist whose work one loves, but there is something startling and forever...

Posted November 10, 2009

Episodic episodes I was in Chicago a week ago to discuss the subject of writing musical biography with some of Prof. Philip Gossett's excellent graduate students at the University of Chicago - a thoroughly enjoyable experience, at least for me.  While I was there, I managed...

Posted October 25, 2009

More Met Since I saw the Met's new Tosca production (see a previous entry), about which I found much less to dislike than most other commentators (not to mention the opening night audience), I've been back to the house for three more...

Posted October 22, 2009

Fascinated again Sometimes, in looking back over periods in your life, you may recognize that certain moments or events were turning-points.  But you may also recognize other moments or events as having been potential turning-points that you passed up for one reason or another. Just now I'm remembering...

Posted October 11, 2009

Puccini and others The New York musical season began, for me, with a double dose of Puccini.  First, I visited the small but interesting exhibition that the Morgan Library and Museum has dedicated to the composer between two of his anniversaries - the 150th of his...

Posted October 7, 2009

Just before 8 A few minutes before 8 p.m., my heart beats faster. So many concerts start at this time -- after years in the business my body is trained! The particular ritual of the concert brings a kind of order to living....

Posted November 16, 2009

Case Law Setting out to learn a piece of scripted classical music, a pianist usually looks at print. Some musicians listen to recordings. A celebrated American violin pedagogue sent her young virtuosos to listen to five or six recordings of a new...

Posted November 9, 2009

Mr. Brendel, thank you My introduction of Alfred Brendel last night in Boston: In classical music, there are those who believe that thinking about music can compromise feeling -- compromise our emotional response to music. Alfred Brendel's example vividly shows us that such notions...

Posted November 5, 2009

Iowa was the name of the Star I'm from Iowa. Born there. Grew up there. Studied music there. I wasn't a prodigy. I took lessons from the lady down the street. (Her name was Joy Lord.) In high school, I played concertos with several Iowa orchestras. In...

Posted November 2, 2009

Recenter The "reception" of a piece of music becomes part of its identity. Our performances, recordings, reviews, reactions, lawsuits, teaching, reflection, arrangements, remixes, appropriation -- all of that is the piece, along with the text we started from. Famous music acquires...

Posted October 26, 2009

Kierkegaard, Strolling through Toronto Kierkegaard, Walking is one of my favorite of my works; I look through the score and get a smile from every measure. My former student Max Scheinin, a violinist, has arranged a performance of it for this Wednesday, Nov. 11,...

Posted November 8, 2009

Keeping Good Company I had expected to have two new CDs and a book out this fall, but two of them have been delayed until February. One of the CDs, however, has arrived, titled The Minimalists, by the Orkest de Volharding on Mode Records...

Posted October 29, 2009

Maryanne Amacher (1943-2009) [For emendation to the above dates, see updates below.] The music world lost one of its most bizarre characters today, and I say that with the utmost affection. Maryanne Amacher was an amazing composer of sound installations, who occasionally taught...

Posted October 22, 2009

Total Heaviosity Liturgy opening the New Yorker Festival, October 16, 2009: Tyler Dusenbury, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, Greg Fox, Bernard Gann. Listen here. The photo completely fails to convey the high-energy maelstrom of their strumming. ...

Posted October 17, 2009

Silence and Noise This Friday night, Oct. 16, my son's black metal band Liturgy plays at the New Yorker festival, at the Bell House in Brooklyn, 149 7th Street, 8 PM. The event is listed as already sold out, but I'm supposed to be on a...

Posted October 14, 2009

Notes Going Into The Weekend Jazz History Preservation Not all of the reconstruction work to be done in New Orleans is a result of Katrina's damage. One of the city's jazz landmarks has been falling apart for decades. Now, it appears that Crescent City...

Posted November 21, 2009

Indelible Lines Before the Rifftides staff gets back to business as usual, whatever that is, we're finding it difficult to let go of thoughts about Johnny Mercer. Lines from his songs won't go away -- ever. There's a dance pavillion in the...

