Librarians: If We Can’t Lend Books During Lockdown, Let’s Make Our Buildings And Bookmobiles Wi-Fi Hotspots

AUDIENCE, WORDS Posted: March 25, 2020 9:01 am

“The [American Library Association] urged the FCC to waive E-rate restrictions so libraries could not only offer [free] Wi-Fi access via local libraries, but could also provide broadband service to disconnected communities via bookmobiles and mobile hotspots without running afoul of FCC rules.” – Vice

Deaccession Deactivation: Fallout from Baltimore Museum’s Pullout from Sotheby’s (& other pratfalls)

The misadventures of Sotheby’s David Galperin, hyping four anticipated highlights of Sotheby’s Oct. 28 Contemporary Art sale, would be ripe for parody if the underlying issues weren’t serious. None of the four works discussed by Sotheby’s hapless head of contemporary evening sales in the auction house’s promotional preview video (beginning... Read more

Source: CultureGrrl Published on: 2020-10-30
Two Hours of Twenty-Four

by Deborah Jowitt Here’s what surprises me. I’m used to watching dance while sitting in a darkened theater surrounded by mostly silent people who’ve been given a fragile world to watch, examine, and... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more!... Read more

Source: Dancebeat Published on: 2020-10-30
Just the right size

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a webcast of the Irish Repertory Theatre’s revival of Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet. Here’s an excerpt. * * * How bad can a play be and still be good? Eugene O’Neill tested the limits many times, perhaps most exasperatingly in the long-winded,... Read more

Source: About Last Night Published on: 2020-10-30
Replay: Clairemarie Osta dances “Emeralds”

Clairemarie Osta dances Fauré’s “Sicilienne” in the Paris Opera Ballet’s 2005 staging of George Balanchine’s “Emeralds,” the first section of Jewels, his full-evening plotless ballet: (This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) Continue reading Replay: Clairemarie... Read more

Source: About Last Night Published on: 2020-10-30
Almanac: Anthony Powell on growing old

“Growing old’s like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.” Anthony Powell, Temporary Kings Continue reading Almanac: Anthony Powell on growing old at About Last Night.... Read more

Source: About Last Night Published on: 2020-10-30
Why composers shouldn’t attack each other in public

In the end, everyone comes out looking bad. So it was when composer Matthew Aucoin, age 30, took on Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) in the Nov. 5 New York Review of Books. The young Boulez trashed his compositional contemporaries left and right; now Aucoin takes up that mantle in his review... Read more

Source: Condemned to Music Published on: 2020-10-30
Free Online Event / Friday / Oct. 30 / 12 p.m.Bend Your Mind: Artificial Intelligence and Art

"Today’s computers compose music that sounds “more Bach than Bach” and turn photographs into paintings in the style of Van Gogh’s "Starry Night." They also write screenplays. But are algorithms truly creative—or are they merely tools to be used by musicians, artists, and writers?" — Creative GC: Art and Science... Read more

Source: Straight|Up Published on: 2020-10-29
Diane di Prima, R.I.P.

Diane di Prima died several days ago in San Francisco at age 86. The obituaries have poured in, paying tribute to a life devoted to writing—her own and others'. She was a poet, editor, publisher, memoirist, novelist and, not least, a social activist. I believe she will be remembered most... Read more

Source: Straight|Up Published on: 2020-10-29
Almanac: Anthony Powell on “truth” in fiction and biography

“People think because a novel’s invented, it isn’t true. Exactly the reverse is the case. Because a novel’s invented, it is true. Biography and memoires can never be wholly true, since they can’t include every conceivable circumstance of what happened. The novel can do that. The novelist himself lays it... Read more

Source: About Last Night Published on: 2020-10-29
15 Past Presidents of AAMD Sign Letter Calling for Baltimore Museum to “Reconsider” Planned Sales

Can you stop a speeding freight train before it crashes? Some 15 (and counting?) former presidents of the Association of Art Museum Directors are giving it a try: In an 11th-hour letter to Clair Zamoiski Segal, board chair of the Baltimore Museum of Art, they have urged the museum to... Read more

Source: CultureGrrl Published on: 2020-10-28
A ‘Noir’ Drawing Brings the 15th Century into the Light

Gerard Bellaart, an admirer of Hans Badung Grein (who studied with Durer and was his favourite pupil), notes that Grein’s mastery of engraving was so great that his engraved self-portrait, for example, “somehow looks like a silverpoint.”... Read more

Source: Straight|Up Published on: 2020-10-28
Snapshot: Vladimir Horowitz plays Scriabin

Vladimir Horowitz plays Scriabin’s Vers la flamme in the living room of his Manhattan apartment: (This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) Continue reading Snapshot: Vladimir Horowitz plays Scriabin at About Last Night.... Read more

Source: About Last Night Published on: 2020-10-28
Almanac: Hortense Calisher on happy childhoods

“A happy childhood can’t be cured. Mine’ll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that’s all, instead of a noose.” Hortense Calisher, Queenie Continue reading Almanac: Hortense Calisher on happy childhoods at About Last Night.... Read more

Source: About Last Night Published on: 2020-10-28
AAMD’s Failed Oversight: Murky “Clarification” of Its “Financial Flexibility” Resolutions

Better late that never (but not soon enough), Brent Benjamin, current president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, is attempting to backpedal from the precarious position he championed just six month ago, when AAMD temporarily loosened its tight strictures against the use of proceeds from art sales for anything... Read more

Source: CultureGrrl Published on: 2020-10-27
Lookback: traveling light

From 2010: I, too, once felt the mad desire to own every jazz record ever made, and to have them all shelved in chronological order at arm’s length from my desk. Today I own just two racks, and whenever I acquire a new album, I get rid of an old... Read more

Source: About Last Night Published on: 2020-10-27
Almanac: Anthony Powell on the meaningfulness of literature

“I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertable assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.” Anthony Powell, The Valley of Bones Continue reading Almanac: Anthony Powell on... Read more

Source: About Last Night Published on: 2020-10-27
Alarming Preview: Sotheby’s Hawks Baltimore Museum’s Clyfford Still & Brice Marden

Sirens (coming from the street) were heard wailing at the beginning of Sotheby’s Virtual Preview of Highlights from Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary Art—a fleeting but thematically appropriate soundtrack for the alarming disposals set to occur at the auction house’s Contemporary Art auction on Wednesday evening in New York. That startling... Read more

Source: CultureGrrl Published on: 2020-10-26
Lear Lite

Shakespeare's writing—all of it, poetry and plays—was repulsive to Tolstoy, who claimed that whenever he read Shakespeare he was overcome by "repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment." As for "King Lear," ranked among Shakespeare's four greatest tragedies, he found it "at every step," according to George Orwell, "stupid, verbose, unnatural, unintelligible, bombastic,... Read more

Source: Straight|Up Published on: 2020-10-26
Farther along

It’s just short of seven months since the death of Hilary Teachout, my beloved wife. I was close to despair when I returned from her deathbed to my locked-down apartment, and though I thought at one point that I was coming out of it, I was wrong. I missed out... Read more

Source: About Last Night Published on: 2020-10-26
Just because: Jeri Southern sings Frank Loesser

Jeri Southern sings Frank Loesser’s “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year”: (This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) Continue reading Just because: Jeri Southern sings Frank Loesser at About Last Night.... Read more

Source: About Last Night Published on: 2020-10-26