One might think it odd to stage a symphony at Glacier Point. But according to Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman, “From the signing of the Yosemite Grant to the present day, the arts have played a significant role in the creation and continued interest in preserving these public places.” Yosemite sparkles in Ansel Adams’ photos. It is illuminated by John Muir’s prose. Yosemite has a new artistic champion in Les Marsden, the conductor of the Mariposa orchestra.
The Great Library Of Alexandria Had A Rival – And A Vicious Rivalry
The kings of Pergamon in Asia Minor (now Begrama, Turkey) fought hard to build a collection as large and prestigious as Alexandria’s – and the Ptolemies were not pleased at the competition. The two cities struggled over manuscripts, scholars, and even materials. (Yes, there was a papyrus embargo.)
What Is, And Isn’t, ‘Artificial Intelligence’? Not What The Marketers Tell Us It Is
Om Malik: “Much like ‘the cloud,’ ‘big data,’ and ‘machine learning’ before it, the term ‘artificial intelligence’ has been hijacked by marketers and advertising copywriters. A lot of what people are calling ‘artificial intelligence’ is really data analytics – in other words, business as usual. If the hype leaves you asking ‘What is A.I., really?,’ don’t worry, you’re not alone. I asked various experts to define the term and got different answers.”
The Changes Begin Under Atlanta Ballet’s New Artistic Director
“Change is afoot at Atlanta Ballet under artistic director Gennadi Nedvigin, with a new ballet master and company members, plus a major upswing in one dancer’s career.”
James Corden’s Success In U.S. Based On YouTube, Not Broadcast TV, Says Producer
“‘When I get in in the morning I will check our YouTube hits before I check our overnights [ratings],’ said Ben Winston, the man behind Corden’s hit The Late Late Show. ‘The overnights just tell us who managed to stay awake. The YouTube hits tell us which bits flew.'”
The Extraordinary Detail Of Rembrandt’s Etchings
“In this video from Christie’s, we see contemporary printmaker Alexander Massouras analyze the diversity of Rembrandt’s lines and how they create different textures in the same work of art – something Rembrandt was a master at. We also get to see the etching process firsthand.”
Why Holograms Of Dead Performers Weird Us Out (But We Keep Watching Them)
“Simultaneously here and gone, holograms are stand-ins for all things virtual, harbingers of a ‘mixed reality’ in which the real and the simulated have been integrated seamlessly. … In reality, however, holograms have mostly been gaudy stunts … still abut the uncanny valley, displaying a body that is there and not there, alive and dead. Something about it doesn’t quite compute.”
Cast Of ‘Fun Home’ And PFLAG Compare Notes On Coming Out
“‘We thought they could learn a lot from professional actors about public speaking skills,’ said Drew Tagliabue, the executive director of PFLAG NYC, an organization for family members of gay and transgender people. The group runs the Safe Schools Program, which sends those emissaries into classrooms to talk about coming out. … But what was planned as a class about how to hold onto an audience became something different.”
You Know Who’s Responsible For That ‘Any Similarity To Actual Persons Is Coincidental’ Disclaimer In Movie Credits? Rasputin, That’s Who
“Virtually every film in modern memory ends with some variation of the same disclaimer: ‘This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.’ The cut-and-paste legal rider must be the most boring thing in every movie that features it. Who knew its origins were so lurid?” Duncan Fyfe explains.
Hard Lessons About How The Art-Buying World Works, Courtesy Knoedler Fakes Scandal
“For collectors seeking information on the authenticity of specific works of art, there is no repository of authenticators’ reports, and experts doubt the value of a database that buyers could consult the way they check for stolen art (for example, through the Art Loss Register or Art Recovery Group). For one thing, not all reports are reliable.”
The Church Of Big Data – A Quack Religion?
“Just as divine authority was legitimised by religious mythologies, and human authority was legitimised by humanist ideologies, so high-tech gurus and Silicon Valley prophets are creating a new universal narrative that legitimises the authority of algorithms and Big Data. This novel creed may be called “Dataism”. In its extreme form, proponents of the Dataist worldview perceive the entire universe as a flow of data, see organisms as little more than biochemical algorithms and believe that humanity’s cosmic vocation is to create an all-encompassing data-processing system — and then merge into it.”
Earthquake Exposes Fragility Of Italy’s Architectural Treasures
“Many experts maintain that Italy has among the world’s best anti-seismic standards already — at least on paper. But the problems in executing them are legion: money, corruption, tangled bureaucracy, shoddy construction and a lack of enforcement of national regulations at the local level.”
Ai Weiwei Removed From Major Chinese Bienniale
“Ai tweeted that he received a ‘vague letter’ from Yinchuan MoCA’s artistic director Hsieh Suchen that ‘the decision is made by higher officials’ due to the show’s status as part of China’s One Belt, One Road initiative to build a new Silk Road of overland economic and cultural exchange with countries to China’s west.”
