“The brain is not an equal opportunities organ, it seems. An imaging study of Chinese and Caucasian people has found that their brains respond less strongly to the pain of strangers whose ethnicity is different when compared with strangers of their own race.”
Tag: 07.01.09
What Are Critics Really For, Anyway?
Anne Midgette: “The role of a critic is to cover a field. This doesn’t mean simply pandering to popular taste. It means doing one’s best to convey a sense of what is going on in a given discipline by writing about every possible side of it. It means trying to convey a perspective that a reader who doesn’t spend every night going to concerts/plays/films may not be able to gather himself; or offering a thoughtful take that might stimulate a reader who does go to everything to see something in a different light.”
Dutch Arts Official On The Lam After Embezzling Millions
“The former head of finance for the Dutch national arts funding body, the Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture (BKVB), is the subject of an international police hunt after the discovery that he had siphoned around €15.5m from the organisation’s accounts.”
Pina Bausch, Tender Mother Figure (Yes, Really)
Mark Swed: “Again and again Bausch stopped the dancers, praised them and ever so sweetly asked them to start over, as she lithely sidestepped falling bodies. … When the tension became unbearable or it looked as if the dancers would be beaten to a pulp, Bausch flashed a sly smile and handed out cookies. She had baked them that morning. They were delicious.”
Hey, Rugby Players! Are You Man Enough To Get Through A Ballet Class?
This week the coach of South Africa’s national rugby team defended an eye-gouging incident by one of his players by saying, in effect, that rugby ain’t ballet, it’s a violent sport. So South African Ballet Theatre invited the players to take a class with them and see how they fared opposite some real men in tights.
Project Runway Gallery: Art Gets The Reality TV Treatment
“In the series [on the Bravo cable network], 13 contestants will compete for a gallery exhibition, a cash prize and a sponsored national tour. The artists will create works in the fields of sculpture, painting, photography, industrial design and more. Their completed works will be judged by a panel of art world figures including gallerists, collectors, curators, critics and fellow artists. The finalists’ work will be featured in a nationwide museum tour.”
Authors Lobby For Children’s Right To School Libraries
“A high-profile group of children’s authors, publishers, teachers and librarians is calling on the government to make school libraries statutory.” Campaign supporters “are concerned that while prisoners have the statutory right to a library, schoolchildren do not, and they believe it is essential that children get the habit of reading for pleasure.”
At Philly Museum, Rub Says He’s Taking Things Slowly
Timothy Rub, incoming director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “is at that awkward stage in a new leader’s tenure – perhaps wanting to talk substantively about his ideas for the job, yet wary of committing too much too early – but he is happy to say one thing quite unequivocally: He’s thinking of Philadelphia long-term.”
Jackson’s Death Kicks Broadway Thriller Project Into Limbo
“[I]magine the potential for a multimillion-dollar Broadway musical based on the ‘Thriller’ video and brandishing the seal of approval from Jackson himself. The Nederlander Organization,” which announced that project in January, “may be sitting on a gold mine. But the gold mine won’t be producing for a while. The musical has yet to be written, and Jackson’s sudden death has thrown the production into confusion.”
With New Magazine, Fiction Gets A Jolt Of Electricity
“Amid all the dismal reports about the death of fiction, here’s a refreshingly bold act of optimism: a new bimonthly magazine called Electric Literature. And it’s not just MFA kids self-publishing their diatribes against Mom and Dad. The first issue sports stories by such heavyweights as Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Cunningham and National Book Award finalist Jim Shepard.” To contributors, Electric Literature “pays real money: $1,000.”