“A cardboard box labeled, ‘Slinky, Wrench, Razorblade, Bullet, Comb, Can Opener, Many Metal Pieces’ rests open on a workbench. Meanwhile, Roger Browner, Man Ray’s nephew, sits in front of a decade-old iMac looking for an object, per my request.”
Sotheby’s To Auction Former Owner’s $500M Art Collection
“[Alfred] Taubman, who died in April aged 91, was a billionaire real estate developer who bought the UK auction house in 1983.” His collection includes works by, among others, Picasso, Modigliani, Gainsborough, de Kooning, Pollock, and Jasper Johns.
Chicago’s Second City Cancels More Shows In Wake Of Fire
“The Second City announced Friday it will move or cancel all main stage, Second City e.t.c. and UP Comedy Club performances through Sept. 20 as a result of the ongoing cleanup from a three-alarm fire in Chicago’s Piper’s Alley Aug. 26.”
The Man Who Fronted The Weirdest (And Longest-Running) Show On Spanish-Language TV Is A Mild-Mannered German-Jewish Chilean
“Sábado Gigante‘s Don Francisco is really Mario Kreutzberger, the 74-year-old child of refugees whose German-Jewish parents fled the holocaust to Chile, where Mario was born. He started hosting the variety show there when he was 21, in 1962. As Sábado Gigante comes to an end on September 19, Kreutzberger talks to Brooke about bringing the show to the US, his 53-year-long career, and criticism of the show’s tone.” (audio)
Oliver Sacks On His Life WIth Gefilte Fish
The Yiddish fish balls had powerful associations for the late neurologist and writer, and he alternated years-long periods of eating it regularly and avoiding it completely. During his final illness, he found it was one of the very last foods he could eat. “Gefilte fish will usher me out of this life, as it ushered me into it, eighty-two years ago.”
How To Make Speeches Better? An Algorithm Can Help!
“After 22 iterations of that process, Beauchamp’s algorithm managed to find a mix of topics, represented in a particular trio of statements, that improved Obamacare approval ratings 30 percent, from neutral (five points) to 6.5. Topics related to laws, rights, and government tended to turn people off Obamacare, while sentences related to employer mandates or pre-existing conditions boosted approval.”
Fair Bans Food Portrait Of Bill Cosby Using Rapeseed
Artist Nick Rindo told CBS that his crop art portrait of Cosby was removed from the exhibit hall on the very first day of the fair, after the venue received multiple complaints. It joins the ranks of two other artworks in the competition’s entire history that have been removed — one made from marijuana seeds, another containing a sexual reference.
Simon Schama: What Faces Tell Us
“A portrait must offer a good likeness, so the truism holds. But this raises an enormous question: a likeness of what, exactly? Which of the innumerable faces we put on for as many occasions; some public, some private, some that arrive unbidden?”
What (Or Who) Makes A Great Piano?
“Several leading brands have top-of-the-line instruments that represent decades of work at developing prototypes, whether animating an existing line, such as the Yamaha CFX or the Shigeru Kawai, or creating a new one, such as Fazioli.”
A Listeners’ Guide To The Great Pianos
Great pianos are like sports cars: They have passionate adherents, their owners are often fiercely loyal to one brand, and at the top of the line, the differences between one and another come down in part to personal preference. Here’s a rundown of some of the top names in the field.
What Palmyra Meant To History, To Us
“What was done in Palmyra was a crime. The crime was committed in particular circumstances and for particular ideas—in geopolitical and ideological contexts. There is no escape from these contexts into lyrical speculations. This war on a parcel of a universal human patrimony—people still believe in such things, don’t they?—was part of a larger war, an actual war, over territory and power and the meaning of life.”
Classical Music Critic Robert Commanday, 93
“I don’t regret or withdraw a single carping article or castigating review. The standards I had held to were not set by me but by the works and the art form first and then by the artists and performing institution themselves. They also are measured by what we have come to expect of them and what they claim and aim to be.”
Fear Of ‘Extremist Agenda’ Was Reason For Cancelling Play About Girls Who Joined ISIS
In a just-released email sent July 30, the UK National Youth Theatre’s artistic director wrote, “The creatives have failed to meet repeated requests for a complete chronological script to justify their extremist agenda and so it doesn’t look good for the future of Homegrown on National Youth Theatre turf.”