“On one level, these performances can be seen as an act of homage. The Russians are certainly noting the symbolic implications of an American orchestra coming to honor a Russian, playing literally under a banner emblazoned with Rostropovich’s portrait above the Conservatory stage… On another level, the NSO’s performances can be seen as a viable alternative to political diplomacy, showing people from different societies brought together by a common love.”
Tag: 03.30.17
Hong Kong Artists Struggle With Expressing Their City’s Angst, Apprehension
“Local artists are struggling to find meaning in the city’s upheavals, art professionals said in interviews. And while some of their recent works are more overtly political than others, many are infused with a sense of helplessness toward what is widely seen here as the city’s increasing subjugation to Beijing’s authoritarianism.”
In Praise Of… Indexers?
“It would be a cliche to say that indexers are the unsung heroes of the publishing world. But unsung they generally are: no indexer usually expects or receives credit by name in books where everyone from the font designer to the snapper of the author photograph tends to get a solemn shout-out. And heroes they are, too: the index is, in any nonfiction book, more useful than almost anything else in the apparatus. It is a map of the text; a cunningly devised series of magical shortcuts that can in the good case save a scholar many hours of work, and in the bad one save a bookshop-browsing cabinet minister from having to buy a former colleague’s memoirs.”
Harry Potter Festival Canceled After Massive World-Wide Interest Overwhelms Organizers
“The festival has been cancelled amid concerns that it had got out of hand. Mr Hamilton, one of the co-ordinator’s of the Bearsden Festival, said people had been planning to travel from all over Europe and some had compared it to T in the Park, a music festival that attracts 80,000 a day. He said it was a small, local event that had been held for five years.”
Museums Have Dramatically Increased The Number Of Shows They’re Presenting
“The average number of shows increased by 7.4% between 2007 and 2015 (from an average of 8.8 shows per year to 9.5), according to an analysis of 2,360 exhibitions at 29 US museums conducted by The Art Newspaper. Institutions are also keeping shows running for longer periods of time. We found that the average number of exhibition days increased by almost 25% during this period.”
Why Do Your Friends Insist On Forcing Their Favorite TV Shows On You?
“Watching TV is fun, talking about TV is fun — it’s all great fun. But I’ve begun to dread these four words: Wait, you haven’t seen —-? Fill in the blank with the current or classic prestige show of your choice: Mad Men, The Wire, Stranger Things, whatever. The second someone says this, the TV banter takes on an irritatingly insistent tone, with everyone present who has watched the show piling on the person who admits that they have not, until this poor soul agrees that, yes, okay, they’ll finally start watching Westworld. This weekend. Promise. It’s supposed to rain, anyway.”
It’s Called FOBO – Fear Of A Better Option
People who over-analyze, wanting to make the best possible decision. “They want to find the absolute best option. They become so focused on doing the ‘right’ thing that even after they make a decision, they still ruminate on their earlier options, which leads to frustration and regret with the decision process.”
Analysis: Contemporary Art Shows Now Dominate American Museums
It was not always this way. Just 20 years ago, Impressionism was king; no contemporary shows cracked the top ten most visited exhibitions in US museums in our 1997 attendance figures survey. Back then, only around 20% of the shows organised by US institutions were devoted to the art of their time. “It’s a definite cultural shift,” says Robert Storr, the former dean of the Yale University School of Art.
World-Leading Experts On Cambodian Art Under Scrutiny For Helping Fence Looted Antiquities
Collector Douglas Latchford, 86, and scholar Emma Bunker, 87, together wrote three books that are core reference works in the field of golden-age Khmer art and have been invaluable consultants to the national museum in Phnom Penh as it assembled a collection in the aftermath of Cambodia’s late-20th-century calamities. But a current criminal case suggests that the pair also spent decades providing false ownership histories for looted art.
‘President Trump vs. Big Bird’: NY Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof Argues For NEA, NEH, CPB
“The humanities may seem squishy and irrelevant [in a time of crisis]. … Yet the humanities are far more powerful than most people believe. The world has been transformed over the last 250 years by what might be called a revolution of empathy driven by the humanities.”