“A sheet of paper can bend, twist, and tear easily. But folded several times, it becomes stiff and can support objects many times its weight. That’s the basic idea behind ‘origami engineering,’ an emerging technique in structural engineering that’s based on a centuries-old Japanese art form.”
Is Hearing Voices Necessarily A Sign Of Illness? Or Could It Sometimes Do Some Good?
“An increasing number of researchers and practitioners have gone from dismissing hallucinated voices as worthless ravings symptomatic of psychosis to listening carefully to what they say. What they have heard has been infinitely varied and surprisingly complex. And the effort to deal with these complexities is leading to entirely new, even inventive forms of treatment.”
What Are The Limits Of Culture When Hedda Gabler Starts Tweeting?
“The internet is clearly changing ideas around different art forms and how they are delivered and experienced – and where they are experienced – including pressing issues such as: how do you clap on Twitter?”
Andrew Litton To Depart As Colorado Symphony Music Director
“He’ll conduct his usual eight concerts this season starting Friday night, then shift into a new role as artistic adviser and principal guest conductor next year. That means he’ll lead just four concerts a year during the following two seasons, leaving him more time to carry out his duties as the recently hired music director of the New York City Ballet.”
The 20 Most-Produced Playwrights Of Last Season
American Theatre looked at 2,159 productions at 386 theatres. The gender breakdown on this list is 15 men, 4 women. Just 3 playwrights—Ayad Akhtar, August Wilson, and Dominique Morisseau—are non-white. Compared to last year’s Top 20 list—with 3 women to 17 men, and 4 playwrights of color—the trend lines are staying consistent, for better or worse).
On Creating A Company: Twyla Tharp Blogs The Final Rehearsals For Her 50th Anniversary Tour
“What makes a company? It is, like a good performance, greater than the sum of its parts. It brings together a wealth of experiences and commitments that create a single foundation. Tacitly expressed in the dancing is a guarantee to the audience that whatever goes down, there’s no need for panic because onstage we have your back.”
‘This Week, Hedda Gabler Will Die On Twitter’
“There will be no further Tweets from @Heddathruaglass where, over the last two years, Katherine Tozer has been tweeting every day in character charting Hedda’s life, latterly on her extended honeymoon with her husband in Europe. Over the last few days, the daily tweet has brought Hedda closer and closer to home and the point where Ibsen’s play begins.”
Walter Isaacson Turns Down Offer To Be Librarian Of Congress: Report
A source told Politico that the 63-year-old Isaacson – former chairman and CEO of CNN, former managing editor of Time, currently president of the Aspen Institute, and author of admired biographies of Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Kissinger, and Steve Jobs – was approached by the White House about the job and declined.
The Secret To Self-Confidence (And Stardom) Is Simply Hard Work, Says Mindy Kaling
“People talk about confidence without ever bringing up hard work. That’s a mistake. I know I sound like some dour older spinster on Downton Abbey who has never felt a man’s touch and whose heart has turned to stone, but I don’t understand how you could have self-confidence if you don’t do the work.”
Now That He’s Won A Nobel, Author Patrick Modiano Is Finally Catching On
Well, in America, we mean. “All told, 10 of his books have been published in the U.S. since the Nobel announcement last October. English translations of six more novels are due later this year and in 2016.” Here’s a Q&A with the 70-year-old French author.
The Broad Museum – A History Of Collecting, Not Art
“There’s no artist or movement here that hasn’t already had abundant exposure in museums and galleries over the years, if not the decades. As a result, whatever the Broad collection may say about the art of the recent past, the real story it tells is about art collecting in our time.”
Here Are The Finalists For The 2015 Man Booker Prize
Marlon James, Tom McCarthy, Chigozie Obioma, Sunjeev Sahota, Anne Tyler and Hanya Yanagihara are the six authors shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015.
The Broad Museum’s Big LA Statement
“When it opens on September 20, the Broad will become the city’s second richest museum behind the Getty—its endowment of $200 million is more than the endowments of the neighboring Museum of Contemporary Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—as well as the latest edition to the developing downtown arts district. Commissioned by the billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad and his wife Edythe, the $140 million museum will showcase and store the couple’s more than 2,000-piece collection.”
Our Relationship With Libraries Is Changing (Fast)
Overall, perhaps people aren’t visiting libraries as much because their relationship to the printed word, still a library’s core offering, is dramatically changing.
Study: Participation In The Arts Driven By Education, Not Class
“Sociologist Aaron Reeves of the University of Oxford reports most forms of arts participation are strongly correlated not with class, but rather with education. To his surprise, he found that in a large sample of the English population, those with higher incomes were actually less likely to be active participants in the arts.”
Paris Opera Introduces A Digital ‘Third Stage’
3e Scène, conceived by new Paris Opera Ballet director Benjamin Millepied, “includes 18 films in its first batch of offerings. The filmmakers include the French actor-director Mathieu Amalric, the director Rebecca Zlotowski, [etc.] … Mr. Millepied said that the website aimed to produce around 30 new works each season, and to extend to installations, readings and other events.”
The Man Booker Prize Shortlist Is Out (And Marilynne Robinson’s Not On It)
The National Book Award winner Lila didn’t make the finals. But Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is there, as are titles by fellow American Anne Tyler, Britons Tom McCarthy and Sunjeev Sahota, Jamaican Marlon James, and Nigerian Chigozie Obioma.”
Andy Warhol Really Did Like Campbell’s Soup
“Host Alec Baldwin talks to Eric Shiner, director of The Andy Warhol Museum, about the hyper-inventive multimedia star, and learns about the surprisingly deep emotional basis for Warhol’s obsession with Campbell’s Soup.” (podcast)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.15.15
Where did the creative class come from?
Your humble blogger has been absolutely swamped with a cross-country move and writing about pop culture (mostly) for Salon. I hope to never leave CultureCrash fallow for nearly this long. … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2015-09-15
The Broad Broadsided: Critics Take Aim
No good deed goes unpunished. That adage seems sadly apt when it comes to collector/philanthropist Eli Broad, whose eponymous downtown Los Angeles museum, opening Sept. 20, has already sustained potshots from leading art critics, … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-09-15
Conover Stamp News & When Paquito Met Willis
The campaign for a US postage stamp to honor the late Voice of America Broadcaster Willis Conover has surmounted a bureaucratic hurdle. Maristella Fuestle of the Conover archive at the University of North Texas reports. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-09-15
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Report: Public’s View Of The Future Of Public Libraries Is Sharply Divided
“The data paint a complex portrait of disruption and aspiration. There are relatively active constituents who hope libraries will maintain valuable legacy functions such as lending printed books. At the same time, there are those who support the idea that libraries should adapt to a world where more and more information lives in digital form, accessible anytime and anywhere.”
Ángel Corella Brings Two More Stars To Pennsylvania Ballet
Kyra Nichols, long one of Balanchine’s muses at New York City Ballet, and former ABT and City Ballet primcipal Charles Askegard (who is also Mr. Candace “Sex in the City” Bushnell), have joined the company as ballet masters.