“American robber barons snuck ancient stones out of the war-torn countryside in the dead of night, Europeans fretted over how their familiar landmarks were rapidly disappearing, and U.S. cities spent decades of the 20th century fighting over what to do with tens of thousands of displaced medieval remnants.”
Can You Actually Get High From Looking At Art?
“Can it cause a chemical change in our body? Can it affect our perception of reality? Can it serve as a stimulant, a hallucinogenic, a depressant, or anything that mimics these effects? We spoke to a neuroesthetics expert, an art critic and a neuroscientist to find out.”
The St. Louis Symphony’s Very Good Year
“In fiscal year 2015, the SLSO won a Grammy award, got raves at Carnegie Hall, rejoiced in a string of significant anniversaries, hired a new president and CEO, sold more tickets, received more donations and moved closer to a balanced budget.”
Japanese Curator Denied Visa To US
Fram Kitagawa, the “redoubtable” Japanese curator who espouses art’s return to slow, rural values as opposed to urban, market systems, has been denied a visa by US officials, he said, according to a press release from the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington.
This Book Was Voted The Most Influential Academic Text In History
“After a list of the top 20 academic books was pulled together by expert academic booksellers, librarians and publishers …, the public was asked to vote on what they believed to be the most influential.” The winner – a volume arguably at the very heart of America’s culture wars – finished well ahead of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the complete works of Shakespeare, Plato’s The Republic, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.
How The Metaphor Of ‘The Cloud’ Changed Our Attitude Toward The Internet
“Around 2010, casual Internet users were introduced to the idea that the digital world around them could be understood in terms of the ‘cloud.’ As a metaphor, the cloud seems easy to grasp: our data is somewhere in the ether, floating, drifting and wireless, available wherever and whenever we need it. … [Yet] how did we come to place our faith in a symbol that is so ephemeral – all vapor and crystal?”
Bolshoi’s Chief Troublemaker Took Over St. Petersburg’s Top Ballet School – And It’s Turned Out Surprisingly Well
The appointment of Nikolai Tsiskaridze to the directorship of the Vaganova Academy (after the Bolshoi Ballet’s management declined to renew his contract) “was controversial at the time, and many high ranking dancers and administrators spoke out against the Bolshoi dancer being given the top job at the Mariinsky school, a school that he hadn’t come through himself. However, after two years the consensus seems to be that he is doing a good job and is popular both inside and outside the revered Academy’s walls.”
How London Fell Out Of Love With The ‘Garden Bridge’
“What makes this fall from grace so striking is that when the Garden Bridge plan first entered the public domain it caused a ripple of pleasure. Month by month, it has steadily descended from being perceived as a flagship for a new brighter London to becoming a symbol of the city’s wider problems. So how exactly did the Garden Bridge fall from grace?”
A Unified Theory Of The ‘Rocky’ Movies
“Stallone always gives himself two chances to tell the same story – as if, no matter how big it may have hit, he’s not quite satisfied with his first telling. The series is really a classic trilogy, with each installation in diptych form.”
Does T-Mobile’s Unlimited Streaming Deal Violate Net Neutrality?
“The idea of zero-rating would seem to stand in stark contrast to the principle of net neutrality, where all services are treated equally, whether they’re music streaming services, file sharing applications, or any other type of service—and whether they’re operated by well-funded startups or by rag-tag community non-profits.”
How Video Games Affect Your Brain
“In the past few years, multiple fMRI studies, including a seminal one conducted at Stanford University, have peered into the brains of gamers. Their results show that when we play video games, two regions of the brain are continually hyperstimulated: the region most associated with motivation and goal-orientation (often referred to as “the reward pathways”) and the region most associated with learning and memory (the hippocampus).”
Global Perspective: What Should A Public Library Be?
Libraries are powerful precisely because they’re spaces of potentiality. They are, as the Aspen report puts it, “platforms,” foundations on which many structures can be built. To speak of their future, then, should be to speak of a collective future, one from which none are excluded.
Toronto Author André Alexis Wins Canada’s $100,000 Giller Prize
For a second consensus-free year in a row, Giller prognosticators were all over the place when asked to pinpoint a front-runner. “It’s almost Game of Thrones — you don’t know who’s going to come out alive out of the bloodbath.”
How Could You Possibly Like That Book?
“How can people like these stories, with their over-easy packaging of what are no doubt extremely complex personal problems, their evident and decidedly unexamined complacency about the rightness of the analyst’s intervention?”
