“The Ajanta Caves, 30 spellbinding Buddhist prayer halls and monasteries carved, as if by sorcery, into a horseshoe-shaped rock face in a mountainous region of India’s Maharashtra state, … were ‘discovered’ by accident in 1819 … [after being] abandoned by those who created it as long ago as AD 500.”
Archives for February 2015
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.25.15
Connecting with Communities: A Conversation Template
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2015-02-25
In the Heat of the Dance
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-02-25
Crucifixion Conservation: Cleveland Museum’s Time-Ravaged Caravaggio
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-02-25
Services For Clark Terry
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-02-25
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Where Beethoven Is A Star: Violent Video Games
“The spirit of Beethoven has come back to life in first-person shooter games. Over-the-top Romanticism, in all its most extravagant manifestations, is now the preferred musical accompaniment to virtual killing.”
These Artists Promote Cultural Understanding (But Not If They Can’t Get Visas)
“In a time when cultural understanding is more critical than ever before, it’s become an uphill battle for artists from Islamic countries to obtain permission to travel to the United States.”
Study: Violent Video Games Are Less Violent For Good Players
“The level of aggression and hostility such games produce varies considerably depending upon the skill of the individual player.”
Here’s Why Classifying Writers Is A Bad Idea
“Given the chance, we would resist classification. I have never met a writer who wishes to be described as a female writer, gay writer, black writer, Asian writer or African writer. We hyphenated writers complain about the privilege accorded to the white male writer, he who dominates the western canon and is the only one called simply ‘writer’.”
Non-Profits Versus For-Profits – The Lines Are Blurring
“All organizations – not just nonprofits – are now in the business of promoting “social good” in order to gain support… If your organization imagines one of its key differentiators to be its social responsibility, well, then your thinking may be at complete odds with the way the market perceives and evaluates all organizations (i.e. nonprofits and for-profits alike).”
Theatre Cancels All-Asian “Showboat” After Concluding It Couldn’t Be Done
“We spoke with, and listened purposefully to members of racially diverse communities and particularly with our most direct constituents, Asian-Americans, regarding how tackling this work might be perceived when the Asian presence is thrust into the center of a conversation that has historically excluded it. After carefully absorbing arguments of both support and opposition, we have chosen to cancel the production, concluding that the goal that propelled us — to lift up the Asian-American theater artist — could not be sufficiently achieved.”
Con Men Try To Sell Fake Goya, Get Paid In Counterfeit Money, Then Get The Book Thrown At Them
“The con artists realized they had been tricked when they tried to deposit 1.7 million Swiss francs (€1.5 million) in a Geneva bank and were told that the banknotes were mere photocopies.”
Results: Arts Rank Low In Survey Of Essential Skills Students Need
“Despite decades of work citing and arguing the value and benefit of the Arts as a core subject important to the education of our children, despite substantial research on that importance, despite the flourishing of hundreds, if not thousands, of exemplary programs across the country, and despite all our efforts, the public seemingly STILL thinks of the arts (at least as important in education) as a frill, a luxury.”
The Arts Are Always Talking About Being Inclusive. And Yet Hypocrisy Is Rampant
“In the face of such bleak statistics, it’s time for us to ask why the industries with some of the loftiest ideals and the most vocal commitments to progressivism still far so far short of reasonable expectations.”
Oops. Hackers Buy Up First Batch Of “Burning Man” Tickets
“They figured out there was a problem when passes went on sale last week. Some 80,000 people tried to buy $390 tickets to the massive, free-for-all festival in a remote dry lake bed in the Black Rock Desert in Northern Nevada in late August. But only the first 20,000 people who clicked were guaranteed a pair of tickets.”
Why Can’t Art Just Be Art?
“Cultural institutions once saw it as their priority to cultivate, preserve and display the best of the arts. Their unique contribution was to cultivate culture in the public sphere, for anyone to enjoy, by developing public understanding of the arts and sciences that have shaped the world we live in today. Through providing access to their collections and archives, they offered inspiration to, and sometimes platforms for, writers, painters, dramatists, architects, and many more.
Now they are desperate to be seen as inclusive, non-elitist public spaces.”
