The 81-year-old Estonian, who is the world’s most-performed living classical composer (and who is not himself Roman Catholic), is one of three recipients of this year’s Ratzinger Prize, named for Pope Benedict XVI (né Joseph Ratzinger) and given to “people who answered to the challenge of fostering a deep dialogue among science, theology and philosophy.”
Archives for September 2017
Improving Schools Is Not The Key To Upward Mobility For Poor Children, Finds New Research
UC Berkeley economist Jesse Rothstein “found that differences in local labor markets – for example, how similar industries can vary across different communities – and marriage patterns, such as higher concentrations of single-parent households, seemed to make much more of a difference than school quality. For Rothstein, there’s no reason to assume that improving schools will be necessary or sufficient for improving someone’s economic prospects. ‘We can’t educate people out of this problem,’ he says.”
Why Book Cover Designs Are So Different In The UK From What They Are In The US
“Traditionally, US design tended towards literal interpretation, driven… by the complexity of the US market: the image that motivates readers in southern California to pick up a copy of a book is likely to be different to what appeals to readers in South Carolina. As a result, US jackets have tended to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and that does not make for good design.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.27.17
CultureGrrl Video: My Opinionated Tour of the Embattled Berkshire Museum
Having written extensively and critically about the Berkshire Museum’s deaccession plans, I thought I ought to revisit that embattled institution in person. I’d been there twice before, decades ago, before … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-09-27
Film Society Cancels Screening After Filmmaker Announces “Justice Pricing” Plan To Charge White Males More
Shiraz Higgins used the false name Sid Mohammed when he announced a so-called justice-pricing model to charge white men as much as $20, while others would pay $10 based on the purchasing power of individual groups and “price discrimination.”
Have We Lost Control Of Our Computers?
“The problem is that we are attempting to build systems that are beyond our ability to intellectually manage… The problem is that programmers are having a hard time keeping up with their own creations. Since the 1980s, the way programmers work and the tools they use have changed remarkably little. There is a small but growing chorus that worries the status quo is unsustainable.”
Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art Hires A New Director
Augustus Casely-Hayford is a force in London’s cultural scene, working as a curator, broadcaster and adviser with many organizations, including the Tate Britain, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the British Library. He created “The Lost Kingdoms of Africa” for the BBC; a six-part series for Sky Arts, “Tate Britain: Great British Walks”; and is working on films on landscape art. His book on Timbuktu and the rise of the Mali Empire will be published next year.
Much Of Public Radio’s Audience Listens In Cars. What That Audience Still Listen In Driverless Cars?
It’s still not clear what the entertainment systems in driverless cars will look like. The women have seen mockup designs that are very preliminary. “We don’t know if we’re essentially going to be presented with a platform from car companies where they’ll say, like, ‘Here’s your screen. Put what you want to put on it’ and now we’re competing with Netflix and Hulu,” said Muller. “Or is there a way to be part of the conversation, help shape what the entertainment experience is like for people?”
How Capoeira Evolved From Occult Martial Art To International Dance
“Capoeira developed in Brazil, derived from traditions brought across the Atlantic Ocean by enslaved Africans … During this time, the art was considered a social infirmity and officially prohibited by the Brazilian Penal Code. The identification of ‘the outlaw’ with capoeira was so widespread that the word became a synonym for ‘bum,’ ‘bandit,’ and ‘thief.’ However, that did not stop the capoeiristas from practicing. They moved to marginal places and camouflaged the martial art as a form of dance.”
Poets: Lost In Academia
Academic institutions are now the biggest steward of poets, who teach everything from freshmen composition courses to graduate workshops. While the financial viability of this arrangement for writers seems to be waning, as universities and colleges find it easier and cheaper to exploit the labor of academics, it is still the uncomfortable status quo.
After Three Major Documentaries About War, What Has Ken Burns Learned? ‘Human Nature Doesn’t Change’
“Whatever arrogance you have – is the past lesser or greater? It’s all the same. And loss is loss is loss. And so wars are united, because they are big loss machines. They drive families apart and then some people don’t come home. … And that’s why they’re so instructive, because they remind us again and again of the worst of us. And we hope in some ways that by studying it you might mitigate it, but it won’t. There will always be wars and everybody feels it the same.” (podcast plus transcript)
Why Religious Belief Doesn’t Count As Delusion, Despite What Richard Dawkins Thinks
As the eponymous physician in the TV series House said, “You talk to God, you’re religious. God talks to you, you’re psychotic.” Neuroscientist Dean Burnett explains that it’s all about the way the brain sets up its model of how the world works.
A New Theatre Magazine To Launch
“Part of the calculus behind The X is TodayTix’s customer base—3.5 million people across 11 cities, with an average age of 29—which gives the magazine a considerable audience and opportunity for monetization right out of the gate.”
