“The art world has a love-hate relationship with visibility, entertainment, and anything populist. It claims to be open but relentlessly polices its borders for anything as alien as this show was bound to be. Yet Bravo had me at hello. The show appealed to my belief that art only got better once the boundaries between high and low culture were relaxed, most famously by Andy Warhol, then by countless others.”
Tag: 09.12.10
Global University Education – Will Rest Of The World Out-Innovate US?
“We didn’t just copy European institutions when we adopted the model of the German research university in the 19th century. We improved on them, welding their focus on scholarship to our egalitarian spirit. We can expect that our 21st-century competitors will be similarly adaptable. They’ll take what’s worked for us and do better.”
Bad Times? Maybe It’s Time For Collaboration
“People are recognizing that audiences can have multiple allegiances. The old idea that this is my theater, this is the one theater that I go to, is breaking down. People are seeing different work in different places.”
Where Is Boston’s Great Public Art?
“Especially in a proud city like ours, you shouldn’t have to search so hard for evidence that the history of art — and of Boston — continued past the turn of the last century. Where are our leading corporations in all of this? Where is City Hall?”
Happiness Is on the Rise. Thanks to Freedom
“Despite the belief that happiness has remained constant in modern societies, recent research says otherwise, citing rising democracy and increased basic freedoms as the cause.”
British Museum Receives £25M From Supermarket Mogul
“Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover, the Conservative peer and former chairman of the supermarket chain, has made a £25 million donation to the British Museum.”
Serge Diaghilev, the Ultimate Smooth Operator
“From their first performance to Diaghilev’s death, the Ballets Russes were in a state of acute financial crisis, and neither the company nor its director ever had a permanent home. The strategies with which Diaghilev addressed these obstacles are astonishingly modern in their scope. He was a master of spin with a sophisticated understanding of the nature of celebrity and power, a consummate networker, and he knew exactly how to manipulate the press.”
Looking at ‘Humanitarian Architecture’ in Museums
“Has architecture rediscovered its conscience? Or is it just critics and curators who have had a reawakening, suddenly paying attention to design work that has been going on steadily, and right under our noses, for years?”
Louisville Arts Groups Make Painful Cuts
“All have made difficult decisions over the past couple of years. And though in some cases performances have been curtailed, most of the cuts have been on the administrative, rather than the artistic, front.”
Riccardo Muti Contemplates Chicago
“I am not Toscanini, and I don’t know if I will become 80, but it’s very important that the people in Chicago, especially the musicians, who have invited me, know — I am coming not to make a career, first because what I’ve done, I’ve done. But to make good music, to improve myself. If you are stable, you are dead; there’s only two choices, higher or lower, but there must be movement.”