Dutch Soccer Hooligans Damage Historic Bernini Fountain In Rome
“One of the central victims of the clash was the Berninis’ Fontana della Barcaccia, a fountain of a half-sunken ship that sits at the foot of the famous steps in piazza di Spagna. In addition to being left looking like it had a hangover, filled with beer bottles, balloons, and trash, at least 100 scratches were made to the travertine sculpture, damage that one Italian official called ‘permanent and irreparable’.”
Yes, Sometimes You Do Have To Censor Shakespeare, Says Mark Rylance
“I don’t think there’s pressure [to remove] the bawdy jokes. He’s bawdier a lot more times than people realise. The pressures I feel are more for times where he will say something very antisemitic.”
ISIS Burns 8,000 Rare Books and Manuscripts in Mosul’s Library
“Among its lost collections were manuscripts from the eighteenth century, Syriac books printed in Iraq’s first printing house in the nineteenth century, books from the Ottoman era, Iraqi newspapers from the early twentieth century and some old antiques like an astrolabe and sand glass used by ancient Arabs. The library had hosted the personal libraries of more than 100 notable families from Mosul over the last century.”
The Genius And Excess Of John Berryman
“Centennial celebrations, meant to re¬suscitate a reputation, run the risk of burying it instead. Consider the case of John Berryman … Not so long ago he was a commanding figure in what had come to be known as confessional poetry, for its seemingly raw autobiographical excavation of alcohol and drugs, adultery and divorce, madness and hospitalization.”
The Murky Gay (And Not-Gay) Politics Around Graham Moore’s “Stay Weird” Oscars Speech
“A lot of people assumed that by comparing himself to Turing, Moore was specifically addressing the plight of people who aren’t straight … But knowing that he’s straight, and knowing the primary controversy surrounding The Imitation Game has been about its minimization of the gay experience, makes Moore’s Oscars moment a somewhat strange one. In fact, it’s striking how much his speech is decidedly not aimed at gay people.”
How A Museum Can Help Make Science Accessible
Ellen V. Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York: “The public has a real thirst to understand the world around them. But what people don’t want to do is be intimidated or made to feel like it’s too much for them to understand. We are … removing any sense that it’s too hard, remote, for experts only. It isn’t. Science really is a great detective story.”
UK Labour Party: We’ll Put Arts “At The Heart Of The Government” (But We Might Cut Funding Anyway)
Ed Milliband: “I come here with an offer: to put policy for arts and culture and creativity at the heart of the next Labour government’s mission. … The arts and culture define our character as a nation … [But] I can’t make promises about what funding’s going to look like in the future.”
Beyond The Turing Test: Artificial Intelligence Will Never Be Human Intelligence
“Some insist that ‘hard A.I.’ (with human-level intelligence) can never exist, while others conclude that it is inevitable. But in many cases these debates may be missing the real point of what it means to live and think with forms of synthetic intelligence very different from our own. … A mature A.I. is not necessarily a humanlike intelligence, or one that is at our disposal.”
What Philly Cheesesteak Does To The Brain (The Science Of Appetite)
And then there’s scrapple. The researcher’s name for the appeal of these two Philadelphia delicacies is dynamic contrast. (podcast)
Heart Of A Ballet Superstar: Wendy Whelan At 47
“She was, and is, longer than most. More angular. Like calligraphy, critics said. And that’s just the start. They go crazy for her work ethic. Her astounding strength. Her rapturous, incandescent spirituality. So have choreographers. … Last fall, at 47, Whelan left the New York City Ballet. But she’s still dancing.” (audio; includes video clips)
Robert De Niro To Direct Stage Musical
Along with theater veteran Jerry Zaks, the Oscar-winning actor will direct a musical adaptation of Chazz Palmintieri’s play A Bronx Tale, a film version of which De Niro directed in 1993.
Mexico City Museum Cancels Exhibition Because Artist’s Work Is Too Bloody
“Anticipating that [Hermann] Nitsch’s disturbing oeuvre might upset Mexicans already alarmed by the bloodshed ravaging their country, the Museo Jumex … abruptly canceled an exhibition that was scheduled to open this week. The pre-emptive decision by the Jumex Foundation, which runs the museum, has been denounced by collectors, curators and art critics as an embarrassing act of censorship by a group striving to establish itself in the international art circuit.”