“We measure the very moments of our lives by computer-driven clocks and calendars that we keep in our pockets. I get why people think this way. Still, it’s a pernicious fallacy. To believe that change is driven by technology, when technology is driven by humans, renders force and power invisible.”
The Time I Designed A Building And IM Pei Decided To Visit
The madness began after I received a phone call from my brother, Christien, who worked for a luxury travel agency. “Great news,” he said. “I may have a client for the villa for New Year’s week. How’s the project coming?” My heart sank. More than two years in, and we were nearly out of money. We really could have benefited from a holiday rental. But there was no way we could be ready in time, I told him. “But it’s apparently a famous person,” my brother added. “Some architect,” he told me. “His name is I. M. Pei. Ever heard of him?” My brother was not a student of architecture, so the significance of this was lost on him.
2017 Index: The Twenty “Most Vibrant” Arts Communities In America
“The overall index is composed of three dimensions: supply, demand, and government support. Supply is assessed by the total number of arts providers in the community, including the number of arts and culture organizations and employees, independent artists, and entertainment firms. Demand is gauged by the total nonprofit arts dollars in the community, including program revenue, contributed revenue, total expenses, and total compensation. Lastly, the level of government support is based on state and federal arts dollars and grants.”
An Open Letter To The Dancer Who Hates Herself
Alessa Rogers of Atlanta Ballet: “I see you. I know who you are. If you think you are hiding your self-loathing, you are deceiving only yourself. It is time to stop. … Don’t be seduced by the feeling that berating yourself makes you a better artist. I know you are trying to protect yourself by saying self-judgmental things so that it won’t sting if others do. But putting yourself down will not endear you to the people in the front of the studio.”
John Waters Is Hosting A Summer Camp For Grown-Ups
Sure, there will be campfires and s’mores, but there will also be burlesque lessons, Hairspray karaoke, scotch and cigars, and Bloody Mary Bingo – not to mention a movie marathon, a costume contest, and the national treasure‘s own one-man show. Also arts-and-crafts and archery, which seem pretty kinky in this context.
We Need To Split The ‘Millennials’ Into Two Separate Generations
“Old Millennials, as I’ll call them, who were born around 1988 or earlier (meaning they’re 29 and older today), really have lived substantively different lives than Young Millennials, who were born around 1989 or later, as a result of two epochal events that occurred around the time when members of the older group were mostly young adults and when members of the younger were mostly early adolescents.” Jesse Singal, an Old Millennial, explains.
Social Media Firefight Over Female Choreographers And Sexism In Ballet Sparked By NY Times’ Peck-Wheeldon-Ratmansky Interview
Brief answers by the three (male) star dancemakers to this question (evidently texted to them after the main conversation recorded in the article was over) – “Most of the major choreographers in classical dance are men. Why is that?” – led to a ferocious response from The Observer‘s Luke Jennings, after which “Twitter went mad.” Courtney Escoyne surveys the battlefield.
Robert M. Pirsig, 88, Author Of ‘Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance’
“Where [Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan] pursued enlightenment in hallucinogenic experience, Zen argued for its equal availability in the brain-racking rigors of Reason with a capital R. Years after its publication, it continues to be invoked by famous people when asked to name a book that affected them most deeply.”
Arachnid Art: Argentine Artist And 7,000 Spiders Create World’s Largest Web
Tomás Saraceno and his eight-legged collaborators are displaying their installation, titled Quasi-Social Musical Instrument IC 342, at Buenos Aires’s Museum of Modern Art.
Actors Making Fun Of The Powerful And Their Politics In Ancient Rome
Of course, the dangers were rather greater than they are for the cast of Saturday Night Live, or even Bassem Youssef, and more immediate than even for the Belarus Free Theatre.
How The Barnes Museum Figured Out How To Use The Cloud To Track Visitors
“Counters keep track of average visit duration in any space where we use them and by tracking at our main entrance, special exhibition, and collection gallery we have a sense of visit duration throughout the building on any given day and at any given time. This has given us the opportunity to manage queues effectively at high capacity events because we know roughly what the average stay rate is and how quickly those lines will move.”
Can Literature Give You Hope?
“When reading about the feeling of hopefulness in a novel, it can become an almost tangible thing, perhaps made out of the fiber of the pages you’re turning, or housed within the blackness of the ink used to print the words you’re reading. And hope can often be easier to hang on to in literature than in real life, where it might feel ephemeral, intangible, and unsteady. And now, more than ever, hope takes work.”
Tonys Reinstate Sound Design Awards
“Next season, Best Sound Design of a Musical and Best Sound Design of a Play will be reinstated to the list of competitive Tony Award categories with a new voting process. In addition, it was determined that for similar reasons, the category of Best Orchestrations will adhere to this same new voting process. The Tony Nominators will nominate for these categories as in the past. However, voting on the winners of the three categories will now be the responsibility of a subset of the overall voter pool based on their professional affiliation.”
