“Hello from Banksy!” is a postcard that you need to shred to read. Created for the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands, and designed by the Belarusian graphic designer Lesha Limonov, it looks like a miniature, framed piece of art. But pull at a tab on the bottom, and the precut postcard comes out in shreds.
Archives for October 2018
The Serious Consequences Of A No-Deal Brexit On UK Arts
There are approximately 131,000 EU nationals working in the arts in the UK, making up 7% of the total workforce. These individuals range from stage technicians to gaming software developers. Freelance and self-employed workers make up 35% of the sector and 33% of EU workers.
Watch For It: The Dead Musician Hologram Tours Are Coming
How “full-on” is a “live experience” that requires the deployment of what has been described as “a military-grade laser” to create the illusion that a performer who died in 1988 is walking the stage again? And doesn’t a “hologram tour” by a dead rock ’n’ roller run completely counter to the point of live music in the first place?
Met Museum Plans After It Leaves The Breuer Building?
Aside from cost-cutting, the museum has cast the decision to leave the Breuer as an opportunity to expand Modern and contemporary programming in its monumental Fifth Avenue home ahead of the David Chipperfield-designed expansion of the Modern and contemporary galleries, planned several years down the line.
Meet Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, Winner Of This Year’s $1 Million Berggruen Prize
Martha Nussbaum, 71, is the author or editor of more than 40 wide-ranging books covering topics including the place of the emotions (including negative ones like disgust) in political life, the nature of human vulnerability, the importance of liberal education and connections between classical literature and the contemporary world. She is also known for helping to advance the so-called capabilities approach to economic development, which holds that progress should be measured by things like increases in life expectancy and education, rather than simply by increases in income.
Here Are The World Heritage Sites Threatened By Climate Change
Here we show that of 49 cultural WHS located in low-lying coastal areas of the Mediterranean, 37 are at risk from a 100-year flood and 42 from coastal erosion, already today. Until 2100, flood risk may increase by 50% and erosion risk by 13% across the region, with considerably higher increases at individual WHS.
Literary Hoax, ‘The Most Underappreciated Genre In History’
Counterfeits such as James Macpherson’s Fragments of Ancient Poetry and Clifford Irving’s Autobiography of Howard Hughes “incubate the circumstances of their composition, weaponizing the prevailing nostalgias and channeling the anxieties of their era while providing a window into the hearts of their author. They are, in other words, literature.”
Syson Siphoned: Met’s Departing Department Chair to Direct Fitzwilliam; 2 Future Stars Emerge
Luke Syson, who in 2012 came to the Metropolitan Museum from the National Gallery, London, becoming the Met’s chairman of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts in 2014, is now poised to join the wave of high-level departures from our country’s preeminent museum.
Catching Up, As Always: Recent Listening In Brief
Randy Waldman, Superheroes (BFM Jazz)
Kate McGarry, The Subject Tonight Is Love (Binxtown Records)
Will Tiny Books The Size Of Your Hand Change The Way We Read?
The tiny editions are the size of a cellphone and no thicker than your thumb, with paper as thin as onion skin. They can be read with one hand — the text flows horizontally, and you can flip the pages upward, like swiping a smartphone.
‘We Were Promised Better Worlds, And All We Got Was This Lousy Headset’ – Consumers Cool On Virtual Reality Games
“VR was supposed to be a revolution, with companies like Oculus pioneering a whole new way for gamers and non-gamers alike to be immersed in digital environments … But for all the hype we have very little consumer interest to show for it.”
Galleries Pile On The Amenities As They Compete For An Audience
For large and now even midsize galleries, custom architecture has become as important as it has long been for museums, with all-new or re-engineered spaces to add restaurants, kitchens, gift shops, bookstores, and black box spaces and auditoriums for performance, film screenings and staged events.
A Cemetery With A Playwright-In-Residence
Playwright Patrick Gabridge is artist-in-residence at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass. “[His] mandate is to bring theatre to the graveyard in a way that avoids the clichés about ghosts and ghouls, and instead focuses on the beauty of the space’s environment and the significance of its history.”
Bill Rauch Talks About How Artistic Leaders Lead
“I’m collaborative perhaps to a fault, both in artistic leadership and in the rehearsal room. I think I’ve become a theatre artist and a theatre leader—an arts leader—because I can’t do things on my own. I have to be in dialogue with people who are smarter than me, who know more about any number of things, who will question how I’m living my values with any given decision in ways that it would not have dawned on me to question.”
