Oh: “The dramatic photograph of an anteater approaching a glowing termite mound in the dead of night was originally considered a worthy winner of a Wildlife Photographer of the Year award. The prize has now been withdrawn after judges noticed a problem: the anteater pictured is almost certainly a stuffed animal kept outside a visitor centre.”
Archives for April 2018
What’s The Harm In Gamifying Your Life? Well …
The game – for instance, getting more money back on CVS cards, or figuring out which credit card to use in which specific situation – is infinite, and rigged. “It’s not a zero-sum, winners-and-losers sort of game, like Monopoly or cage fighting, but rather one that continues as long as you want to play and one that, in a sense, you can’t win.”
The Erie Chamber Orchestra Ends A Four-Decade Run
Whoa: “The orchestra, founded in 1978 by Bruce Morton Wright and supported by Gannon University, announced it would officially disband at the end of its current season after 40 years of offering free concerts.” Its final concert was Saturday night.
The Life Of A Conflict Photographer
Andrea Bruce took a photography class for fun in the last semester of her undergrad degree in 1995, and since then, she’s photographed some of the most challenging and conflict-ridden places in the world. “I have experienced many roadside bombs and suicide bombs and been under fire. Most of the time it’s just unpredictable — you’re in a war zone and things just happen. You have to know what is worth the risk and what’s not.”
As Kansas City’s American Jazz Museum Teeters On The Brink Of Closing, Is The City Pushing It Over The Edge?
The city has gone through various creative processes to fund its other attractions, including Union Station, the National World War I Museum, and the Kansas City Museum. “Why didn’t city officials and museum stakeholders explore progressive options to breathe new life into the American Jazz Museum? It’s puzzling that none of these creative solutions was seriously considered.”
The Sackler Protests Continue, This Time In DC
On Thursday, the Nan Goldin-led group PAIN traveled to the capital to protest the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery of Art. Goldin said, “We are here to call out all of the Sacklers. … The Sackler brothers built an empire of pain.”
How Did Ferrero Rocher Become The Preferred Status Symbol For Immigrant Families?
Marketing – and the history of war. “Most Americans now know Ferrero Rocher by way of Nutella, but long before the hazelnut cocoa spread became an ingredient seemingly found in every trendy dessert recipe, the gifting and receiving of a Ferrero Rocher chocolate box (48 pieces if you were lucky) was a secret, universal language shared by immigrants in the ’80s and ’90s. It was a truth acknowledged amongst the hospitality-ladened cultures of their families: You never showed up to someone’s house — whether they were strangers or family — without a gift. And if the gift turned out to Ferrero Rocher, it was a surefire way to know you had almost literally struck gold with your hosts.”
You Think You’re Waiting A Long Time To Publish? This Zora Neale Hurston Book Took Ninety Years To Get To Print
She first tried to publish the novel in 1931, but its genesis was earlier. “Hurston began researching Barracoon in 1927, when she first interviewed the former slave Kossola (later named Cudjo Lewis) on an assignment from the famed anthropologist Dr. Franz Boas.”
A Vocalist At The Intersection Of Classical And Blues
Nora Fischer, the daughter of the conductor Ivan Fischer and the recorder player Anneke Boeke, is mixing pop, the blues, and classical music in her performances and albums. “Her affinity with experimental classical styles and her sharp dramatic instincts have encouraged composers to tailor works to her,” including entire song cycles.
The First Kenyan Film To Debut At Cannes Is Banned In Its Home Country Thanks To Homophobia
The film, Rafiki, was banned, and the film classification board even issued threats. “The Kenya Film Classification Board (KFCB) said the film ‘seeks to legitimize lesbian romance.’ KFCB warned that anyone found in possession of the film would be in breach of the law in Kenya, where gay sex is punishable by 14 years.”
Polixeni Papapetrou, Photographer Known For Whimsical And Eerie Images, Has Died At 57
Her images (including one of her young daughter naked, sitting on a rock) often involved her children and her children’s friends in odd and psychologically intense costumes, in the Australian landscape. “Her works were striking in their strange simplicity yet evoked deep emotions and archetypes.”
MoviePass Changes Things Up Right As Marvel’s Long-Awaited ‘Infinity War’ Hits Theatres
First, MoviePass changed its plan so that new subscribers are limited to 4 movies a month instead of one movie per day. Then, on Friday, the day that Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War came out, the “Netflix for movie theatres” changed again – so that you can’t use MoviePass to see the same movie more than once. People were furious. What did the CEO tell The Hollywood Reporter? “Anyone with an issue should call customer service.”
Top AJBlogs Stories From The Weekend 04.29.18
Leonard Bernstein at 100: An American Archetype
My 5,000-word piece on the Leonard Bernstein Centenary, in The Weekly Standard this week, begins with a story you’ve never heard before: “In 1980, at the age of 62, Leonard Bernstein undertook the composition of a … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered QuestionPublished 2018-04-28
Barnes Foundation to Subdivide (& monetize?) 137 Acres; Offloads Costs of Lower Merion Properties
Some six years after it controversially moved to Philadelphia, the Barnes Foundation appears to have decided to monetize the original properties of its founder, the legendary collector Albert Barnes, in both Lower Merion and Chester … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2018-04-27
Replay: Bernadette Peters sings “Broadway Baby”
Bernadette Peters sings Stephen Sondheim’s “Broadway Baby” (from Follies) on The Tonight Show. The performance, originally telecast by NBC on July 27, 1989, is followed by a segment in which Peters is interviewed by Johnny … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-27
Homer And His Unique Way of Seeing
Winslow Homer has always been a complicated artist, and now he will be viewed as an even more complicated one. What’s going to do that is an exhibition opening in June at the Bowdoin College … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear ArtsPublished 2018-04-26
Almanac: Solzhenitsyn on Chekhov and the future of Russia
“If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov, who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years, had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2018-04-26
An Educated Guess: What Did the Lucas Museum Pay for Rockwell’s “Shuffleton’s Barbershop”?
