“At the risk of being dismissed as naïve, I’ll repeat: it takes eyes, ears, brains, and passion — not an art market degree — to run a culturally meaningful gallery. The problem with the ever-growing barrage of marketing schemes lies in the sentence they all open with: “Art is like any other business.” It isn’t. No two artists require the same approach; I have as many hats as I have artists. If only I was in the business of selling hats.”
Tag: 09.25.15
Are Apple Stores The 21st Century’s Temples? Maybe So, Says A Cultural Historian
“In more ancient times, when communal experiences were mediated by religion, crowds used to gather outside temples on feast days. … Nowadays, we have Apple Release Day – the Feast of St. Jobs – when faithful customers gather outside Apple stores and await the renewal of a next generation iPhone.” Says NYU professor Erica Robles-Anderson, “It’s so obviously a cult.”
How Billy Crystal’s One Five-Minute Scene Nearly Derailed ‘The Princess Bride’
Mandy Patinkin came away with a bruise, and for some takes Cary Elwes had to be replaced with a mannequin.
French Thinking Used To Animate The World. So What Happened?
“French public debate has been framed around enduring oppositions such as good and evil, opening and closure, unity and diversity, civilisation and barbarity, progress and decadence, and secularism and religion. Underlying this passion for ideas is a belief in the singularity of France’s mission.”
Eighty Years of Penguin Books – By The Numbers
“Before Allen Lane began his publishing house in 1935, good books were the purview of the privileged, costing more than many Londoners spent on a week’s rent. But that all changed when Lane, then managing director of the now-defunct Bodley Head, bought the rights to 10 already popular hardcovers … redesigning each with a uniform set of specs so simple that even small, inexperienced print shops could mass-produce them on the cheap.” (infographic)
How Can A Movie About A Laundry Worker In 1914 Feel So Sadly Relevant Today?
“It all felt a little too retro. The thing is, while these men may well have the best of intentions, the history of the left, and of revolution, is littered with broken promises made to women.”
How Does A Canadian Artist Sketching Cartoons About The Brontë Sisters Become So Popular?
“A cartoonist and quasi-historian who launched her comic strip Hark! A Vagrant in 2007 while still working at the museum, Beaton has harnessed the power of Tumblr and Facebook and Twitter to become a ubiquitous presence online, where her sketchy, clever, perfectly imperfect strips are often copied, spoofed, remixed and memed by others.”
A Broadway Actor Stands Up For A Kid Who Disrupted A Performance
“He said in the Facebook post that he believed shows that have special performances for autistic audiences should be commended for their efforts and that he hoped the woman would see his post.”
Walter Benjamin, Children’s Radio Broadcaster
“Something quintessentially Benjaminian happens in that uncanny encounter of radio and child: the hint of an unsettling remainder in the everyday, in the dislocation of sent message and received meaning, in the figure of the child who knows something his parents do not.”
L.A.’s Intense Reactions To The New Petersen Automotive Museum
“The new design, reported KPF’s website, ‘transforms the Petersen building into one of the most significant and unforgettable structures in Los Angeles.’ They got that right. Anyone who has been by the intersection of Fairfax and Wilshire in recent months will tell you that it’s the sort of thing you just can’t unsee.”