“That time-consuming transfiguration is at the core of the Glass mythology, but drugs work differently on different metabolisms, angels appear only to the elect, and I lack the gift of spinning Glassian tedium into bliss. In fact, I start to get his music at precisely the point where his first acolytes fall away.”
Tag: 01.29.12
Monogamy Leads To More Prosperous Societies, Say Researchers
“It would be easier for men in the top 1% to support 3 wives, at least financially, than for a man in the lowest quartile of earners to support one. … Yet in much of the world, particularly the wealthier parts, monogamy – albeit with cheating around the edges – has flourished. Why?”
Cleveland Museum Of Art Ousts Board Chair (And So…)
Michael “Horvitz’s departure was a rare sign of discord at an institution with a reputation for solid management. The loss of a generous donor – Horvitz and his family have contributed more than $5 million to the museum’s expansion and renovation – also raises questions about how the museum could have alienated someone with the potential to do more for it in the future.”
Unseen Portraits By Lucian Freud To Be Shown For First Time
“[A] major new exhibition of his drawings and watercolours [in London] will feature rare, previously unseen works, including intimate portraits of his parents, children, self-portraits and childhood etchings.”
Are We In An E-Publishing Bubble?
“The internet is full of ironies. I, for one, could never have guessed that writing about the end of books would generate more income for me than actually publishing the damn things. I’ve been on an End of Books reading tour since August and it turns out that what the internet gurus say about consumers being more willing to pay for events, speeches and gigs, rather than buying cultural objects, is now becoming true.”
Canada’s Shaw Festival Posts Second Big Deficit
“The Shaw Festival ended its 50th season with a $1.5-million deficit, the Niagara-on-the-Lake theatre company announced Friday afternoon at its annual general meeting. This is the second year in a row that the Shaw has ended a season more than a million dollars in the red.”
After ‘The Death of Klinghoffer,’ Alice Goodman’s Career Was Over – Does She Regret It?
“The controversy silenced her creatively for decades, depriving us of the talents of one of opera’s most poetic librettist. WH Auden said the most important thing the librettist does is inspire the composer. Goodman did that and more: her two libretti stood on their own as works of art. ‘I would have liked to have written more than two operas,’ says Goodman. ‘But I’m glad those were the ones I wrote.'”
DreamWorks Has Successful Movies, And No More Funding
“Can a faltering film industry sustain a company that insists on making ambitious, Oscar-caliber, studio-size films — but without the deep pockets of a Viacom, which owns Paramount Pictures, or a News Corporation, the parent of 20th Century Fox?”
Will 3-D Forever Change Dance Films?
“Every classic dance film ever made would have infinitely more power with real dimensional space around, behind, above and in front of the dancers. Think about Fred Astaire gunning down the corps in ‘Top Hat’ or the fantastic colors and shapes in ‘The Red Shoes’ ballet or Baryshnikov defining male classicism for the whole century in ‘The Turning Point.'”
Who Lies In Online Dating? Everyone, Even The Companies
“For nearly 50 years, ever since computers were first used to help college kids hook up, people assumed, or hoped, that the fact of technology as mediator would mean not just more dates but better dates. The Great God Computer must know something we don’t, the thinking went. It just must. The notion became a wonderful marketing tool–red meat for the media.”