Tag: 09.19.16

Fine, Let’s Talk About Sombreros And Lionel Shriver

Francine Prose: “Like much of Shriver’s talk, this paragraph contains a kernel of truth encased by a husk of cultural and historical blindness. It seems clear that one part of the fiction writer’s job is ‘to step into other people’s shoes.’ But to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a hat is more than just a hat. Sometimes it is a symbol—and a racist one, at that.”

Professional Byzantine Chant (!) Choir In Oregon (!) Has Thrived For 20 Years

“[Cappella Romana], the Portland-based vocal ensemble, which performs annual concert series in its hometown and Seattle, has released more than 20 recordings. Its tours have brought the group’s sometimes ethereal, sometimes austere, always powerfully moving music to venues such as New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles’ Getty Center, the Smithsonian Institution, Stanford and Yale universities and festivals throughout Europe.”

Banksy Painting In Liverpool Parkng Lot Is Taken Away To Museum

“The work, dubbed the Love Plane, was painted in 2011 and showed a biplane leaving a heart-shaped trail behind it. The plane has now been removed from the wall of the outdoor car park on Rumford Street – but the heart has remained. The plane will be displayed alongside other Banksy works from Liverpool in an indoor gallery specialising in street art in the city’s Baltic Triangle.”

$150 Million For “Stairs To Nowhere?” What Are They Thinking?

“The whole eyesore would almost be acceptable, in a humorous, nihilistic kind of way, if we didn’t know just how much money was going down the drain on this. To repeat, it will be a full $150 million—or $200 million if you factor in the money going toward the surrounding park. (Given Heatherwick’s apparent penchant for cost overruns, who knows just how high that price will soar, though?) This project comes about at a time when many of New York’s largest museums have been struggling financially.”

Rethinking The Permanent Collection – The Politics Of How Museums Are Rehanging

Several major museums have rehung their permanent collections in the past year, looking for alternative versions of the stories they tell. “The inclusion of such works, rescued from deep storage—if they were even collected at all—serves as an important historical corrective, giving certain artists a belated recognition and blurring the familiar borders of canonical movements.”

He Changed The Theatre, And He Changed America: Tracy Letts Remembers Edward Albee

Writes the playwright of August, Osage County and Killer Joe, also the actor who won a Tony for playing George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, “His plays not only altered the trajectory of world theatre; their impact is felt beyond the scope of arts and letters. He affected attitudes about race, sex, class, marriage, family, addiction, illness, death. He helped shape the postwar American character. He partly defined the postwar American sense of humor.”

Live By The Movie Ratings, Die By The Movie Ratings

The Motion Picture Association of America rates movies – G, R, M-18, etc. But “power creates its own temptation. MPAA itself has been accused of rating independent films more harshly than those produced by MPAA’s own member studios. And this year, a class action lawsuit seeks to force MPAA to use its ratings system to eliminate tobacco imagery from children’s films.”