“The use of timber could transform the way we build in this city,” said PLP partner Kevin Flanagan. “Timber buildings have the potential architecturally to create a more pleasing, relaxed, sociable and creative urban experience”
‘Our National Antidote’ – An Old Friend Tries To Make Sense Of Harper Lee
“Nelle Harper Lee scoffed at her National Treasure status. … [She] was more like the National Antidote – probably she would have preferred emetic, or gag reflex, something that expressed her unwillingness to humor the Chamber of Commerce or our contemporary age of ubiquity and oversaturation.”
Homintern: The Gay Cultural Mafia That Transformed 20th-Century Culture
“Homintern” – a riff on Lenin’s Comintern – “was the name various people jokingly coined to describe a sprawling, informal network of contacts that occupied a prominent site near the centre of modern life. It may have started as a joke, but it was taken all too seriously by those whom it infuriated.”
Ten Gay Works That Changed The Modern World
Philip Hensher’s list runs from the expected (Proust) to the … well, not (Ellen’s talk show changed the culture?).
An Art App That Uses Facial Recognition Tech To Tell You Exactly What You’re Looking At
“The user takes a photo of an artwork with a mobile device. Within seconds, Magnus provides the name of the artist, gallery price, past dealer and auction prices of other works, and the artist’s exhibition history. The image can be shared via text, email, Instagram, Facebook and other social media, and saved in the user’s digital collection.”
Ad Exec: Three Ways Advertisers Have Gone Wrong (And Arts Orgs?)
“I’ve come to believe that most marketers target young people because they see everyone else doing it. And they assume that somewhere someone must know why we are doing this. The marketing industry has been spending too much time on another planet. We need to get back down to earth.”
Fan Fiction: Peter Schjeldahl On The Computer-Generated Rembrandt
“Like its literary equivalents, it mimics the effect of a particular creator’s art. Working backward from that point, it passes the creator’s intention – intelligence, emotion, soul – coming the other way. There’s no harm in it.”
Bang On A Can Marathon, New York’s Favorite New Music Event, Is Now Homeless
“They need to find somewhere else to bang on their cans. [The popular 12-hour annual festival] will not be held this year in New York City because it has lost its space and presenting partner of the past decade, the Winter Garden at Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan” (formerly the World Financial Center).
Top European Art Award Cancelled After Two Of Five Finalists Withdraw
Said the awards committee, “The jury believes that the recent discussion has overshadowed the intentions of the award and could eventually comprise the nominated artists.” The chairman added, “It is the strong idea of the jury that the Vincent should be about art. But that was not the case any longer.”
Naked Donald Trump Painting Going Up In London Today, Despite Death Threats
Artist Illma Gore: “While it is obviously a great shame that I cannot exhibit it in the USA due to censorship and also threats from Trump supporters to harm both myself and the artwork, I am so excited that it will finally be exhibited in a gallery space where interested parties can come and see it ‘in the flesh.'”
Dear Writers, Here’s What Your Choice Of Music (Or Silence) Says About You
‘Some writers reveal that they listen to music. They tell us their favorite bands and songs so we can steal some inspiration. These writers are cool—maybe even too cool. I picture big money, big headphones, and small packs of cigarettes on their desks. Some say they can’t listen to anything until they’re deep in the revision process; these writers seem reasonable enough, I guess, and might also be modest, responsible drinkers. The author who is said to require complete silence comes across as saintly and chaste. This writer must have a clean desk, drink tea, and make money very slowly.”
Dancers’ Bodies, In Repose (Or In A Puppy Pile)
“Dancers are like a special species, … and the company is a place that ties their destiny together in a very intense way.”
We Need To Stop Trying To Deny Our Brutalist History
“The term brutalism borrows from the French béton brut, or raw concrete. Depending on who you consult, those surfaces represent honesty, technological innovation or sheer newness: as the critic Reyner Banham wrote, ‘a radicalism that owes nothing to precedent.'”
Technology Might Just Kill ‘Literary’ Novels
“Before we conjecture anything about this future, we need a way to conceive of the momentum that is affecting everything, most especially our interactions with others: our communications.”
Can The San Antonio Symphony Save Itself?
“David Gross is the President of the San Antonio Symphony, and he says the problem isn’t a new one. The deficit has been growing since 2008. Fundraising, ticket sales and grants just haven’t paid the bills and Gross says he asked everyone involved to help find a solution.”
No One Living Has Ever Heard The Most Famous Violin In The World
“The violin world is a world based on lineage, secrecy, and the ‘war’ between authenticity and deception inside an elite group. It consists of a cloister of craftspeople, dealers, and ‘experts’ passing very specific knowledge down to the very few willing to take the time to learn this time-intensive skill that for centuries has been based on copying old fiddles.”
The Man Who Turned The Organ, And Bach, Into Serious Study
“Unlike scholars in the Bach field who have often succumbed to a bland attitude of continuous adulation towards the master, [Peter] Williams, who has died aged 78, never shirked from showing where Bach fell short of his own astonishing standards, observing, for instance, that certain of his pieces show ‘teeth-gritting dogma’ and that there is something alienating in the thoroughness of the Well-Tempered Clavier’s progress through all the major and minor keys twice over.”
This Is The Woman Who Brought The Original Paddington Bear To Life On The Page
“After photographing Malayan bears at the London Zoo, [Peggy Fortnum] depicted, in black and white with pen and ink, an endearingly frumpy refugee with a floppy hat and duffel coat — ignoring her London art tutor’s advice that she never draw animals that talked and wore clothes.”
How Did Architecture – And Development – Pass East New York By?
“An account of a tour though East New York reads like a Dickens parody. Walk the streets and you’ll pass scrapyards; junkyards; auto dismantlers; methadone clinics; prostitution motels that charge by the hour; seventeen mental health facilities; fifteen drug-treatment facilities; twelve homeless shelters; half-way houses and three-quarter houses.”
An Explicitly Sexual And Explicitly Violent Lucia Draws Boos In London
“The extra scenes include a passionate sex sequence and, after the audience are led to understand Lucia was pregnant, a miscarriage on stage.”
When Museum Protesters Take Over The Museum’s Walls
“An artist from Bushwick, Sarah Quinter, wrote an open letter to the museum, saying the conference participants engaged in speculation and were part of an ‘epidemic of gentrification’ that endangered the stability of neighborhoods.”
Heartbreaking: Before And After-ISIS Images Of Palmyra
“A single stone arch is all that remains of Palmyra’s most important site and the Middle East’s most significant ancient temple, alongside Baalbek in Lebanon. Isis blew up the temple building in August 2015, destroying two inner sanctums dedicated to the Palmyrians’ supreme deity, Bel, the sun god Yarhibol and the moon god Aglibol.”
How To Judge A Movie Based On Its Director (Can You?)
“No one sees the director but everyone sees the actors, so the notion of directorial authorship flies in the face of common sense as well as of the theatrical tradition on which movies appear to be based. Yet the very notion of authorship (whether with movies or books or elsewhere) isn’t a theory, a policy, or a wish—it’s either the viewer’s experience or it’s nothing at all.”
Ailyn Pérez Wins Beverly Sills Artist Award
“A rising lyric soprano who won the 2012 Richard Tucker Award, Ms. Pérez, 36, … [has won the annual] $50,000 prize to help foster the careers of young singers who have appeared in solo roles at the Metropolitan Opera.”