“Newspaper style has long been to omit that final comma. But every stylebook that allows omission of the Oxford comma includes a caveat, often forgotten: Once the sentence moves beyond a simple series, that comma might be necessary for clarity.”
Between ‘Trainspotting’ And ‘T2 Trainspotting’, Danny Boyle Says He’s Become A Worse Director
Yes, that’s despite Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later, 127 Hours, and Steve Jobs. In a Q&A, he tells Kevin Lincoln what on earth he means by that.
Shrine At Site Of Jesus’s Tomb Reopens After Nine-Month Restoration
The historic structure, known as the Edicule, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem had fallen into such disrepair that the Israeli government declared it a safety hazard and closed it. Now, after $4 million worth of work, the Edicule is open to pilgrims again – and the cage of iron girders that had surrounded it for 70 years is gone. (includes video)
Lessons On Male Insecurity (And Indigestion) From Walt Whitman’s Men’s-Health Column
Oh yes, he did. Starting in 1858, Whitman (under one of his man pseudonyms) wrote an advice column for the New York Atlas titled “Manly Health and Training.” Dan Piepenbring suggests that, behind Whitman’s vigorous exhortation, his advice betrayed more than a bit of insecurity about masculinity.
Are Our Classrooms Set Up Wrong? Studies Show Kids Need To Move!
“We fall into this trap that if kids are at their desks with their heads down and are silent and writing, we think they are learning. But what we have found is that the active time used to energize your brain makes all those still moments better,” or more productive.
Siobhan Burke Talks About How Dance In America Is Changing
“Dance tends to be marginalized in our culture. For many people, it’s not as much a part of everyday life as movies, TV, music or books. I have friends who are incredibly knowledgeable about art and literature, but when I mention major dance figures like Isadora Duncan or Merce Cunningham, they don’t know who they are. For dance writing to be more viable, dance needs to be more centralized somehow, so it’s not seen as esoteric and inaccessible, or, on the flip side, as purely fun and entertaining — though it can be all of those things.”
Did An Artist Opportunity High Atop The World Trade Center Turn Into Artist Exploitation?
“To do a project on the 69th floor of the World Trade Center has been beneficial to a lot of us. You’ve gotta be pretty dumb not to think the floor’s not going to get rented out eventually, and that whoever probably took it wasn’t going to want the artwork. Of course they’re going to want the artwork. But never did Silverstein say they were ever going to use it for marketing to rent the place.”
Deborah Borda On Leaving LA And On Saving The NEA
Here’s the great irony: the budget of the Los Angeles Philharmonic is now about $120 million a year. The total amount of money we get from the National Endowment for the Arts is about $150,000. So it’s less than one percent of our budget. So we — the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic — both of these orchestras will move ahead because that’s about the level that big orchestras receive from the NEA. Who is going to be terribly hurt are the smaller organizations in this city and especially in rural America.
A Few Thoughts About British Actors Playing American (And African-American) Roles
Richard Brody considers Samuel L. Jackson’s controversial comments about the casting of black British actors in African-American roles (in particular, Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out and David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King in Selma) – in particular, how Jackson may have a point.
There’s A Backlash Against Online Teaching. That May Not Be Fair
“The stereotype that online instruction is less rigorous, or that students cannot be engaged in it with appropriate rigor, isn’t borne out by my experience. Anyone who’s taught an on-the-ground class has looked out into the classroom and seen boredom or disconnection. By comparison, my online students were choosing when to log on to do their work. They seemed very tuned in when they did.”
Off-Broadway’s Very-Long-Running ‘The Fantasticks’ Will Close – This Time, It Seems, For Good
“For nearly 42 years the show chugged along at the 153-seat Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, finally closing in 2002 after 17,162 performances – a victim both of a destroyed downtown after 9/11 and a new edgy mood. It opened four years later at The Theater Center, an off-Broadway complex in the heart of Times Square, where it will end after a run of 4,390 shows.”
