“The world’s most-visited museum previously opened for six free Sundays a year, but a statement published Wednesday said this was failing to bring in visitors from a broad spectrum of society. … The Louvre is hoping to appeal to more people living in poorer Paris suburbs as well as to young adults and families with older children with the initiative.”
Archives for November 2018
The Nézet-Séguin Era Begins At The Metropolitan Opera
Mr. Nézet-Séguin, who had originally been set to assume the post in 2020, moved up his start date to take a stronger musical hand at the opera house after the allegations against Mr. Levine came to light. And although it will be a few seasons before he takes on his full workload at the Met and implements some of his plans for commissions and collaborations, he is already making his presence felt.
Minimalist Robert Morris, 87
Mr. Morris was one of a generation of artists who embraced the Minimalist credo, along with Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin and others. But while they continued to work within the genre’s austere limits, Mr. Morris went on to explore an astonishing variety of stylistic approaches, from scatter art, performance and earthworks to paintings and sculptures symbolizing nuclear holocaust.
UN Adds Reggae To Its List Of Cultural Treasures
Jamaica applied for recognition of its musical tradition at a meeting of the UN in Mauritius this year. “It is a music that we have created that has penetrated all corners of the world,” said the country’s culture minister Olivia Grange.
How Blockchain Is Changing Philanthropy
Many nonprofits now accept cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, including the United Way, Red Cross, and Save the Children. All three receive digital monies through a Bitcoin payment processor called BitPay.
“Shakespeare In Love” 20 Years Later
After its Academy Award wins, “Shakespeare” became Exhibit A when people claimed that a studio can buy an Oscar. Miramax certainly waged a hefty campaign for the movie, but it’s likely the “buy an award” theory was invented by rival studios who lost out that year and assumed it was a matter of spending rather than taste; their claims received widespread coverage on the then-expanding internet. But if the theory were true, why did “Shakespeare” win only seven of its 13 nominations? Why not a clean sweep?
How To Look At Art?
Art is regarded as part of a wide aesthetic world, not sealed in a vacuum, so Robert Gober’s “Untitled Leg” spurs associations not just to Duchamp’s 1917 readymade urinal “Fountain,” Meret Oppenheim’s 1936 “Object” and Duane Hanson’s 1970s Madame Tussaud-like sculptures but also to an Alfred Hitchcock movie and Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West.
Toulouse-Lautrec Was One Of The Creators Of Modern Celebrity Culture — And One Of Its First Victims
“His strikingly innovative designs turned artistes such as Aristide Bruant, Jane Avril and Yvette Guilbert into household names, heralding the birth of celebrity culture as we know it and making a star of their creator in the process.” (And how did he become a casualty of that culture? Absinthe.)
Struggling To Find The Aesthetic Self(ie)
Consuming these images is stultifying. To be digitally femme means to bathe anxiously in the images of others and act impotently in response, liking a photo or congratulating others on their beauty. More stultifying is that this is done in spite of knowing the effort that went into each composition. The selfie is a cover-up, hiding both the means of its own production and the true self.
The Communist Manifesto Becomes A Cantata
“Choral Marx, which was recently performed at NYU’s Skirball Center, consists of nine singers whose variously musical utterance transfigures, toys with, and otherwise implements eight heavily excerpted selections from the 1888 Samuel Moore translation of the Manifesto. Led by [composer Ethan] Philbrick’s cello, the band played all the hits: ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies/ Is the history of class struggle,’ ‘The bourgeoisie has reduced personal worth to exchange value,’ ‘There is a specter haunting this world’ and so on.”
How Hip Hop Is Influencing Architecture
Because the idea of hip-hop architecture is still very new, the design elements aren’t quite apparent yet, though Deconstructivism and Postmodernism are probably the closest reference points in forms that emphasize the design of façades, different heights for different sections of buildings, and references classical architecture.
Changing Museums’ Wall Texts To Acknowledge The, Well, Problems With Certain Artists
“While museum wall labels were once used to explain the ‘title, artist, date’ status of an artwork, they’re quickly becoming a place to spark debate, rewrite history and acknowledge untold stories. In light of the #MeToo movement, wall labels are finally starting to include the controversial information that surrounds an artwork or artist. It could soon become the expectation.”
27 Artists Talk About The Best And Worst Advice They Got
People have told me to stop being a perfectionist and make more work, more quickly. This is not bad advice in theory, but it does not work for me.
Ten Literary Translators On The Art Of Translation
Lydia Davis: “In translating, then, you are … always solving a problem. It is a word problem, an ingenious, complicated word problem that requires not only a good deal of craft but some art or artfulness in its solution. And yet the problem, however complicated, always retains some of the same appeal as those problems posed by much simpler or more intellectually limited word puzzles — a crossword, a Jumble, a code.” (Among the other translators included are Jhumpa Lahiri and Vladimir Nabokov, who makes the job sound impossible for anyone but himself.)
