Some communities in America have great distrust of “mindwork.” “There was lots of room for people who wanted to learn to become mechanics or electricians, for those were tangible, practical jobs that existed in the world. Mind work, beyond figuring the price of cotton or how to pay bills or the technicalities of being mechanics or electricians, was troubling, not well understood, and generally to be feared. There was a strange inconsistency in that persons educated out of practical usefulness still served as a source of pride to their families. Folks could respect you, for example, for earning a doctoral degree and could exclaim loudly to neighbors about your success; they just had little practical use for you and many times didn’t know what to do with you. To become thus educated is to become a nerd, and black nerds are strange creatures indeed.”
Tag: 04.07.03
This Year’s Pulitzer – The Little Play That…
Nilo Cruz’s little-known play “‘Anna in the Tropics” wins the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, triumphing over high-profile Broadway competition – Edward Albee’s “The Goat or Who is Sylvia?” and Richard Greenberg’s “Take Me Out.” “Anna” was born when Cruz got the idea of writing a play about a cigar-factory tradition brought years ago from Cuba to Florida.
What Will Happen If Oregon Zeroes Out Arts Funding
The Oregon state legislature is considering zeroing out the state arts commission. Arts commission director Christine D’Arcy says her agency would try to reinvent. “You could see the commission continue as a service agency rather than a grant maker. We?re clearly looking at partnerships, revenue resources. I would say there is a lot of creative thinking under way.”
Arts As Economic Engine
“In an era when public and private coffers are depleted, it’s easy to ask why arts investment should be a priority.” Real estate consultant Wendi Wheeler writes: “Culture helps build community by influencing commercial and residential development, which in turn attracts workers and residents. When companies make decisions to relocate, they seek markets with concentrations of talented workers. In turn, the power of industry to attract talented workers depends largely upon a city’s quality of life.”
Hemingway/Dietrich Letters To Kennedy Library
Thirty of Ernest Hemingway’s letters to Marlene Dietrich are being donated to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. “The letters, never made public, will remain sealed for four years, according to the wishes of Dietrich’s heirs. ‘We didn’t know the collection existed,’ said Deborah Leff, director of the Kennedy Library.”
Beethoven Ninth For Sale
Sotheby’s is selling a manuscript of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. “In three bound volumes of 465 pages, the offering includes virtually the complete score of that symphony in manuscript. (Two fragments of the same manuscript reside in the Beethovenhaus in Bonn and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.) The hands are mainly those of two copyists, but Beethoven scribbled corrections and changes throughout. The manuscript may have been used at the work’s premiere, in 1824, and it was the basis for the first printed edition, in 1826.”
Utzon Wins Pritzker
Jorn Utzon has won this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession’s most prestigious international award. Utzon was the architect of the Sydney Opera House, “perhaps the world’s most famous 20th-century building.”
Art That Defaces Is No “Art”
Eric Gibson wonders why the art world accepts the altering – read “vandalism” – of important classic artworks. Tying string around a Rodin sculpture or defacing Goya prints isn’t art, he writes, and it doesn’t make sense to dignify these acts with serious consideration. “It says something that in our own time it has always been the lesser talents who have left their imprint on the works of their superiors. And you can be sure that, whatever motivated Rubens, it had to do with an artistic impulse far more profound than simply “thinking again about a familiar image.”
Only 200 US Colleges Reject More Students Than They Accept
“In the ongoing debate about affirmative action, with the Supreme Court expecting to decide a case involving admissions procedures at the University of Michigan, the term meritocracy is a canard. American education is not meritocratic, and it never has been. Merit, defined as quantifiable aptitude and achievement, is just one of the variables that decide educational outcomes. Success in college admissions, as in almost every sphere of life, is a function of some combination of ability, connections, persistence, wealth, and special markers?that is, attributes valued for the difference they make to the mix. There are more than two thousand four-year colleges in the United States. Only about two hundred reject more students than they accept. The vast majority of American colleges accept eighty per cent or more of those who apply.”
A Clue To Who Mona Was
Mona Lisa is a star. But who was she? “Over the past five centuries, that smile has been exploited and replicated in so many forms that the Mona Lisa has been transformed from a mere masterpiece into an international celebrity. And, like a Hollywood star, she now has to have her own bodyguards and lives behind triplex bullet-proof glass in a humidified, air-conditioned environment. Aside from the riddle of the smile, it’s the mystery of Mona Lisa’s identity that has inspired amateur art detectives all over the world. After centuries of uncertainty, a vitally important document has recently come to light in the Milan State Archive.” It suggests Mona Lisa’s identity.