Snopes.Com – In The Post-Truth Era, The Internet’s Oldest Myth-Debunking Site’s Problems Aren’t Only Political
Yes, for years the right-wing media complex has been accusing Snopes of liberal bias whenever it fact-checks a lie or myth the right likes, and in today’s climate that situation has only gotten worse. Add to that the very bitter divorce of the site’s founders, David and Barbara Mikkelson, and a financial dispute between David and the site’s new co-owners that includes accusations of embezzlement, and Snopes is having a rough time of it.
How To Be Successful In Theatre? Maybe Take Risks?
Chad Bauman argues: “Change is hard. I’ll admit it sometimes scares me. There are no guarantees. But how is that different from anything else in the theatre? It does surprise me when theatres elect to stick with a failing business model that is most certainly destined to lead to disastrous results over the long term rather than risking throwing it out the window for a shot at success.”
With A ‘Superstar’ At Its Helm, Harlem’s Studio Museum Prepares To Build New Home By America’s Leading Black Architect
“As the Studio Museum prepares to break ground [on 125th Street] next year, coinciding with its 50th anniversary, [Thelma] Golden, 52, is overseeing the institution at a turning point in its history. … Ms. Golden’s name, meanwhile, keeps coming up for top posts, like those at the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the same time, Ms. Golden must defend the Studio Museum’s importance in an age when the work of African-American artists is increasingly making its way into mainstream institutions.”
With Largest Gift In Its History, San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum Begins $38M Expansion
“Museum leaders gathered Tuesday morning to release details of the $38 million expansion that will – when finished in summer 2019 – nearly double its total exhibition space. The biggest addition is a new 8,500 square-foot, column-less exhibition pavilion” designed by Kulapat Yantrasast of the firm wHY. The pavilion will be named for museum board chair Akiko Yamazaki and her husband, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, who have contributed $25 million for the project.
The Real Challenge Of Being A Classical Music Critic: Anthony Tommasini Explains
“Describing performances, whether the New York debut of an exciting young Finnish pianist or a boldly radical production of The Magic Flute, is the core of the reviewing art. … [Yet] music, especially purely instrumental music, resists being described in language. It’s very hard to convey sounds through words. Perhaps that’s what we most love about music: that it’s beyond description, deeper than words. Yet the poor music critic has to try.”
Twitter Will Try Doubling Its Character Limit – Just How Big A Deal Is This?
“To start, the feature will only be available to a random set of users on the service. But if adopted by the platform as a whole, the change will constitute one of the most fundamental changes to Twitter’s core product in years.” Robinson Meyer answers seven questions about the change, such as, “Why would Twitter do such a thing?” (money), “What do 280 characters have to do with money?”, and What does it mean for Twitter’s most (in-)famous user?”
What Disney Hall Sounds Like To An L.A. Philharmonic Musician On Its Stage
“The seating arrangement for the musicians in an orchestra is designed, naturally, to make the music sound best to the audience sitting out in the hall. … But [it] is definitely not optimized for the listening pleasure of the musicians, who hear a different cacophony depending on where they sit. ‘The stage has 101 acoustical micro-climates. Every seat on that stage is different,’ says section percussionist Perry Dreiman.” (audio)
Most Expensive Manuscript Ever Sold Goes For $35 Million
The document is the original printer’s manuscript of the Book of Mormon, sold to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the church most people know as “Mormon”) by the Community of Christ, the Independence, Missouri-based denomination formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Guggenheim Museum Gets Pushback After Withdrawing Three Works Protested By Animal-Rights Activists
Claiming that it had received threats of violence well beyond what it had encountered in the past, the Guggenheim pulled three pieces from its exhibition “Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World” – only to come under a new round of criticism from artists, curators, and PEN America for capitulating to “heightened political sensitivities that have been amplified by social media.”
Gisèle Casadesus, Dean Of France’s Classical Actors And Matriarch Of Its Great Performing Arts Dynasty, Dead At 103
Daughter of conductor Henri Casadesus and harpist Marie-Louise Beetz, mother of conductor Jean-Claude, composer Dominique, painter Béatrice, and actress Martine Casadesus, Gisèle joined the Comédie-Française in 1934 at age 20, where she played 120 roles over almost three decades. Afterwards, she had an extensive career in both theater and film; her final screen performance, at age 96, was with Gérard Depardieu in the 2010 film La Tête en friche. (in French; Google Translate version here)
Joffrey Ballet To Move Into Chicago’s Lyric Opera House
Just as the two companies have opened their first major collaboration, “the Joffrey Ballet and Lyric Opera of Chicago announced Friday that the dance company will move its season residencies from the Auditorium Theatre to the Lyric Opera House, beginning in fall 2020.”
Opera Australia Threatened With Fines For Hiring Too Many Foreign Singers
In the perpetual tug-of-war between hiring the best artists available from anywhere and helping Australian singers make a living in their home country, the balance has swung to the former, with the number of non-Australians in leading roles in the company having tripled over the past seven years. So a government report has recommended docking funding for Opera Australia by up to $200,000 if it doesn’t maintain an “appropriate balance” of Australian and foreign singers.