A major retrospective of the work of David Macaulay is underway at the National Building Museum. “Macaulay created imaginary buildings that felt more alive than real ones. And in the process, he demonstrated the power of a sometimes maligned theory of education — that far more important than the recitation of particulars and facts is the understanding of systems and methods and context.”
Tag: 06.23.07
Vatican Library Renovation Panicking Scholars
The Vatican Library is preparing to close for a three-year overhaul, which has set off a scramble among scholars to access texts that will shortly go into storage. “Petitions addressed to Pope Benedict XVI, the ultimate authority on Vatican matters, are circulating among scholars. Some ask that the manuscript division at least remain accessible to the public during the three-year renovation. Others request that the closing be delayed until 2008 so that scholars will have time to wrap up research and meet publishing or teaching deadlines.”
Who Will Speak For Rushdie?
With Muslim extremists demanding blood in exchange for Salman Rushdie’s pending knighthood, Tim Rutten wonders why there have been so few voices in the West defending Rushdie? “What masquerades as tolerance and cultural sensitivity among many U.S. journalists is really a kind of soft bigotry, an unspoken assumption that Muslim societies will naturally repress great writers and murder honest journalists, and that to insist otherwise is somehow intolerant or insensitive.”
Canadian Film On The Edge Of The Abyss
“On the brink of closing one of the biggest deals in the history of Canadian entertainment – the sale of Alliance Atlantis’s Motion Picture Distribution arm, also known as MPD, to Manhattan-based investment house Goldman Sachs – many of the most powerful names in Canadian film and TV are claiming that the sale of such a heavyweight distributor to a foreign company could decimate the industry here. And they’re demanding Ottawa do something about it.”
Shrinks Weigh In On Ultraviolence
Much has been made of the extreme brutality and unapologetic torture that goes on throughout such new-wave horror movies as Hostel 2. But do mental health professionals really believe that such over-the-top violence is dangerous to those of us living in the real world? A group of Boston psychiatrists watched the film, and concluded that normal, healthy people wouldn’t be inspired by the brutaility. Still, “by fusing the erotic and violent, there are ways you create fantasies that become a playground for serial killers.”
All That’s Missing Is The Real Blood
When Nintendo launched its Wii video game system late last year, some observers were cautiously optimistic that the revolutionary controller, which forces the user to use actual physical movement to create the action on the screen, would change the sedentary nature of gaming. But when the controller is being used to mimic the actions of a brutal serial killer, slicing and dicing in the privacy of one’s living room, a lot of hackles are raised.
Legend of the Fall
Anyone who’s ever seen the theatrical blockbuster Phantom of the Opera was likely dazzled by the spectactular thirty foot plunge of the massive chandelier that dominates the set. Of course, someone had to figure out how to pull that stunt off, night after night, without killing anyone or damaging the set…
Bringing In The Young People
The holy grail of modern arts management is the quest for younger audiences. One consulting group thinks it has found the answer: offering heavily discounted tickets to premiere events that haven’t sold out on its members-only website. “Goldstar Events now has 315,000 members, two-thirds of whom are under the age of 45… Moreover, Goldstar’s younger members are far more ethnically diverse than the average big-city fine-arts ticket buyer.”
Omaha Musicians Claim Executive Greed
The dispute between musicians and management of the Omaha Symphony is ratcheting up, with the musicians claiming that the salary of the orchestra’s CEO rose an average of 20% over the past three years, as the musicians were held to a 2-3% bump over the same period. The orchestra management acknowledges that its CEO’s pay is nearly twice that of some comparable ensembles, but says that much of the raise came through incentive pay.
Push To Save SF’s Oldest Black Theater
“San Francisco’s arts community has launched a broad effort to save the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the city’s oldest African American theater company, which has been told it will lose its 19-year-old home on Sutter Street.”