“After tangling in court over nearly $40 million in cost overruns on the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, the Orange County Performing Arts Center has reached an undisclosed settlement with the project’s architects [Pelli Clarke Pelli] and builders [Fluor Corp.].”
Tag: 05.09.09
The Eiffel Tower’s Journey From Loathed To Loved
“The tower is so beloved that few today remember the storm of vitriol, mockery and lawsuits provoked by its selection as the startling centerpiece of the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. … Even as Eiffel was breaking ground by the Seine River in February 1887, 47 of France’s greatest names decried in a letter to Le Temps the ‘odious column of bolted metal.'”
Missing Poet Presumed To Have Fallen To His Death
“Award-winning poet Craig Arnold, who went missing in Japan in late April, is presumed to have died after a fall, his employer, the University of Wyoming, announced Friday. … The American search team that arrived tracked Arnold to the edge of ‘a high and dangerous cliff, and there is virtually no possibility he could have survived the fall,’ the release explained.”
Why High Culture Fled TV
“The more television channels we have, the less the mainstream ones wish to head towards the “elitist” culture. Thirty years ago, when there were only three channels, the proportion of cultural programming on them was high. Operas, concerts and recitals were commonplace.”
The Robots That Make Art Out Of Shouting
“The pocket-sized Pollock comes in two flavors: the SoundBot, which draws in response to loud noise, and the ShadowBot, which sketches along the boundary between light and dark. They can even transform anger into art.”
A Lost Generation For The Arts?
“Martin Bright, the journalist and founder of the New Deal of the Mind campaign, argues that we risk losing a generation of talent and intellectual capital if we in the arts don’t react immediately and imaginatively to the challenge of the financial crisis.”
Prince Charles On Architecture (And The Architects Cringe)
“Although much of this is now history – the prince has kept remarkably quiet about architecture in recent years – old sores, and carbuncles, have clearly yet to heal.”
The Tonys – Invisible Beyond Broadway?
“Put simply, the aesthetic glow of the Tonys doesn’t shine very far out and barely reaches markets where both audiences and producers are less likely to use awards as a tool in their theater-making and theatergoing decisions. You think the producers of the musical “Billy Elliot,” which has been selling $1 million worth of tickets a week at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre and playing to 90-plus percent of capacity, have been waiting for the blessings of the Antoinette Perry Awards before planning to take the show on the road?”
The Science Of Being Happy
“In recent years, cognitive scientists have turned in increasing numbers to the study of human happiness, and one of their central findings is that we are not very good at predicting how happy or unhappy something will make us.”
The Bleak Story Behind Orwell’s Bleak Story
“The circumstances surrounding the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four make a haunting narrative that helps to explain the bleakness of Orwell’s dystopia. Here was an English writer, desperately sick, grappling alone with the demons of his imagination in a bleak Scottish outpost in the desolate aftermath of the second world war.”