“The long-time curator of Baltimore’s Edgar Allan Poe House says the museum could be forced to close if city officials stick to their insistence” that the museum wean itself from municipal funding by July 2012.
Tag: 02.04.11
The Poet of the Egyptian Revolution
Tamim al-Barghouti, an Egyptian poet and professor, wrote a poem about the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square – the title translates, roughly, as “O Egypt, [The Time] Is Near” – that has become wildly popular. Copies are made and distributed hand-to-hand, and a recording of the poem is played repeatedly in the square.
Where Physics Meets, and Misses, Philosophy
Alva Noë: “Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow do not succeed in murdering philosophy in their recent book The Grand Design. Nor do they even try. Perhaps this is because they believe, as they blandly announce on the first page, that philosophy is already dead. But the joke’s on them.”
Writing About Dance, A Challenge
“In dance, I think primarily because the art form is ephemeral by nature, critics clutch at abstract imagery, hoping that the readers are entertained or keeping up. Dance is a difficult art form to pin down: all the more reason not to stray too far.”
197 Years of Frankensteins
Mary Shelley’s “myth has been interpreted as a parable about the ethics of governing (or failing to govern) experimental scientists; a cautionary tale, co-opted by both the left and the right, about what happens when the proletariat is allowed to run amok; a Freudian bodice-ripper about the id on the rampage; and as a coded homosexual saga about a man who usurps the female prerogative and tries to bypass womanhood in having a baby by himself.”
This Week’s Art-Censorship Battle: Confederate-Flag-Plus-Lynching Painting Pulled From Georgia Exhibit
“The painting, Heritage?, shows the Confederate battle flag superimposed on images that include a hanged black man and robed Ku Klux Klansmen, one with a torch.” The canvas was removed “after a poster on a Southern heritage website encouraged people to protest the [piece].”
The Egyptian Uprising: Struggling Over Antiquities
Simon Schama: “It’s no accident that, as I write, the front line of the street battles is at the perimeter of the National Museum … Partly that’s because when civil authority dissolves, the temptation to plunder is usually irresistible; and partly because all revolutions have at least an iconoclastic streak in them. … At stake, too, is what you might call the psychology of patriotic honour – an intense matter in any revolution.”
Riccardo Muti To Have Surgery for Broken Jaw
“Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti will undergo surgery Monday to repair what the CSO is now characterizing as “multiple facial and jaw fractures” sustained from a fall from the podium Thursday.”
Yann Martel’s Gift Of Books To The Prime Minister – Just A Tad Rude?
“There was something snarky and unkind, perhaps even verging on rudeness, in Mr. Martel’s gift of 100 books, and in the accompanying letters, well-written and insightful but too often containing a chest-poke of condescension, or irony.”
Google Earth Reveals Thousands Of Archaeological Treasures In Desert
“Almost two thousand potential archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia have been discovered from an office chair in Perth, Australia, thanks to high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth.”