When Dan Savage Meets Wagner: The Problematic Sexual Politics Of ‘The Flying Dutchman’
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim looks at the still-common dynamic that the opera explores via myth: as Savage puts it, “It’s a common delusion, particularly among women, that their love is transformative. That they can find their damaged man and, by loving him, they can save him, restore him, fix him, make him a better person.”
That Ballerina Fired For Being Too Tall? She’s Headlining A New Ballet Company That’s Making Diversity Its Focus
Sara Michelle Murawski made headlines in January after the Pennsylvania Ballet told her (shortly before she went onstage) that her contract wasn’t being renewed because she’s too tall to fit in visually with the company’s other dancers. Now she’s joining the American National Ballet, a new company, launching this fall in Charleston, that’s making a point of engaging gifted dancers of varied physiques and skin tones – and giving them a decent standard of living. (Oddly, neither Charleston City Paper nor The Post & Courier seem to have reported on the ANB yet.)
Mixing Things Up: Anne Midgette On Two Attempts To Break Out Of The Concert-Experience Rut
“Expanding the concert experience is a pet theme of classical music these days. And if you wonder why the concert experience needs expanding, it’s because the term ‘classical concert’ tends to translate as ’19th-century music played in a stuffy setting’ – at least, to the people who aren’t coming. In fact, classical concerts are more and more varied, and this weekend I saw a couple of different attempts – one more subtle, one more overt – to mix things up.”
Trial Begins For Lawsuit Over Doomed Broadway ‘Rebecca’
“Opening arguments began on Monday in a civil trial about a Broadway musical that never came to be, a real-life drama that, even by showbiz standards, stretched the suspension of disbelief.”
Paris Has Another New Concert Hall, And A Woman Conductor Is Running It
Well, strictly speaking, it’s in Boulogne-Billancourt, about 10 miles and 20 Métro stops southwest of the city center. Designed by the Pritzker Prize winner Shigeru Ban (known for his extraordinary way with much materials as cardboard and paper tubes), La Seine Musicale has a 6,000-seat hall for rock events (it opened on Friday with Bob Dylan) and an 1,150-seat classical concert hall that’s been turned over to conductor Laurence Equilbey and her professional chamber choir, Accentus, and period-instrument Insula Orchestra.
Police Forced To Intervene To Keep Nationalists From Disrupting Controversial Play In Croatia
“Carrying a banner reading ‘Satan, leave our city,’ about a dozen right-wing supporters Monday chanted extremist slogans and sang nationalist songs inside the theater in the coastal town of Split before police pushed them out.” The local Catholic archdoicese had called for the play, Oliver Frljić’s Our Violence and Your Violence, to be banned due to some extreme imagery.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.24.17
Who Gets What? David Rockefeller’s Art Bequests
Of all his art interests, we have long known that the Museum of Modern Art came first for David Rockefeller, who died last month. But there were in his will a few other bequests for museums. … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-04-24
Monday Recommendation: Krukowski, The New Analog
Book: Damon Krukowski, The New Analog (The New Press)
The introduction of the compact disc in 1982 made analog sound delivered by phonograph records and landline telephones obsolete – didn’t it? If not, then … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-04-24
Uh-Oh – Has Science Gotten Too Complex For Humans To Comprehend?
“The twin challenges of too much quantity and too little quality are rooted in the finite neurological capacity of the human mind. Scientists are deriving hypotheses from a smaller and smaller fraction of our collective knowledge and consequently, more and more, asking the wrong questions, or asking ones that have already been answered. Also, human creativity seems to depend increasingly on the stochasticity of previous experiences – particular life events that allow a researcher to notice something others do not. Although chance has always been a factor in scientific discovery, it is currently playing a much larger role than it should.”
Asking Kids The Big Questions – How They Philosophize
“From ages eight to eleven, kids are natural philosophers—before puberty and those awful inhibitions creep in. All you have to do is trigger the question and let it roll.”
Chi-chi Nwanoku Was Tired Of Being The Only Black Musician In The Orchestra, So She Formed One Of Her Own
The double bass player recruited and organized a group quickly in 2015, and her project has been a success. “The Chineke! Foundation — which includes both Europe’s first professional orchestra made up entirely of minority musicians from across Britain and Europe, and also a junior orchestra — has had a strong impact not only on the musicians involved, but also on the audiences.”
Daniel Mendelsohn’s Father Sits In On His Son’s Class On Homer – And An Adventure Begins
“The students laughed. Then, as if fearful that they’d overstepped some boundary, they peered down the length of the seminar table at me, as if to see how I’d react. Since I wanted to show them I was a good sport, I smiled broadly. But what I was thinking was, This is going to be a nightmare.”