Tag: 09.17.18

Florida’s Norton Museum Of Art Picks A New Director

Elliot Bostwick Davis has been chair of the department of Art of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for the past 18 years. During her tenure there, she oversaw the 2010 opening of the museum’s widely acclaimed Art of the Americas wing, which brought forth expansive notions of connectivity by juxtaposing American colonial art, a strength of the museum, with art from throughout Latin America, indigenous art, and art from pre-Colombian civilizations.

Hoaxer Alan Abel Gets His Second New York Times Obit (And This Time He’s Really Dead)

“A master psychologist, keen strategist and possessor of an enviable deadpan and a string of handy aliases, Mr. Abel had an almost unrivaled ability to divine exactly what a harried news media wanted to hear and then give it to them, irresistibly gift-wrapped. … He was, the news media conceded with a kind of irritated admiration, an American original in the mold of P. T. Barnum, a role model whom Mr. Abel reverently acknowledged.”

Researchers: There Are Four Basic Personality Types

In a report published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior, researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois identify four personality types: reserved, role models, average and self-centered. The new approach was nothing like the basis for widely used personality tests such as the Myers-Briggs, which spits out a personality type with acronyms like INTJ, for introversion-intuition-thinking-judgment, or ESFP (that’s extrovert-sensing-feeling-perceiving).

Why Awards Shows (Like The Emmys) Should Be Political

It’s easy to understand why awards shows would rather praise the art of making entertainment than risk alienating viewers who are tired of reality. Hollywood is an escapism factory at its core. But the impulse to look away from the ugly parts, to conveniently ignore certain elements and focus instead on the glamour and the ratings (ratings being inextricably associated with money), is what allowed Cosby and Weinstein and so many others to get away with so egregiously abusing their power for so long.

Shan Tianfang, Master Traditional Storyteller And Chinese Radio Superstar, Dead At 83

“Bothered by what he felt were the many historical inaccuracies and superstitious fantasies found in the classical epics [of the pingshu storytelling artform], Mr. Shan, who had studied history, soon began performing his own interpretations based on his meticulous historical research,” for which he became celebrated. In the years after the Cultural Revolution, he brought pingshu to the radio waves, where hundreds of millions listened.

Vulture’s ‘Premature Attempt’ At A 21st-Century Literary Canon

“A couple of months ago, we reached out to dozens of critics and authors — well-established voices (Michiko Kakutani, Luc Sante), more radical thinkers (Eileen Myles), younger reviewers for outlets like n+1, and some of our best-read contributors, too. We asked each of them to name several books that belong among the most important 100 works of fiction, memoir, poetry, and essays since 2000 and tallied the results. The purpose was not to build a fixed library but to take a blurry selfie of a cultural moment.”

‘Mr. Balanchine’s Stage Is Now Filled With Rot’, Writes Former New York City Ballet Dancer In New York Times Op-Ed

Toni Bentley: “The company has now formally hit its nadir after 35 years under the direction of Peter Martins, who succeeded Mr. Balanchine. As a lead dancer for Mr. Balanchine, Mr. Martins embodied a singular purity that made him one of the great male dancers of the 20th century. But the company, under his guidance, is now proffering vulgarity, narcissism and amorality … [and] this descent into moral vacuity has been in the works for decades.”