A new wharenui near Auckland “is not just a splendid example of traditional meeting-house architecture, but a three-dimensional ‘reference library.’ The carvings on every surface, including the floor, tell a comprehensive story of the Maori experience, from the earliest times until the present.” (One of the bas-reliefs includes a map of Auckland’s freeway system.)
Tag: 05.19.09
Want That Donation? It’s Probably Up To A Woman.
“An online survey of 1,000 adults who had given $1,000 or more to charity in 2007 — half of whom had donated $5,000 or more — found that more women than men act as their household’s primary decision maker in determining how much to donate to charity and which causes to support.”
Aristotle Was Right: Cities Are Like Living Organisms
“Whether you measure miles of roadway or length of electrical cables, you find that all of these [measures of infrastructure necessary for a city] also decrease, per person, as city size increases. And all show an exponent between 0.7 and 0.9. Now comes the spooky part. The same law is true for living things. That is, if you mentally replace cities by organisms and city size by body weight, the mathematical pattern remains the same.”
Jimmy Kimmel Acts Up (Repeatedly) In Front Of ABC Advertisers
“At Tuesday afternoon’s upfront presentation [of next season’s shows] in New York, Mr. Kimmel, the host of ABC’s late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live, delivered a withering, blistering monologue that took direct aim at ABC, its potential advertisers and his NBC late-night rival, Jay Leno. The assembled advertisers received his performance with a mixture of uneasy laughs and the occasional gasp.”
A California Bill Would Funnel Funding To The Arts
“Arts institutions in California need all the money they can get at this point, and a new bill currently making its way through the halls of Sacramento is poised to help. If it can only make its way out of committee, that is.”
Suggested: A New Motto For The NEA
“The endowment’s current slogan is ‘A Great Nation Deserves Great Art.’ Wince. That imperial bit of provincial pomposity has things exactly backward.”
What If P.G. Wodehouse’s Characters Had Sex?
“During most of Wodehouse’s long career, writers and readers had yet to reach an accord by which the former would knock down the bedroom walls and the latter would peer in. Much the same is true of, say, the screwball comedies of the 1930s. … It’s not a matter of morality or prudery, I would argue, but almost one of genre.”
Women On The Verge Of … Breaking Into Song Onstage
“A tuner adaptation of ‘Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’ is in the works. The developing musical will get a week of creative work hosted by Lincoln Center Theater this summer.”
Rebecca, The Musical
“Christopher Hampton, whose play The Philanthropist and translation of God of Carnage are now on Broadway, has signed on to write the English-language adaptation of the book for the musical Rebecca, based on the Daphne Du Maurier novel.” Following a tryout in Toronto, runs in London and New York are planned.
The Cliburn Tries To Fix (Some Of) What’s Wrong With Competitions
We’ve all heard the usual complaints about competitions: they reward safe, boring playing over artistic daring; they thrust talented youngsters onto the concert treadmill too early; it’s ridiculous to rank the first prize winner over the runner-up on the basis of a single performance or two; etc. The Van Cliburn, the most visible of today’s piano competitions, has considered these issues and made some changes.