Why Museums Shouldn’t Return Colonial Cultural Treasures
Turning the past into a morality play, in which grandstanding politicians and academics act as saviours, can have deleterious consequences for the way we understand it. Looking back on earlier times is a privileged and elevated position from which to view it, one that is often distorted by current preoccupations and interests. It’s easy to launch a press conference and condemn colonialism, after all; what’s harder is tackling contemporary social problems, and Macron faces and ignores many of those. It is important to guard against the simplistic and all too easily acquired feelings of superiority that we can have by surveying the past through contemporary mores, centuries later.
When Oxford’s Library Literally Branded Dirty Books With A Scarlet Letter
Well, okay, the letter wasn’t really scarlet; it was black, but nevertheless … Beginning in 1882, when the Bodleian Library overhauled its cataloguing system, the Greek letter phi (Φ) was branded onto the spines of books deemed to be “Obscene literature in general” or “Drawings and photographs of nudes and similar subjects.” These books — which ran from an illustrated edition of Ovid’s love poetry to Joyce’s Ulysses to Madonna’s Sex to a Monty Python volume — were kept under lock and key, available only with a specific referral from a professor. The Φ system was in use until, wait for it, 2010.
Why Do People Like Sad Music? It’s The Hormones
Yes, there are the obvious reasons: it can move us or validate our own sad feelings. And the human brain produces several hormones in response to music, including dopamine and serotonin. But sad music in particular induces production of a hormone called prolactin.
As Confederate Monuments Come Down, Whom Should 21st-Century Monuments Honor?
“What should a contemporary monument look like? Who deserves to go up on a pedestal? Should there be a pedestal at all? Five artists, or groups of artists, from each of the five cities involved in New Monuments for New Cities were invited to respond to the questions and to create a poster or projection of their ideal monument. The same 25 designs will travel to each location: Houston; Austin, Tex.; Chicago; Toronto; and New York.”
An Oscars Columnist Explains Why The Oscars Still Matter
Kyle Buchanan, the New York Times‘ new Carpetbagger: “This isn’t rah-rah boosterism: These awards can frustrate and often miss the mark, but that’s why they remain so crucial. If the Oscar nominations provide a snapshot of that year in Hollywood, and Hollywood helps shape the way we see ourselves, then examining them can tell us not only where the industry is headed but also where our cultural blind spots still lie.” Exhibits A, B, and C: #OscarsSoWhite, #MeToo, and #TimesUp.
Manchester Is Using The Arts To Address Its Homelessness Crisis
“The city council’s homelessness strategy for the next five years explicitly includes a commitment to increasing access to arts … [as part of] what is described as a jigsaw of homelessness support approaches.” Says one arts executive involved, “Funding to local government to help tackle homelessness was reduced, so for the first time the city council said they couldn’t solve it on their own – and we were there to offer a solution.”
Renoir Painting Stolen From Vienna Auction House
Shortly after 5 p.m. on Monday, three men dressed in ordinary clothes entered the Dorotheum auction house, walked up to Renoir’s Golfe, mer, falaises vertes, took it out of its frame, and walked right out. Said a police spokesman, “It was very quick. Nobody noticed.”
‘Growing The Southern Theater Canon’: Alabama Shakespeare Festival Launches Major Commissioning Project
“The Alabama Shakespeare Festival will commission 22 plays in the next five years, with more than half of the commissions set to go to female playwrights and playwrights of color. Rick Dildine, the artistic director of the [festival], … emphasized that the plays will focus on ‘transformative moments in the South that caused important and lasting changes to its people, culture and land.'”
Songs Sung By Auschwitz Inmates Discovered
University of Michigan musicologist Patricia Hall was doing research in the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum when she found handwritten arrangements of popular German songs — titles such as “The Most Beautiful Time of Life” and “Sing a Song When You’re Sad” — assembled for prisoners to perform for their SS captors.
UK Parliament To Investigate ‘Class Ceiling’ In Arts
“A parliamentary inquiry has been launched to explore the lack of working-class performers, writers and musicians in the entertainment industry. … Topics such as arts education, access to training, low and no pay and recruitment will be covered in the wide-ranging review, which has been launched in response to the idea that social inequalities and class are often forgotten in the debate around diversity.”
Creative Industries In UK Now Worth More Than £100 Billion Annually
“According to figures published by the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) on Wednesday, the value of the nation’s creative sector has almost doubled from £66.3bn in 2010 to £105.5bn [in 2017], and increased significantly from 2016’s figure of £94.8bn. TV, film, advertising, radio, photography, music, museums, art galleries and digital industries make up this sector.”