“But nothing prepares you for the richness of the stone carved interior. It is best to sit for a moment in one of the center pews (you may have to move the chapel cat who has residential rights) and slowly absorb the carved richness of almost every surface.”
Tag: 08.31.13
Detroit Institute Of Arts Director: “Selling Any Art Would Be Tantamount To Closing The Museum”
“[Graham] Beal minces no words in his September letter on the DIA website, telling supporters that he remains adamant that selling art as part of Detroit’s Chapter 9 bankruptcy is the nuclear option that would have catastrophic results.”
Muslim Artists At Work, Battling The Fundamentalists
In excerpts from her book Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, Fatima Bennoune visits a Pakistani director fighting to maintin a children’s theater festival despite actual bombings, the embattled producers of the wildly popular North African TV show Bled Musique (which one might describe as Algerian Bandstand), and the director of the controversial Lahore musical Burqavaganza.
New York’s Music Conservatories Take A Turn To Business
“I think the semi-crisis we’re in could be one of the best things that could ever happen to classical music.”
Malevich’s Burial Site Uncovered
“The burial site of the Russian avant-garde artist and theorist Kazimir Malevich, in a field near Moscow, has been covered in concrete by a real estate developer to make way for luxury housing, says an enthusiast who spent years looking for the site.”
The Time Jackie Kennedy Hid The White House Cezannes
“Perhaps the omissions represented the public relations savvy of a young but seasoned political wife. She knew the art’s importance, having studied French history at the Sorbonne in Paris, but may have thought it impolitic to draw attention to Modern French paintings in an American Neoclassical house.”
The Private Museum You’ll Never See
“Whether or not the museum ever opens to the public, it has already made its mark as a metaphor — a private art palace built on the skewed economics of globalization by and for the privileged few. Happy Labor Day.”
Russia’s Cultural Politics Takes An Ugly Turn
“Spurred by demagogues, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kirill I, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Russia has embraced a hysterical fear and loathing of gay people, embodied in a now-infamous law that prohibits gay “propaganda,” which seems to encompass any positive or even neutral mention of homosexuality that might be heard by children.”
Should American Universities Be Working With Authoritarian Regimes?
“If you look past their soaring rhetoric, you’ll see globe-trotting university presidents and trustees who are defining down their expectations of what a liberal education means, much as corporations do when they look the other way at shoddy labor and environmental practices abroad. The difference, of course, is that a university’s mission is to question such arrangements, not to facilitate them.”