“In the Anglo-American West, where Camus is often revered as a kind of French Orwell, his stand on Algeria is typically taken as the sole mark against him.” Yet, as Thomas Meaney reminds us, Camus’s opposition to Algerian independence wasn’t just loyalty to his own pied-noir community: he wanted genuine equality for all Algerians as French citizens.
Tag: 08.27.13
Santiago’s Museum of Contemporary Art Reopens Following Theft
The main branch of the Chilean museum was burglarized during a major open-air concert in August 15. Two butterfly prints by Damien Hirst were stolen and have now been recovered; additional security is in place.
Does The “Exposure Effect” Work With Bad Art? Evidently Not
“An oil painting of a piece of wood with a sad face sitting on the ground or a pink pony with Disney Princess-like hair. Would people come to like these pieces, considered ‘bad art by some websites, if they became more familiar with them?” According to this study, rather the opposite.
Deborah Borda Talks About Why The LA Philharmonic Is Successful
“Since arriving in L.A. in 2000, Deborah Borda got Disney Hall built, created a $140 million endowment, discovered Gustavo Dudamel, and started YOLA (Youth Orchestra of L.A.) — her version of Venezuela’s highly regarded El Sistema music program — for disadvantaged kids.”
Two Spanish Regions Fight Over Title To 13th-Century Frescoes
“The government of Aragon, an autonomous region in the north east of Spain, is formally asking the neighbouring government of Catalonia to return Romanesque frescos that are in the collection of the Museo Nacional de Arte de Cataluña, Barcelona.” The works were saved from a monastery that was badly damaged during the Spanish Civil War.
Naxos Founder On His “Favorite Baby”, Naxos Music Library
Says Klaus Heymann on his label group’s subscription streaming service, which offers more than 85,000 CDs on 250 labels, “Today more than 60% of music is consumed on mobile devices. I read a sci-fi novel years ago in which you could get your music from a socket in the wall. Now you don’t even need the socket.”
Benjamin Millepied Is Being Subversive About Ballet’s Gender Roles
“[There] seems to be a clear undercurrent of Millepied’s artistic thinking: the need to modernize what ballet represents, as well as the artistic elements that are incorporated into them. There are three big ideas that come across in Millepied’s comments about race and gender in ballet.”
Julian Lloyd Webber: I’m Doing Dudamel
“El Sistema’s success has become a global phenomenon – all over the world, Sistema-inspired programmes are springing up almost every day, regardless of political system. The key to their success is that they are not just music education projects; they are social programmes with music at their heart.”
What Made JD Salinger JD Salinger?
“Considered through such a filter, Salinger’s life becomes a saga defined by its own trauma and the books a series of small miracles that, by all rights maybe, never should have existed at all.”
Pshaw! A Humanities Degree Doesn’t Make Better People. Still…
“A humanities major may make an obvious contribution to everyone’s welfare. But the truth is that for every broadly humane, technological-minded guy who contributed one new gadget to our prosperity there are six narrow, on-the-spectrum techno-obsessives who contributed twenty.”