“A growing number of art museums in the US are incorporating sustainable technologies into their multi-million dollar expansions. Yet for every Âenvironmentally conscious museum, there are several leading art institutions that have given limited attention to ecological issues.”
Tag: 01.10.07
Community Standards In Education
“Nearly 50 percent of all credit-earning undergraduates in the United States are enrolled in community colleges. Besides having half of all students nationwide, community colleges enroll a disproportionate share of the country’s poorest students.” So why is funding for them so precarious?
Dinosaur Museum Loses Director To Phoenix
Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History is losing its director to a new museum in Arizona. Billie DeWalt’s “departure comes just as the Carnegie is completing its $36 million “Dinosaurs in Their World” exhibition. Set to open in November, it will display the world’s third-largest collection of dinosaur fossils, many of them purchased by Andrew Carnegie himself.”
What Becomes A Great Music Studio
These days, anyone with a computer can record music. “But what is it that gives certain studios an aura, while others are cold and sterile? Today, technology allows whole albums to be recorded in a bedroom – yet still the great studios have high prices and long waiting lists.”
Remembering Kenneth Tynan
Theatre critic Kenneth Tynan was a legend. “It is tempting to wonder how he would fare today, at a time when criticism itself is changing, partly because of a democratising technology that makes everyone an opinion-pusher, and partly because of a rampantly consumerist culture. But my hunch is that he would have loved the new trend towards fact-based drama and would have relished writing about our more idiosyncratic actors.”
Drowning In Movies
Andrew Sarris is overwhelmed by how movies are released. “Anywhere from 522 to 540 new feature films were exhibited locally this year, depending on who is doing the counting and compiling. Apparently, more big movies were released in the month of December than I can ever remember. Was it a good year or a bad year for movies–or, as is usually the case, something in between?”
Food Fight – How Eating Will Ruin Broadway
John Heilpern is dismayed that Broadway theatres will now allow food inside. As I see and hear it, chowing down in the theater will kill the theater. The writing is now on the wall for our theaters, where, until only recently, eating and drinking at your seat were forbidden. Now even those ritual warnings about unwrapping candy and cough drops before the curtain goes up are out-of-date.”
How Podcasts Are Changing Radio
“The top podcast on the iTunes chart, week after week, is a radio show: ‘This American Life,’ the weekly syndicated public radio show hosted by Ira Glass. It’s a sign that radio, instead of fighting the competition from online and satellite radio, is adopting the same tools to serve — and keep — its listeners.”
CBS To Allow Show Trading
CBS says it will allow fans to snip scenes from its shows and send them to friends. “CBS’s efforts are the latest example of networks experimenting with interactivity and the Web.”
Louvre Gets Money For New Islamic Wing
“The Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Sabah, has donated €5m ($6.5m) towards the establishment of a new Islamic wing at the Louvre, to open in 2009 at a cost of €56m ($68m). This follows another donation made early last year by the Saudi Prince Al-Walid Bin Talal of €17m ($21m) to the Paris museum.”