“With each post, each tap of the screen, each drag and click, I am becoming a different person — solitary where I was once gregarious; a content provider where I at least once imagined myself an artist; nervous and constantly updated where I once knew the world through sleepy, half-shut eyes; detail-oriented and productive where I once saw life float by like a gorgeously made documentary film.”
The State Of Arts Funding In America Is A Mirror Of The Disfunction Of Our Public Investment
“The gutting of arts funding at the national, state and local levels left a gap to be filled by private mega-donors and corporate philanthropy. This has transformed the non-profit performing arts into a funhouse mirror version of America’s corporate sector.”
Why Ancient Rome Still Matters In 2015
Mary Beard: “The truth is that Roman history offers very few direct lessons for us, and no simple list of dos and don’ts. … Ancient Rome still matters for very different reasons – mainly because Roman debates have given us a template and a language that continue to define the way we understand our own world and think about ourselves.”
There’s A Man Scattering Fake Books, Signs And Pamphlets Around L.A.
“When he’s on a job, leaving fake signs and objects in his gym, at IKEA, in book stores, in chain stores, on the street or at a museum, he tries to be sneaky. Once the deed is done, ‘I run away as fast as possible,’ he says. Since January, Wysaski, a Los Angeles comedy writer who runs the website Pleated Jeans, has been planting jokes in the real world. “
Will E-Readers Ever Replace Books? (And If So, How Will It Change The Reading Experience?)
“Containers matter. They shape stories and the experience of stories. Choose the right binding, cloth, trim size, texture of paper, margins and ink, and you will strengthen the bond between reader and text. Choose badly and the object becomes a wedge between reader and text.”
Marion True Does Not Deserve Our Sympathy, Says Archaeologist
“It’s worth stating again just a few of the things True admitted doing or is alleged to have done over a nearly 20-year career as curator. … She is no innocent scapegoat, nor is she a hero for calling attention to a problem she was helping to create.”
The Three Dimensions Of Artificial Intelligence
MIT professor Frank Levy: “The first two are AI’s depth and breadth. The third is the media picture of AI that shapes public perception. … By depth I mean the extent to which AI equals or surpasses human intelligence – the development that worries Ray Kurzweil and Stephen Hawking. … By breadth of AI, I mean the way that software with current levels of sophistication will increasingly penetrate the workplace and displace workers. … The third dimension of AI – the media portrayal – is wildly excessive and it comes at a bad political moment.”
Andre Previn: I’m Always After Something New
“I love writing and I’m very serious about it, but when it’s over, it’s over. It’s not for the ages. I can’t visualize anybody doing my pieces 50 years from now. I’m just glad if they do them Wednesday.”
How Did Canada Suddenly Spawn A Burst of New Musicals?
“Look around the country this theatre season and you see activity from coast to coast – with intensive new musical development in Toronto, a resurgent Charlottetown Festival flexing its muscle, and the Vancouver scene absolutely exploding with musical-theatre activity.”
William Forsythe: I Am Not A ‘Natural Heir To George Balanchine’
“Balanchine is unique unto himself. I think the real heirs to Balanchine are [Alexei] Ratmansky and the upcoming Justin Peck actually. I think these people possess an extraordinary skill set that is far more aligned with Balanchine’s way of organizing. I was trying to work on another thing because I didn’t think Balanchine was very imitable. You can’t imitate Balanchine.”
Night School: Does Sleep Learning Really Work?
“Almost a century ago, a fad for sleep-learning swept the industrialised world, ending only after neuroscientists determined it was physiologically impossible. Yet today, a growing body of research suggests they were wrong. Sleep-learning appears to be heading for a revival, on a far more solid scientific basis than its earlier incarnation.”
Margaret Atwood On Her New Book, And A Lot More
“You can’t face this alternative, so let’s pretend it’s not there. You can’t face global warming, so let’s pretend it’s not there. We know that Santa Claus is really our parents, but we don’t want to look at that too closely. People do that all the time. We know Stephen Harper is a dictator in the making, but he’s convinced some people that they’re going to be financially better off under him, which is untrue.”
