“More than 250 photographs and films of celebrities, and ordinary people doing ordinary, or more often, extraordinary things, when they thought they were unobserved, play provocatively with the idea of the forbidden gaze. Spanning the 1850s to today, [the exhibition is] like a history of the photographic invasion of privacy.”
Tag: 05.27.10
Where Show Tunes Meet Public Policy
“The founding director of Santa Monica College’s new Public Policy Institute wants to get people engaged and educated about government decisions that affect their lives – a subject many find eye-glazing. So [Sheila] Kuehl has decided to enliven things by using show tunes to help get the message across.”
How Lewis Carroll’s Illustrator Killed Part Of Looking Glass
“Don’t think me brutal,” John Tenniel wrote in a letter to Carroll, “but I am bound to say the ‘Wasp’ chapter doesn’t interest me in the least. I can’t see my way to a picture. If you want to shorten the book, I can’t help thinking — with all submission — that there is your opportunity.”
The Hallucinogenic Nature Of Botticelli’s Venus And Mars
“A fruit held by a satyr in the bottom right of the painting has been identified as belonging to Datura stramonium, a plant with a history of sending people mad and making them want to strip off their clothes. Its hallucinogenic effects were recorded in Ancient Greek texts and it has since been used as an aphrodisiac and a poison.”
Pans Of Dudamel Stem From Misunderstanding Him
“Each assessment stresses that this wouldn’t matter so much were it not that Dudamel is being billed as the future of classical music. Here’s the thing, though: Dudamel is not the future of classical music. He’s not even trying to be.”
B’way Singers, Dancers In Union Tussle
“The American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents dancers and singers at companies including New York City Ballet and the Metropolitan Opera, is attempting to wrest jurisdiction over performers in many Broadway musicals from Actors’ Equity Association.” AGMA wants “jurisdiction over any musical in which two-thirds of the performers sing and dance, but do not speak lines.”
Pianist Isn’t A Marquee Name, But He’s Winning Big Prizes
“[R]iches don’t normally fall from the sky. But for Kirill Gerstein, age 30, it might seem that way. In January, he was announced as this year’s [$300,000] Gilmore [Award] winner. Then in April, Lincoln Center conferred its prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant, worth $25,000. For a pianist with less than marquee status, it was a jackpot of huge proportions.”
On The Portability Of E-Books
“[C]ommercial e-books from the leading online stores come with restrictions that complicate your ability to move your collection from one device to the next. It’s as if old-fashioned books were designed to fit on one particular style of bookshelves. What happens when you remodel?”
Corcoran Art Gallery Director Is Stepping Down
Paul “Greenhalgh, 54, arrived at the Corcoran in spring 2006, hoping to consolidate the work of the art gallery and the city’s only art college, and to steady the programs and financial lifelines of the museum. However, the Corcoran has had a rocky recent past, dealing with declining donations and mounting repairs to an old and historic building.”
Emily Dickinson, Gardener
“‘I was always attached to mud,’ she once wrote, and a sophisticated understanding of plants and flowers is reflected in her poetry. … On the path that runs between beds of flowers at the New York Botanical Garden,” where the exhibition “Emily Dickinson’s Garden” is running, “more than 30 poems are displayed on boards next to plants and trees and flowers that inspired them.”