The Books A New Author Reads On Book Tour Can Make Or Break Them
“I’d pick up others along the way. All would be serendipitous. I’m going to learn from them not only how to handle a book tour better, but how to *be* better, fully stop.”
What Is The Public Art In City Hall Park Saying?
“The Language of Things is a bit cerebral for a public art exhibition (the description does begin with a Walter Benjamin quote, which inspired the title); like the four speakers pointing inward in Watson’s sound installation, it can feel somewhat insular, even for art about codes.”
How A Writer Of Gay (And Wildly Silly) Erotica Became The Standard Bearer For What’s Good In Science Fiction
“If you could pick a single writer to make an effective, compassionate statement about identity politics to a divided literary community, who would you pick? Would it be a schizophrenic, autistic person who’d authored an e-book called Space Raptor Butt Invasion?”
Reinventing Ballet’s Long Form
“Binet gave a killer speech on what he wants the ballet of his generation to look like: non-hierarchical, non-heteronormative and non-subscribing to gender stereotypes.”
The Venice Film Fest Provides A Superb Showcase For Awards Bait
“It’s back on top after a scorecard that saw successful Oscar wins for Venice premieres three years in a row: Gravity, Birdman and, last year, Spotlight. Hollywood has taken notice.”
What It’s Like To Try To Play – But Not Caricature – The First Lady Of The United States
“The film is not campy and it’s not winking at the audience going, ‘Look! It’s the future president and first lady.’ It is rooted in authenticity.”
Max Ritvo Took The Poetry World By Storm, All While He Dealt With Terminal Cancer
“Over time, he said, his work had shifted ‘away from sort of ebullient death poetry and fighting poetry and poetry of, sort of, the bloods and the squirmies and the guts, and more toward trying to figure out what death is, and what my place in the world is.'”
When Teens Without Arts Opportunities Get To Do Shakespeare
“It’s not about being a great actor. … It’s about studying craft, deriving a sense of strength from that craft, and feeling that you’ve grown in some way. If students get anything from this program that they can apply to any other aspect of their lives, that’s a huge success for us.”
One British Politician Pledges Extra Money For The Arts (If He Gets Elected, Of Course)
“Speaking at world’s largest arts festival in the Scottish capital, Mr Corbyn said that under his leadership Labour will draw on the country’s ‘proud cultural heritage’ and give people from all sections of society the opportunity for their ‘creativity to flourish’.”
The Cleveland Orchestra Goes To The Heart Of The City For The Summer [AUDIO]
“The old model of service has sort of imperial, colonial overtones,” but the relationship they actually built was refreshing.
Taking Art World Sexism And Making It Into Art
“Language started creeping into her work after this episode, with ‘Censored’ drawings, explicit images over which Tompkins laid a grid, stamping ‘censored’ on the offending areas. ‘I censored my own pieces. I felt I could do it better than anyone,’ Tompkins told me. ‘It was in reality a way to stay sane. Being censored is a really nasty business.'”
The Things Musicians Carry
“Tunes, traditions, styles, perspectives — one might think of us as the carriers of a DNA that can both stubbornly endure and spontaneously mutate as we meet other musicians and enter new realms.”
The Love/Hate Relationship Authors Have With Their Own Books
“I am so excited when I begin a book. All of that possibility! All of that vision! Then the book hits me in the head with the work ahead of me.”
Is This The Year That Movies Stopped Mattering In Pop Culture?
“Nowadays there’s likely something way more exciting than the latest alleged blockbuster waiting for you on your phone, whether it’s a Frank Ocean record, a cornered Charmeleon, or some dank memes. And with social media providing us real-time updates of our passions and consumption, it’s become clear that, in 2016, people are less passionate about films than ever before.”
Top Execs Quit Bronx Museum Over International Plans
“They are especially worried about the museum’s involvement with two Cuban projects: a plan to create a replica of the José Martí sculpture near Central Park and an exchange of artworks with Havana.”
We Thought The Internet Would Liberate Us. Instead It Distracted Us From What Really Mattered
“By spreading a utopian view of technology, a view that defines progress as essentially technological, they’ve encouraged people to switch off their critical faculties and give Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and financiers free rein in remaking culture to fit their commercial interests.”
What Do Plain Old Museumgoers Think Of The Art They See? The Times Asked Them, And Here’s What They Said
“We tried to find out what goes on in the mind of the modern museumgoer, unscientifically, by staking out the Met Breuer and interviewing nearly 50 art gazers over the course of two months … they included students who said museums were like ‘eating your vegetables’ and romantics who cherish their lunch breaks, when they can hop in a cab to go steal a few quiet minutes in front of a beloved painting.”