“When you look at what people find attractive, it is consistent across cultures. We have some innate or hardwired beauty detector.”
Tag: 01.17.09
Downturn Having Big Effect On Australia’s Aboriginal Artists
“The past, high-growth decade proved a golden time for the sale and promotion of indigenous culture. Today, though, in the face of the looming international downturn, an ominous calm has descended.”
Chicago Lawyer To Head National Endowment For The Arts?
Michael Dorf “has a long resume built at the crossroads of the arts, politics and policy, not to mention roots in Obama’s political career. Reached in Chicago, Dorf declined to comment about the NEA job. But he’s a well-known figure in his city.”
Is Roberto Bolaño Really As Good As All That?
“His posthumously published book 2666 has been hailed as ‘the finest novel of the present century’ and yet, until recently, the English-speaking world knew little of Roberto Bolaño. The colourful life and early death of the hard-living, rebellious Chilean writer are the stuff of literary legend, but does the work live up to the hype?”
Scholar-Collector Jailed For Stealing Pages From Antique Books
Farhad Hakimzadeh, an Iranian-born philanthropist and bibliophile has been sentenced to two years in prison for carefully slicing pages, plates and maps from rare books in the British and Bodleian Libraries and adding the pages to his own private collection.
Dallas Critic Says Steel Was ‘Miscast’ There
Scott Cantrell suggests that the marriage between George Steel and The Dallas Opera is better annulled: “[I]t wasn’t long after Steel’s arrival here, in October, that whispers of discontent became a crescendo of complaint.” And anyway, when he took the Texas job, “there was boo-hooing in the New York media at the loss of one of the artsy crowd’s darlings.”
How To Keep Dancing Into Your 50s
For Peggy Baker, 56, “the choice to become a solo dancer has been the secret to extending her life onstage. ‘I would not be dancing for as long as I have if I were in a company. No company could put up with the way I have to take care of myself now. But because I’m totally in charge of myself, I can decide how hard I’m going to push myself on a given day.'”
Michael Jackson, The Musical Hits West End
In the age of the jukebox musical, it had to happen. ‘Thriller Live, a new West End show built around the music of Michael Jackson, features a moonwalking lookalike, zombie choreography and prepubescent singers who hit the high notes on ‘ABC.’ What’s absent: any backstory about the elusive King of Pop… There’s no plot or dialogue – just music.”
Battle Of The Chamber Orchestras In Minnesota
The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is hosting its first International Chamber Orchestra Festival, with the SPCO giving joint concerts with the London Sinfonietta, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra.