“Flappy Bird is not difficult to challenge you, nor even to teach the institution of videogames a thing or two. Rather, Flappy Bird is difficult because that’s how it is. It is a game that is indifferent, like an iron gate rusted shut, like the ice that shuts down a city.”
Grand Jury Recommends Possible Shutdown of Planned Pennsylvania Museum
“In Northampton County, Pennsylvania, a grand jury has declared in a 38-page report deemed ‘scathing’ that, due to negligence, the state should review and potentially dissolve the nonprofit group behind the National Museum of Industrial History. The museum has not yet opened despite spending $8 million in operating costs over the past decade.”
Spanish Priest Claims to Have Found Major Murillo Painting
The parish father for three small villages near Granada says that the 17th-century canvas depicting the bound Christ is the first of painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s several treatments of the image, titled Ecce Homo. Experts are divided on the claim’s accuracy.
The Ontological Proof for the Impossibility of Satan
“The Ontological Argument is an infamously devilish a priori argument for God’s existence.” In a bit of theological jiujitsu, a pair of philosophers has used those exact premises to argue that the Devil must, of necessity, not exist – and “the Christian’s world just got a whole lot smaller.”
Moby: Why I Left New York (It’s Not Creative)
“I was so accustomed to the city’s absurd cult of money that it took me years to notice I didn’t have any artist friends left in Manhattan, and the artists and musicians I knew were slowly moving farther and farther east, with many parts of Brooklyn even becoming too pricey for aspiring or working artists.”
Is Fair Use Broken In The Visual Arts?
“Members of the visual arts communities of practice encounter copyright permissions issues in connection with virtually every aspect of fulfilling their professional responsibilities, ranging from an artist’s creation of work that references popular culture to an art historian’s focus on a contemporary artist, to a teacher’s compilation of curriculum materials, to a museum exhibition and catalogue, to scholarly and art publishing.”
Riccardo Muti On The Ways Of The World
Muti looks more and more these days for ways to connect past and present. He wonders if the current merging and melding of cultures and nationalities will produce a kind of music that “will be relevant to listeners today” while “exploring the many layers of the past, the many kinds of melody, harmony, chanting, rhythms of all of these societies throughout history.”
Musical About Anti-Gay Violence in Uganda Wins Richard Rodgers Award
The prize will underwrite a production of Witness Uganda, by Matt Gould and Griffin Matthews, at the American Repertory Theater with Diane Paulus as director.
Unpublished Novella by Charlie Chaplin Will Be Released
The 1948 work, called Footlights and thought to be the source of Chaplin’s 1952 film Limelight, was reconstructed from numerous manuscripts in his archives.
Brazilian TV Airs First Primetime Gay Male Kiss
This was a huge deal. “‘Kiss him, Felix,’ urged thousands of viewers of Globo TV’s popular soap Amor à Vida … The campaign for it was partly led by a politician, and it took place online using Facebook and Twitter.”
Iraqi Writer Finds Literary Asylum in English Translation
“Hassan Blasim calculates that after several decades of dictatorship, economic sanctions and war, Iraqis have around 150 million horror stories to tell.”
4,600-Year-Old Step Pyramid Discovered in Egypt
No one yet knows what it was used for, but archaeologists are sure that it’s older than the great pyramids at Giza.
Joan Mondale, Vice President’s Wife and Arts Champion, Dead at 83
“In Washington and around the country, Mrs. Mondale became known as a tireless advocate for the cultivation of the arts. … She traveled around the country attending museum exhibitions, dedicating new works of art and otherwise directing national attention on artists, noted or undiscovered, whom she admired.”
Riccardo Muti to Stay With Chicago Symphony Until 2020
“Muti has honed these winter season announcements into a sort of high-wire performance art. It is something he clearly enjoys and always proves entertaining for the assembled press, if nerve-wracking for CSO staff who never know what the irrepressible maestro is going to say next.”
Conductor Gerd Albrecht, 78
He led orchestras in Denmark and Japan as well as in a number of German cities, and he spent a notable decade as music director of the Hamburg State Opera. Most famously, perhaps, he served a brief and stormy tenure as the first foreign chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic.
Plus-Size Women Dance Real Ballet On UK Reality Show
On Channel Four’s Big Ballet, former Royal Ballet soloist Wayne Sleep and Ballet Ireland founder Monica Loughman train a newly-assembled company of larger women (many of whom studied dance seriously) for a new staging of Swan Lake.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 02.03.14
Reporting, the Digital Age, and the Disappearing Middle Class
Source: CultureCrash | Published on 2014-02-03
More On Damage To Egypt’s Heritage
Source: Real Clear Arts | Published on 2014-02-03
Curator Barry Bergdoll Explains MoMA’s “Frank Lloyd Wright and the City”
Source: CultureGrrl | Published on 2014-02-03
Seahawks Sweat-Soda (a Partial Repost)
Source: Out There | Published on 2014-02-03
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As We Have Access To All Our Artistic History, Lines Between Past And Present Dissolve
“Suddenly we find ourselves living in an online realm where the old is just as easy to consume as the new. We’re approaching an odd sort of asymptote, as our past gets closer and closer to the present and the line separating our now from our then dissolves.”
Art Stolen By Nazis Goes To Auction (And Here Are The Issues)
“Both Sotheby’s and Christie’s now frequently coordinate with buyers, sellers, restitution lawyers and private art-loss databases to broker deals on art they discover was looted by the Nazis.”
Do The Oscars Have Any Morality?
“Together, the two controversies are this year’s contribution to an emerging insistence by many who watch the Oscar process, and some who participate in it, that Academy members should take into account moral, ethical and social factors when marking a ballot or enforcing the rules.”
Why It’s So Hard To Authenticate A Modigliani
“Authenticating art of all types has become more challenging in recent years as a widening circle of scholars and artists’ foundations refuse to offer opinions or publish a catalogue raisonné — the definitive compendium of an artist’s work — for fear of being sued by buyers or sellers unhappy with their conclusions.”
North Dakota’s Economy Is Booming And The State Is Growing. Now The Culture Boom
“Not everyone’s going to the strip clubs. Some people are actually, you know, writing poems when they’re at home or they’re working on a short story.”
Should Research Paid For By The Public Be Openly Available To The Public?
“Scientific publishing is clearly in flux. Not that long ago, most colleagues I spoke with saw the push for open-access publishing as the quixotic crusade of a few enthusiasts. Today, open-access journals are major players who fill the scientific community’s growing demand for places to publish.”
When Detroit Was San Francisco (Does That Mean San Francisco Will Be Detroit?)
“Towers will spring up in Bay Area greenfields, just like Detroit back in the day. Fifty years going forward, these hulking structures will be suburban ruin porn and people will be shocked that San Francisco used to be the wealthiest city in the United States.”
English National Ballet’s Lead Principal To Retire After 25 Years
Daria Klimentova: “I have worked with some incredible people, who I will always remember. I have given my ballet life to English National Ballet, with all the ups and downs.”