“My quick reaction is that the addition is less deferential — in same ways to its benefit — than it lets on, or would like to easily admit, or than it has seemed to some critics and observers. The block-like addition is sliced or folded back in a few places. But in scale and flinty personality, the new building is likely to thoroughly outmuscle the old one.”
Tag: 05.27.11
NYCity Ballet – Some New Life
“Out with the old, in with the new. Whatever and whoever is responsible, the audience is responding with more genuine enthusiasm than it has in a long time. And lifelong City Ballet lovers like myself can turn up at the theater without flinching at the prospect before us.”
NASA Satellites Find 17 Buried Pyramids
“The team also found more than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements, according to the report.”
Why Aren’t American Museums Protesting China’s Detention Of Ai Weiwei?
“It strikes me that instead of being “cautious” not to “impose” American values on a foreign culture, the museums of America should acknowledge that they have a unique responsibility to speak out on behalf of Mr. Ai.”
Time For The Venice Biennale Again
“Competition for attention will be tough this time around: 89 nations are participating, up from 77 two summers ago. A third are setting up their shows in small buildings dotting the Giardini, a Napoleonic park on the city’s eastern edge; the rest are staking spaces in the city’s historic shipyards or in buildings nearby. Nearly 40 art foundations and private collectors are also organizing separate exhibits citywide.”
Royal Ballet Tries A Music Video To Hook New Audiences
“I’m not interested in doing the branded, tick-all-the-right-boxes films for the existing audience (who’ve probably already bought their tickets). Those people will only fill 10 to 20 percent of the capacity, if that! We have to find, target and engage a new, inexperienced crowd, who will form very different opinions to what we’re used to. That gets me excited.”
Enormous Statue Of John Paul II Has Romans Up In Arms
“The crescendo of outrage grew so rapidly that Rome’s traffic cops had to be deployed to keep a 24-hour watch to ward off potential vandalism until video cameras could be installed on surrounding lampposts.”
Rise Of The Micro Theatre Movement
“Not only are we seeing the fast rise of micro-festivals but regional theatres are increasingly throwing open their doors to companies that, in the past, they might have deemed a risky box-office proposition that didn’t fit in with the rest of their programmes.”
Singapore Sentences British Journalist To Eight Weeks In Prison
“The British author Alan Shadrake has lost an appeal against his contempt of court conviction and will begin a jail sentence in Singapore next week. … [He] refused to apologise for his book, Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, which is critical of the country’s use of the death penalty for crimes such as drug trafficking.”
Meet America’s Top Slang Lexicographer
“For most people, being late to a language trend isn’t a problem. But [Tom] Dalzell, a 59-year-old union leader by day and slang expert after hours, is now in the process of updating the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. And as informal language evolves faster than ever, Mr. Dalzell is finding it trickier to keep up.”