“They have not just [hired] renovation architects, they’ve got restoration architects – historical, sensitive architectural work going on, so things are improved without changing.”
Tag: 03.05.14
Here We Go Again: This Year’s Whitney Biennial – A Lot Of Dead Art
Jerry Saltz: “I kept hearing myself think, I see dead art: Work that looks and behaves like it is supposed to look and behave but that doesn’t make us see differently, that doesn’t rethink form, reimage structure, or explore material, color, or new orders.”
Are Big Tech Companies Gentrifying Buddhism?
“Ire at Google buses, tech-driven gentrification in San Francisco and Silicon Valley’s close collaboration with the NSA has been all over the news, but the demonstration at Wisdom 2.0 was different. It wasn’t just aimed at the tech industry; it was also aimed at what some see as an elitist streak in American convert Buddhism.”
BBC to Shut Down TV Channel BBC3, Save BBC4
The youth-oriented channel BBC3 will be pulled from the airwaves, with programming available only online, as part of BBC Director General Tony Hall’s planned £100 million in budget cuts. “His decision also signals a reprieve for its sister channel, the arts and culture specialist BBC4, which has faced calls for it to be axed and merged into BBC2.”
West End Will Close Without Lower Ticket Prices, Says Michael Grandage
The much-awarded director warns that we “make sure that young people have access to West End theatre, and the only way you can do that is through pricing. It stands to reason that if we don’t do it, the West End will close when this generation becomes senior citizens. Because who will replace the people who are now old?”
Even More Trafficked Art Seized In Queens
“The hunt for Indian antiquities allegedly smuggled into New York by Subhash Kapoor, a former Manhattan gallery owner accused of overseeing a $100 million art trafficking ring, led to a Queens warehouse Tuesday where federal officials seized hundreds of Southeast Asian and Indian items that they valued at $8 million.”
Creative Writing Courses, On the Contrary, Can Serve Very Useful Purposes
Anna Davis: “I knew this course would give me dedicated time to write, feedback from tutors and fellow students, and that most useful of all things – a deadline.” (Davis does think that a graduate degree in creative writing may not be worth the money.)
Meet the Doctor Using Sports Medicine to Heal Dancers’ Battered Bodies
Patrick Rump, “a broad-chested, broadly smiling German” and former karate champion, is working “to start a revolution in dance health.”
Venezuela’s Conflict Moves From Caracas’s Streets to Hollywood Boulevard
“From pop culture to high culture, Venezuela’s conflict is leading actors, artists, athletes and fashion designers to voice their support for the antigovernment protesters, with a minority backing President Nicolás Maduro.” And those celebrity statements have inspired conspiracy theories from both sides of Venezuela’s political divide.
Watching ‘The Act of Killing’ in Indonesia
Just this past weekend, The New York Times ran an article on how Joshua Oppenheimer’s award-winning documentary about the massacres after Indonesia’s failed 1965 coup is having little visible effect in Indonesia itself. Here another author describes a screening in Yogyakarta and suggests that the film is having a quiet but powerful effect in the country.