Minnesota’s Guthrie Theatre Wants To Figure Out What’s Minnesota
“The big question for us is how to serve the state in a way that someone from Duluth can find the same value in our work as someone who lives in one of those condos right next to us.”
Can We Finally Start Taking ‘Political Correctness’ Excesses Seriously Now?
Jonathan Chait: “The upsurge of political correctness is not just greasy-kid stuff, and it’s not just a bunch of weird, unfortunate events that somehow keep happening over and over. It’s the expression of a political culture with consistent norms, and philosophical premises that happen to be incompatible with liberalism.”
Knowing How You Decide Is As Important As The Decision
“Psychologists have argued there are two types of decision-making styles: There are maximizers, and then there are satisficers. Maximizers are concerned with making the very best decision, hemming and hawing and hemming some more until they’ve considered every possible option. Satisficers, on the other hand, know what they want, and once they find an option that meets their criteria, they pick that and move on with their lives. It’s a ‘nothing but the best’ versus an ‘eh, good enough’ mind-set.” (includes quiz)
‘I Have 10, Sometimes 11 Costume Changes Per Show’: Diary Of A Moulin Rouge Dancer
“That’s 22 changes each night. You wouldn’t be able to put the feathers on by yourself during a quick change so we have an army of 25 dressers. We don’t dance in the nude: we’re always completely covered with jewels, feathers, bra and pants. It’s very classy, very elegant.”
We’re Starting To Learn The Real Secret Of Stonehenge: How The People Who Built It Lived
“‘The stone monument is iconic,’ said [archaeologist] Wolfgang Neubauer … ‘But it’s only a little part of the whole thing.’ Discoveries in the last decade, some via modern technologies like ground-penetrating radar, have revealed more about the people for whom the giant monuments held great meaning.”
Allen Toussaint, 77, New Orleans R&B Legend Who Churned Out Pop Hits For Other Artists
“He was a versatile, virtuoso pianist and a distinctive, mellow-voiced vocalist who rarely toured because he was so busy producing, writing and arranging music at his New Orleans studio. Meanwhile, his songs were performed by a who’s who of New Orleans singers (Lee Dorsey, Irma Thomas, Ernie K-Doe) and international rock artists (Jerry Garcia, The Doors, Yardbirds, Bo Diddley, Robert Palmer, Little Feat, Elvis Costello). In 1998, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
Netflix Makes $50 Million Bet On A Korean Action Flick
“The streaming service will reportedly spend $50 million on the budget of Bong Joon-ho’s latest film Okja, the follow-up to the Korean director’s international hit Snowpiercer. If that seems like a lot, it is – but it’s part of a larger international gamble that could help the company grow outside the U.S.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.10.15
“The Artist’s Muse”: $170.4-Million Modigliani Doesn’t Float All Boats at Christie’s
While the rest of the scribe tribe has moved on to parsing tonight’s contemporary auction at Christie’s, here’s my recap of the same auction house’s attempt last night to repeat the breakout success of … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-11-10
A Great Lulu
When the Metropolitan Opera rises to its own standard, no opera house in the world presents more engaging, exciting, or satisfying performances. On November 5 the new production of Alban Berg’s Lulu fulfilled every aspect of the… … read more
AJBlog: OperaSleuth Published 2015-11-10
Johnny Costa
The recent Rifftides review of pianist Sullivan Fortner’s new album mentions Johnny Costa as an influence. The influence came early. Like millions of other American children, Fortner grew up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-11-09
Not a One-Trick Pony
San Francisco, 1969. So says Jed Birmingham in #23: The Dead Star, the first of his picks for “The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles.” The Burroughs Nova Broadcast pamphlet, which I published in 1969 and … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2015-11-10
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They’re About To Appoint A New Leader For The Choir Bach Conducted
“St Thomas Church of Leipzig, Bach’s employer for 27 years, is about to appoint his first 21st-century successor. When Bach applied for the job in 1723, the search committee also auditioned four candidates. Their first choice turned the job down. So did their second choice and their third. Bach ended up winning the role by default.”
Modigliani Fetches Second-Highest Price Ever Paid At Auction
In a bidding session that lasted nine minutes, the artist’s Nu couché sold for $170.4 million to an unnamed Chinese buyer. The work is only the tenth ever to sell for a nine-figure price.