Posted November 20, 2009

Correspondence: That Mercer Show Alan Broadbent--pianist, composer, arranger, conductor for Diana Krall and Natalie Cole, among others--wrote in response to the Fresh Air program promoted in the previous exhibit. Thanks for posting Dave and Rebecca's Fresh Air show which I have just finished listening...

Posted November 18, 2009

Other Matters: Mercer, Mercer, Mercer Today is the 100th anniversary of Johnny Mercer's birth. To celebrate it, Dave Frishberg and Rebecca Kilgore will be the guests on National Public Radio's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. See your local listings for station and time, or check...

Posted November 18, 2009

Recent Listening: Kurt Rosenwinkel Kurt Rosenwinkel, Reflections (Wommusic). From his first recordings in the 1990s, Rosenwinkel's guitar playing has had an element of pensiveness. Regardless of tempo, complexity or adrenalin-fueled collaborators, he radiates the air of a man who won't hurry through even his...

Posted November 16, 2009

Left behind (2) Continuing what I started in my last post. 3, Recent history, art and music. Music. Atonal composers started dominating composition -- in prestige, grant-worthiness, faculty hiring, and, retrospectively, in the way classical music history has been written -- sometime in...

Posted November 20, 2009

Left behind I'm going to write again about new music and orchestras, because -- in the present state of these discussions -- it's easy for me to be misunderstood. This isn't my fault, or the fault of the people who misunderstand me....

Posted November 19, 2009

Third book riff This one, you'll see, is a little different from the last two. I expand into some writing that has, maybe, the length and detail l'll have in the finished book. And no, this isn't the actual book text. Still just...

Posted November 16, 2009

Long overdue No, not my next book riff, though that's coming very soon. What's long overdue are two things -- first, major classical music institutions seriously acknowledging alt-classical composers, and, second, a little celebration, here in my blog, for the Chicago Symphony...

Posted November 16, 2009

Terrific idea Janis, who comments often on my posts (and who wants to be known here just by her first name), e-mailed me with a fabulous idea. In a moment, I'm going to turn this post over to her, and simply show...

Posted November 11, 2009

Last Composer Standing - the retro edition As debate continues in several languages over who will still be heard 50 years from now, several readers have asked how accurate our forecasting can be. Well, let's go back to 1959 and ask which living composers, in the view of...

Posted November 19, 2009

Unsung premiere Simon Mawer's reflective novel The Glass Room, shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and one of my reads of the year, digresses midway into a sub-story about a shortlived composer. Vitezlava Kapralova, born in 1915 in Janacek's town, Brno, was...

Posted November 18, 2009

Last composer standing - the results Of 3,200 people who read or engaged with the debate here, on twitter and on facebook, as well as an uncounted readership on radio and newspaper sites, just over 100 eligible ballots were received. Some ticked one composer for posterity, others voted for the full ten...

Posted November 17, 2009

Last Composer Standing - the top three In light of technical and security difficulties - think Afghan election - polls for the most durable composer will remain open until 1800 EST (2300 GMT) Monday Nov 16. The response has been far heavier than expected and the spin-off...

Posted November 15, 2009

Last composer standing A fleeting thought while listening to Gavin Bryars has led to a sweeping discussion as to which 10 living composers will still be played in 50 years' time. We've whittled it down to five certs: Birtwistle, Boulez, Rautavaara, Reich and...

Posted November 13, 2009

Big-City Texas in the '80s: Black Water Rising Attica Locke is a bit of a rarity. She's an African-American, female novelist from Texas who's made her debut with a big-city crime novel. It's called Black Water Rising, and rarer still, Locke is getting compared to such master thriller...

Posted August 6, 2009

Fluxus in Texas Allison McElroy, 411 #2, rolled-up phonebook pages, wire, black frame, 2009 Anarchic and whimsical, Fluxus was a little-known art movement in the '60s -- little-known, even though Yoko Ono was an occasional and influential Fluxite. (John Lennon once quipped...