In the two weeks since the announcement of the Berkshire Museum’s widely deplored sale of Norman Rockwell‘s “Shuffleton’s Barbershop” to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, Los Angeles, none of the parties to the transaction … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2018-04-25
The Women Who Will Run Venice’s Architecture Biennale
The new “queens of Venice” are Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects, a practice that’s been doing the work without getting starchitect status – but that could change now. Their philosophy: “The unsolicited ‘spatial gifts’ that architecture can add could be at the scale of city – a free public garden, for example – or at the scale of a surface you touch. It may not involve construction – ‘sitting under a cherry blossom is as happy an architectural space as you’ll find’ – but these ’emotional components’ are what make architecture worth doing.
Brexit Will Hurt Up And Coming British Musicians Who Want To Tour Europe
British musicians will need visas, an approved (and expensive) list of their equipment and personnel, and a lot more tenacity – and fans may stop going to music festivals if their favorite acts can’t get there as well.
On The Centenary Of Jerome Robbins, Master Choreographer Who Reshaped Broadway And Ballet
Robbins, who directed and choreographed On the Town, The King and I, West Side Story, and many more classic musicals, returned to ballet fully in 1969 – and changed American ballet as well. “He weeded out artifice and mannerism where he could. The naturalness he elicited was a particularly American style that then enriched the world of dance.”
The New Lynching Memorial Is ‘Gut-Wrenching And Beautiful’
“That’s the genius of the museum’s design. It neither shies away from nor revels in the horrors it asks you to contemplate. … It grabs you by the throat but makes sure not to choke you. It confronts without condemning. It provides hope through the sculptures, and footprints, of brave women in Montgomery who were the catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. They overcame and so can we.”
Mississippi Gets A New Writers’ Trail, Stretching From Faulkner To Ward
Eudora Welty and Richard Ford will also be getting markers in a new series stretching across the state. Will Richard Wright make the cut? That’s yet to be decided.
Polish Theatre Directors Push Back Against The Government’s Hard Right Turn
Warsaw just hosted a theatre festival with five women directors and a lot of young, fiery daring. One of the glass-ceiling-breaking women: “I’m trying to sound some kind of alarm—that we should be very careful not to let ideas possess our brains or our souls.”
Sam Hamill, Poet And Founder Of Copper Canyon Press, Dies At 74
Hamill also sparked a massive movement of poets against the war with Iraq after being invited to a White House symposium in 2003. “He built a website to present the poems he received, and the White House eventually canceled the symposium. More than 135 poetry readings and other protests were held around the country on Feb. 12, the day the symposium was supposed to begin. More than 13,000 poets submitted work to Mr. Hamill’s website, some of which, including poems by John Balaban, Ursula K. Le Guin and Adrienne Rich, were collected in an anthology, Poets Against the War.“
A Museum Devoted To One French Artist Just Discovered That More Than Half Of Its Collection Is Made Of Fakes
Étienne Terrus was a friend of Henri Matisse, and the museum devoted to his works had gotten the help of the town of Elne to buy many works over two decades. Then an art historian came to town – and alerted the museum staff to the fakes. “In interviews on Friday, the mayor of the Pyrenees town, Yves Barniol, said the situation was ‘a disaster’ and apologised to those who had visited the museum in good faith.”
Thirty-One Hours Of Marvel Movies In One Theatre? Sure, Why Not?
Eleven movies, leading up to the newest Avengers show. A two-day movie marathon. “By the time Infinity War was on deck, 28 hours in, the excitement was palpable. When the 3D seemed to be misaligned during the unwanted trailers, I was genuinely worried there was going to be a riot. A raucous ‘FIX IT! FIX IT’ chant filled the room before the image was quickly repaired.”
T.V. Revivals Have Become Dangerous, Lazy Replicants
Just stop already. “Each joke is played with a knowing wink, with countless call-backs to episodes of yore. It’s reminiscent of a breaking of the fourth wall, but done in a fashion so grand and garish it becomes spectacle viewing. It also reminds viewers of the more cynical purpose behind the series returning to television: not because there’s more of a story to be told, but because there’s more money to be made by manipulating our desire to derive comfort from the familiar.”
The Inspiration For The Set Of A Broadway Revival Came From A Disaster
How did the creative team of the Once on This Island revival make their set? They scouted in earthquake-ravaged, and rebuilding, Haiti.
How Fabulousness Animates Queer Culture
How to define a word that’s so slippery yet so engrained in everyday use? It’s a tricky task, but moore offers the four main characteristics of fabulousness: It doesn’t have to be expensive; it can be secured in innumerable ways; because it’s largely practiced by queer and other marginalized people, it’s “dangerous, political, confrontational, [and] risky”; and it’s about being a spectacle not only to be seen, but also because certain people are over-surveilled and undervalued. Put another way, fabulousness is primarily about a swashbuckling and transgressive world-making.