James Levine Steps Down From Conducting New Opera ‘Lulu’ At The Met
“The announcement did not directly address Mr. Levine’s history of health problems, but said that ‘faced with the demands of rehearsing and performing two large-scale operas simultaneously this fall,’ he would concentrate his energies on Wagner’s ‘Tannhäuser,’ which opens on Oct. 8. The overlapping runs of two of Mr. Levine’s favorite operas were to have been a highlight of the Met’s 2015-16 season.”
Selling A Norman Rockwell To Fund Journalism
“”We are able to expand our mission and do even more for the profession of journalism and press freedom,’ he said. ‘That’s a great legacy for Norman Rockwell.'”
Workers At London’s National Gallery Come To An Agreement, End Strike
“Union members had been on strike for more than 100 days in protest against plans to switch visitor services to a private company. PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said he still opposed privatisation, but had been unable to prevent it.”
It’s OK – Even Vital – To Be A Film Snob
“I look up in admiration at models of artistic perfection, sound judgment and noble achievement, and I look down on what I take to be the stupid, cheap and cynical aspects of public discourse. … If the words nerd and geek can be rehabilitated — if legions of misunderstood enthusiasts can march from the margins of respectability to the heart of the mainstream — then why not snob as well?”
The Future Of Landscape Design
“Over the past decade, Hayes, 56, has become known for her blown-glass terrariums: biomorphic bubbles that house miniature ecosystems of ferns, bonsai, crystals and flowering plants. In creating them, Hayes reinvented a Victorian concept—the portable greenhouse—by giving it a curvy shape and a pristinely futuristic aesthetic.”
Amazon Won’t Sell Chromecast Or Apple TV Anymore – And That’s Important
“On its face, it’s insane that the biggest e-retailer in the world, looking at the stunningly lucrative consumer electronics market, would stop selling some of its biggest sellers. As of this writing, Google Chromecast was the sixth-best seller in Amazon’s US electronics store, and Apple TV was 14th — two of just a handful of non-Amazon products at the top of the list. What is the endgame here?”
So Hollywood Is Politically Liberal? Not So Fast
The film and television industry is far from an Edenic paradise of equality where diversity reigns supreme, Ruby Rose plays the harpsichord, and Shonda Rhimes lectures biracial hunks on the perils of toxic masculinity. In fact—and someone should probably give Breitbart a heads up on this one—Hollywood is as amorally capitalistic and irritatingly anachronistic as America itself.
Grand Rapids Ballet – How To (Re)Build A Dance Company
Patricia Barker has been “instrumental in preventing the regional company, which is Michigan’s only professional ballet company, from shutting its doors. And, under her direction, both the size of the company and the breadth of the works it performs have grown.”
Playwright Brian Friel, 86
Friel’s diverse output, spanning a 50-year period, was bound together by his passion for language, his belief in the ritualistic nature of theatre and his breadth of understanding.
World’s Clumsiest Art Thief Found Dead In London Canal
Sebastiano Magnanini, 46, was convicted in 1998 of stealing an altarpiece by Tiepolo from a church in Venice. “[He] was 24 at the time, and the theft – characterized as an operatic farce by the Italian news media – alarmed some in the country and fanned debate about how to protect treasured artwork.”
‘No Satisfaction Whatever At Any Time’ – When Agnes De Mille Met Martha Graham Over A Soda
“Feeling that critics and the public had long ignored work into which she had poured her heart and soul, De Mille found herself dispirited by the sense that something she considered ‘only fairly good'” – her choreography for Oklahoma! – “was suddenly hailed as a ‘flamboyant success.’ Shortly after the premiere, she met Graham ‘in a Schrafft’s restaurant over a soda’ for a conversation that put into perspective her gnawing grievance and offered what De Mille considered the greatest thing ever said to her.”