Why Do Various Foods Disgust Some People And Not Others? There’s A Museum Devoted To The Question
“What’s interesting,” says Samuel West, an organizational psychologist who’s the lead curator of the Disgusting Food Museum, “is that disgust is hard-wired biologically. But you still have to learn from your surroundings what [in particular] you should find disgusting.”
Man Tries To Kill Colleague At Antarctic Research Station Because He Kept Giving Away The Endings Of Books
Russian investigators are probing a version of the alleged crime that both men were avid readers to pass the lonely hours in the Antarctic station. But Savitsky had become angered that Beloguzov ‘kept telling his colleague the endings of books before he read them’.
Steven Spielberg Signs Up Lena Dunham To Write A Screenplay About A Syrian Refugee, And The Twitterverse Gets Angry
“@lenadunham constantly talks about representation as crucial to enrich storytelling. Yet, in practice, she has shown a disregard for actually elevating those voices. Now, she’s been signed on to write a Syrian refugee’s story? Hollywood, was no female Arab writer available?” That was one typical response to the news that Spielberg and director J.J. Abrams had hired Dunham to pen the script for their film version of A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee’s Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival.
Why John Luther Adams Is A Composer And Not An Activist
“Throughout my life I’ve steered an uneasy course between my desire to help change the world and my impulse to escape it. The vessel in which I navigate these turbulent waters is music. … And yet, it’s impossible for me to regard my life as a composer as separate from my life as a thinking human being and a citizen of the Earth.”
William J. Murtagh, ‘The Pied Piper Of Preservation’, Dead At 95
“As entire city blocks were razed in urban renewal projects, interstate highways were paved across the countryside and architectural marvels such as New York’s Penn Station were demolished to make way for bigger, newer structures, Dr. Murtagh helped lead a growing resistance effort that culminated in the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. In its aftermath, he was appointed the first ‘keeper’ of the National Register of Historic Places — a job that made him the curator of America’s now-sprawling catalogue of significant districts, objects, buildings, sites and structures.”
After 200 Years, ‘Frankenstein’ Has Suffused The Culture
“While Frankenstein may have thwarted his creature’s desire to procreate, [Mary] Shelley’s novel has birthed a seemingly endless stream of adaptations and riffs … There have been camp Frankensteins, feminist Frankensteins, queer Frankensteins, and political Frankensteins of all stripes, which have taken the monster’s murderous revolt against its maker as allegory of everything from scientific overreach to capitalism to racism to war.”
Why Are Haunted Houses Always Big Old Victorian Mansions?
“Head to your local Halloween haunted house or watch a horror movie, and you’ll probably see a creepy Victorian structure that simply exudes terror. But as art historian Sarah Burns points out, in the 1870s, Victorian houses were just … houses. ‘Half a century later, however,’ she writes, ‘that very same style had become a signifier of terror, death, and decay.’ When did we start to associate these houses with creepiness?” Erin Blakemore explains.
Yayoi Kusama And Takashi Murakami Go After Chinese Company Exhibiting Counterfeits Of Their Work
“The shows allegedly began in April and have been held in the Chinese cities of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Shanghai … [and] were allegedly organized by a Chinese company that approached the individual venues.” Attorneys for both artists say they intend to pursue civil and possibly criminal charges as soon as they firmly identify the parties responsible. (Both artists have legitimate shows opening in Shanghai in November.)
Fired Violinist William Preucil Will Be Replaced On Suzuki’s Teaching Recordings
The now-former concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra was dismissed for good last week following an investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct with students. The news has distressed many teachers and parents of children studying violin with the Suzuki Method, as Preucil was the violinist playing on the official Suzuki instructional recordings. (His parents were among the first teachers of the method in the US.) So Suzuki International and Alfred Music have announced that they’ll be issuing new recordings with another violinist as soon as practical.
India Inaugurates World’s Tallest Statue (And Of Course There’s Controversy)
The Statue of Unity, located in prime minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, depicts Indian independence leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel; it’s twice the height of the State of Liberty and cost about $400 million. There are critics objecting to the cost, to the appropriation of farmland for the site, and to Chinese bronze and workers being used for the structure — not to mention the accusations that Modi is trying to appropriate Patel’s stature for himself and his party.
Sasha Waltz On The Battle Over Her Appointment To Staatsballett Berlin And How They Worked Through It
“Waltz says that the Staatsballett dancers’ initial resistance to her leadership was rooted in miscommunication and fear. ‘After we met them and answered, like, 50 questions, there was a big change and an opening up,’ she says. ‘Now it’s a different atmosphere, there’s a strong engagement in the company. There’s a lot of new dancers and they’re all willing to transform and be active in this practice.'”