Germaine Greer Ponders The Muse

“A muse is anything but a paid model. The muse in her purest aspect is the feminine part of the male artist, with which he must have intercourse if he is to bring into being a new work. She is the anima to his animus, the yin to his yang, except that, in a reversal of gender roles, she penetrates or inspires him and he gestates and brings forth, from the womb of the mind. Painters don’t claim muses until painting begins to take itself as seriously as poetry.”

A Future In Which Technology Will Fix Everything

Ray Kurzweil “sees biology, medicine, energy and other fields being revolutionized by information technology. His graphs already show the beginning of exponential progress in nanotechnology, in the ease of gene sequencing, in the resolution of brain scans. With these new tools, he says, by the 2020s we’ll be adding computers to our brains and building machines as smart as ourselves.”

Singapore Invests In The Arts

“The population of 4.5 million has an arts budget of about $50 million, of which the government provides some $30 million. The rest comes from sponsorship, ticket sales and other revenue streams. Having built the infrastructure – the Esplanade, the recent renovation of old Parliament House into the Arts House performing and exhibition venue, a massive new wing to the Singapore Museum which opened in 2006 – the Government through its National Arts Council is now creating programs and events that will encourage more Singaporeans to take part in the arts.”

Mimi Gates To Step Down As Director Of Seattle Art Museum

“Gates’ stint at SAM has brought the most dramatic changes in the institution’s history and its largest capital campaign. To open the expansion and the sculpture park last year, the museum raised some $200 million. It also recently announced 1,000 promised gifts of art valued at $1 billion, a landmark in museum philanthropy. Under Gates’ watch, SAM also established a new art-conservation department and broadened the museum’s audience and attendance.”

Frontrunner For Poet Laureate Job Talks Trash About It

Wendy Cope is one of Britain’s “most widely read and best-loved poets”, and is seen as a frontrunner for the position British Poet Laureate after the expected retirement of Andrew Motion next year. If appointed, Cope would be the first woman laureate. But maybe not. Infront of an audience this weekend she called the post “ridiculous” and “archaic”