Today’s Composers Have Made The Concerto An Exciting Form Again
“A few decades ago, I would not have put money on the survival of the concerto, except as an antiquarian curiosity. Celebrity soloists continued milking the classics, but the rest of the music world seemed to have moved on from all that gladiatorial bravura.” Justin Davidson looks at four new concertos – by Sofia Gubaidulina, Lera Auerbach, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Timo Andres.
Met Museum’s Interim CEO Presents Plan To Get The Place Back In Shape
“Amid a dramatic management shake-up at the top of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this month, interim chief executive Daniel Weiss is moving in with a sweeping plan to balance the budget and provide a road map for renovations. The plan, to be presented to the Met’s board of directors on Wednesday, could amount to an audition by Mr. Weiss for the top job at the nation’s premier encyclopedic museum.”
Trisha Brown’s Multiple Revolutions
“Her treatise on ‘pure movement’ in the 1970s wiped the slate clean and reset modern dance in a search for movement itself. … She caused a revolution by simply, sweetly, turning to [performance] spaces that other dance-makers don’t … But she also caused a revolution in the space that is the human body.” Wendy Perron, who danced in Brown’s company in the 1970s, gives an extensive overview of Brown’s career.
Black Artists Protest Painting Of Emmett Till By White Artist At Whitney Biennial
As Hannah Black, a British artist who’s one of the leaders of the protest against Dana Schutz’s Open Casket, puts it, “It’s not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun.” (Black thinks Open Casket should be destroyed.)
Colin Dexter, Author Who Created Inspector Morse, Dead At 86
“Dexter, who has died aged 86, claimed that he was no writer, but could revise his ‘bad starts’ into something that worked. The formula was certainly a success for some dozen Morse novels and many original scripts for television, the medium that delivered the doings of the idiosyncratic Morse to an audience across 50 countries.”
Malaysian Censors Back Down On ‘Gay Moment’ In ‘Beauty And The Beast’
The Film Censorship Board of Malaysia had declared that four minutes of what they deemed sensitive material must be cut before they approved release of the movie: in response, Disney withdrew the film from the country. Now the Board has relented, though they’re giving this fairy tale a 13-and-over age rating. (Well, that’s better than Russia did.)
NYC’s Commissioner Of Cultural Affairs On How The NEA, NEH, Etc. Affect The City
Tom Finkelpearl: “New Yorkers and our elected officials clearly see the value of investment in culture. On an individual level, people point to the transformative experiences that can bring joy and enlightenment while building empathy. … For more data-driven policy makers, there is a strong economic argument for cultural investment. It’s true: culture drives regional and international tourism, which creates jobs.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.21.17
The NEA (and Other Things)
The NEA, along with the NEH, the IMLS, the CPB, etc., etc., is very important for both symbolic and practical reasons. … The other thing that concerns me is that, in general, attacks on public funding of the arts are not about money or the arts. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-03-21
I am still feeling the same glow
This Arts Advocacy Day, the stakes are much higher. As we work to make the case for the arts, we wonder, is our data keeping pace? … read more
AJBlog: Field Notes Published 2017-03-21
Making What You Will of Malvolia
Paul Levy on Simon Godwin’s production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, starring Tamsin Greig as Malvolia, at the National Theatre of Great Britain. … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2017-03-21
What’s In A Name? Plenty, If The Name Is Cuneiform
Cuneiform is an independent label recording music that is out of the mainstream. … The history of the label’s name goes back 5,500 years or more. Curious about how it was chosen, I dropped a line to Joyce, the label’s director of publicity and information, and asked, “Are you archeologists?” … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-03-21
A Pompidou Museum Outpost For Shanghai
“Xuhui has already invested Rmb 20bn (around $3bn) in turning a former industrial area into a 11km-long “cultural corridor” on the Huangpu river. It is planning an ambitious series of museums and other landmark projects, such as a theatre, music hall and Imax cinema.”