Posted July 15, 2009

All that glitters can be sold How to Sell: I love the title with its echoes of business advice books. It's easy to imagine someone picking up Clancy Martin's novel to get tips on closing a sale - only to get a shock. But I hope...

Posted June 10, 2009

Money for Art, Pt. 2: Replaying the '50s and '90s Justine Smith, Absolute Power, dollar bills, 2005Money for Art, Pt 1: Arts Funding in AmericaDavid A. Smith's Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy recounts the history of federal funding of the arts...

Posted June 5, 2009

Money for Art, Pt 1: Arts Funding in America It's dead certain that our culture wars will rage again. David A. Smith, a senior lecturer in history at Baylor University, does not actually make that prediction in his book, Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics...

Posted May 30, 2009

Oprah Studies Considered as a Historical Discipline It seems that Oprah is announcing her final season. After this piece appeared, a trade publisher suggested that I write a book about her. The idea did not interest me at all, but then I have a positive gift for avoiding success. (It's...

Posted November 20, 2009

The Focative Case A particular song by the Sex Pistols kept coming to mind while working on this week's column -- and while there are no references to the band in the interview itself, I let the train of thought guide the choice...

Posted October 8, 2009

Studies in Usage The CNN report on the death of former Manson Family member Susan Atkins goes into my file on the word "irony." In the United States we normally use this word to discuss things in which there is no irony whatsoever:...

Posted September 25, 2009

Extreme Unction The announcement of Jim Carroll's death at CatholicBoy includes one sentence that means everything to me: "He was at his desk working when he passed away." A story from my friend Rich Byrne:Idolized him and Basketball Diaries as adolescent. Finally...

Posted September 14, 2009

Relaunch! Home again after a week on a largely deserted island -- a vacation that kept me from attending the NBCC board meeting and 35th anniversary festivities in New York -- I'm now facing so much work that the very thought...

Posted September 14, 2009

Wild Things Make His Heart Sing It's true the Museum of Modern Art's new film retrospective, Spike Jonze: The First 80 Years, opened on Thursday night, so I'm a little late getting to it. But don't mistake my tardiness for a lack of enthusiasm for either...

Posted October 12, 2009

It's Supposed to Be BarryMORE, not BarryLESS Last night marked our li'l version of the Tony Awards, the 15th annual Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Philadelphia Theatre. I've attended a whole bunch of those ceremonies and watched them grow in scale alongside Philly's theater community. However, it's...

Posted October 6, 2009

The Best of the Fests There are still a few days left in the 2009 Philadelphia Live Arts/Fringe Festival, but what with the Jewish new year and other obligations, including the start of the regular theater season, I've had to cash out early. Good news...

Posted September 17, 2009

The Countdown Begins I'm away on vacation right now, and won't return until the start of the Philadelphia Live Arts/Fringe Festival on September 3, when I'll go from being tanned and well-rested to a 24/7 schedule of theater/new-school-year/High Holidays insanity. I know, cry...

Posted August 27, 2009

Finding the Real Spike Lee's filmed version of Passing Strange--that dark horse of a rock-musical coming-of-age tale which garnered 7 Tony noms and won one statuette for Best Book (P.S.: the New York Drama Critics Circle voted it Best Musical, which makes one...

Posted August 12, 2009

An American Farce There are a few elements in Irish dramatist Enda Welsh's play The Walworth Farce -- currently on tour in the US in a Druid Theatre production directed by Mikel Murfi -- that might confuse or perplex American audiences. The reference...

Posted November 20, 2009

Big Bang If a comet were to crash into the Earth, it would make quite a dent.But in director Ryan Rillette's production of Peter Sinn Nachtrieb's play Boom, this colossal event elicits more of a whimper than a bang on stage. This...

Posted November 19, 2009

Self-Marketing Artists are becoming very savvy about marketing themselves these days. Everyone's out there on FaceBook and MySpace and Twitter sending out news about their work and related upcoming events to generate interest and hopefully sell tickets.So it's a little disconcerting...

Posted November 18, 2009

On Making A Good End More than any other recitalist I've experienced lately, Joyce DiDonato has far outstripped the rest in terms of knowing how to make a good end.It wasn't just the mezzo-soprano's encore choices that touched the audience last night at Herbst...

Posted November 17, 2009

Only in San Francisco... ...is it possible to walk down the street swinging a yoga mat and be accosted by a homeless person pushing a Safeway cart in grimy clothes who says: "Pilates?" by way of introduction."No, yoga," I said to the man, smiling....

Posted November 16, 2009

How to Think about Public Art How to think about public art?  Do you just keep doing the same thing?  Big art?  Architectural intimacy?  Site-specific narrative?  Locally responsive?   Internationally, public art has been institutionalized as the founder's dreamed in the 1960 and 1970s.  Big -...

Posted September 7, 2008

Public Art as Science Project MOMA and PS1 prepare the public for the "Watersfalls" later this month in NYC.  The the scaffolding has been constructed under the Brooklyn bridge. Photo taken on May 26. From the Bay Area and Boston emerge artworks that are mainly science projects overlaid with...

Posted June 1, 2008

Starting Over Again Returning to New York City after a 20-year journey in Seattle and South Florida.  New York taught me how to think art.   Psychologically, NYC has changed dramatically.   Signs in the subway remind parents to keep baby carriages off the escalator.  Street territory has been reapportioned for...

Posted May 17, 2008

Public Buyers of Public Art On April 11 in North Carolina, Glenn Harper, Editor of Sculpture Magazine and Bill Thompson, Editor of Landscape Architecture, and I meet to kick off the "Public Art 360" Conference.  Click Here to Attend.  In the next few weeks,...

Posted March 16, 2008

Knitters beat MGM Mirage in Public Art Media Blitz At the end of last week, two public art projects competed for media attention in the USA. In the small town of Yellow Springs, Ohio, a few local women knitted a sweater for ONE tree during a winter day....

Posted March 11, 2008

The Church of the Video Christ Verily, verily, I say unto thee, with powder on my nose and makeup to hide my 4 o'clock shadow...Joe Johnson, from Mega Churches, via...

Posted November 20, 2009

Kader Attia: slums of the Third World Tract homes in America are cookie cut, but slums in the Third World are hand made.Kader Attia's installation Kasbah is in Los de Arriba y Los de Abajo at Sala de Arte Publico Siqeiros in Mexico City, through Jan. 10.Attia's...

Posted November 20, 2009

Friday links - slam-dunk curation Best of 3 has the best take on the news that Shaquille O'Neale will co-curate a show titled, Size Does Matter:It would be so easy to just poke fun, or dismiss this as a publicity stunt. But you know what?...

Posted November 20, 2009

Sean Flood - Boston roots music Sean Flood, 3 Deka, oil/canvas. With relatives living on all three floors and holy water in the parlor. I was born in Boston. Were it not for the restless mobility (and dread) of my parents, I might be there still,...

Posted November 19, 2009

She who digs newspapers... has her own light. (Via)...

Posted November 19, 2009

Cornered: 1969 And All That.... at P.S.1/MoMA                                                     Robert Smithson: Corner Mirror with Coral, 1969. At P.S.1, the sculpture is displayed on...

Posted November 15, 2009

Jung's Secret Book, Aboriginal Paintings, and Mandalas   What do these images have in common?       Top left is from "Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya" at the Grey Art Gallery, N.Y.U., 100 Washington Square East, to Dec.5.   Top right is from...

Posted November 2, 2009

Ken Friedman: Fluxus Prodigy   Refluxions   A recent exhibition at the Stendhal Gallery in Chelsea gave pause for thought. And another chance to play catch-up with Fluxus, during what might be a Neo-Fluxus period. Solidified just before Conceptual Art per se, Fluxus was...

Posted October 18, 2009

Allan Kaprow: The Retread      William Pope.L,YARD (To Harrow), 2009; "reinvention" of Allan Kaprow'sYARD, 1961   Part One: Art By the Yard Allan Kaprow's Yard, now in its 15th reincarnation, celebrates the new quarters (32 E. 69th St.) of Hauser & Wirth, formerly only...

Posted October 4, 2009

Fluxus Redux  Fluxconcert Performance    The End of The Art World, Again Art galleries are closing down. Well, perhaps not enough of them. And, let's face it, museums are dull. As an exercise in nostalgia, we now have O'Keeffe, Kandinsky, and are...

Posted September 18, 2009

Architectural Trauma: Downsized Berkeley Art Museum Plans May Not Include Toyo Ito From the Museum of the Unbuilt: Toyo Ito's scrapped model for the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film ArchiveLawrence Rinder, fresh from conversing on Oct. 27 with his former Whitney Museum mentor, Max Anderson (who now directs the Indianapolis...

Posted November 20, 2009

Mies van der Rohe: Celebrated at MoMA, Destroyed in Chicago Mies van der Rohe's Test Cell building at Illinois Institute of TechnologyPhoto by Edward LifsonA minor work of Mies van der Rohe, who is being celebrated in the Museum of Modern Art's current Bauhaus show, is being demolished in Chicago,...

Posted November 19, 2009

Jeanne-Claude, 74, Gatekeeper of the Christo/Jeanne-Claude Artistic Partnership The poignant image now on Christo's and Jeanne-Claude's homepageI got a chance to talk at length with Jeanne-Claude, who died last night at the age of 74, back in 2005 when "The Gates" captured the imagination of all New Yorkers,...

Posted November 19, 2009

Metropolitan Museum’s Red-Ink 2009 Annual Report, Now Online Okay, all you museum wonks. It's that moment you've all been waiting for---the online debut of the Metropolitan Museum's annual report for fiscal 2009!The Report of the Chief Financial Officer, as predicted, showed a whopping $8.4-million operating deficit for...

Posted November 19, 2009

Knox-ious Notoriety (and the MoMA Monster mash): "Knox Notch" in the New Yorker Knox Martin's protest art: what remains of his "Venus" mural (with his recently added signature)Last month, CultureGrrl. This week, the New Yorker!The Knox Notch (scroll down) hit the Big Time in the magazine's Nov. 23 issue (which landed in my...

Posted November 18, 2009

Back Monday I'm taking a Friday off. I'll have two more posts on Edward Burtynsky next week, plus I'll kick off our 2009 DonorsChoose.org drive. (Last year you gave $3,000 to help provide art education to 1,300 students!)...

Posted November 20, 2009

Adams, Nixon... and a new Eastman House project In 2006 I wrote a post detailing some acquisitions at SFMOMA. Among the SFMOMA curators with whom I spoke was Sandra Phillips, who heads up the museum's photography department. She told me this story. I've tried to interest magazines in...

Posted November 19, 2009

Edward Burtynsky's 'Oil' at the Corcoran An artist interested in tackling a big subject -- a subject such as mankind's dependence on oil -- has a tough job: You can't do it in one picture. Photographer Edward Burtynsky understands that. For the last 12 years he's...

Posted November 18, 2009

Wednesday news and notes I'm behind on posting a couple major items out of Los Angeles: Christopher Knight has reviewed MOCA's two-building permanent collection installation. I've read his write-up and I've seen the checklist: Wow. LACM on Fire visits too. (The Walker is also...

Posted November 18, 2009

Introducing 'Edward Burtynsky: Oil' at the Corcoran On a summer day in St. Catherines, Ontario, a 25-year old Edward Burtynsky reported for a temporary job at the local General Motors plant. He'd been around auto plants his entire life: his dad had been a line worker for...

Posted November 17, 2009