“When schools and institutions attempt to ban The Bluest Eye there is a distinct and ugly irony to this exile. I often think of Morrison’s own words, ‘If you’re going to hold someone down you’re going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain.'”
Tag: 09.25.15
A Protest Mural Gets Defaced
“Wylie Goodman recalls sitting in her Brooklyn home in August when she thought she heard gunfire outside. Actually, it was someone shooting paintballs at a 27-foot-tall mural she had allowed to be created on the side of the building she owns in Red Hook.”
The Paris Opera Opens With Glamour, Glitz, And New Artistic Directions
“Until now, the French haven’t really done galas in the focused way of American organizations. In a largely state-subsidized cultural system, fund-raising has not been an imperative and the cultivation of a circle of patrons has been discreet and elite.”
Why Jane Austen Never Goes Out Of Style
“Of all her contemporaries, Austen is the only one to have made it through with her best-seller status intact, and that’s not just because her girls meet her boys without any help from Tinder.”
Saving Ancient Books Rediscovered In Italy After The Library Was Closed For A Century
“‘One of the bottom shelves was full of black slime,’ she recalled. ‘You couldn’t recognise that they were books and many were lost.'”
Shakespeare Fest Commissions New ‘Translations’ Of The Bard – Into Contemporary English
“We can piece these meanings together, of course, by reading the play and consulting stacks of footnotes. But Shakespeare didn’t intend for us to do that. He wrote plays for performance. We’re supposed to be able to hear and understand what’s spoken on the stage, in real time.”
State Lawmaker Leans On Thomas Hart Benton Mural To Take Notes
There are many things one might do while inside a room whose walls are lined with a historic Thomas Hart Benton mural: admire the artwork, contemplate it, take selfies with it. One should not use it as a surface to lean on while writing. Especially if you’re a state lawmaker.
Vancouver Symphony Picks Kelly Tweeddale As Its Executive Director
Kelly Tweeddale, who has been the executive director of Seattle Opera for the past 13 years, takes over her new role on Nov. 16, the orchestra announced Thursday.
Ernest Hemingway Was A Total Pack Rat
“He saved even his old passports and used bullfight tickets, leaving behind one of the longest paper trails of any author. So how is it possible that ‘Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars,’ which opens on Friday at the Morgan Library & Museum, is the first major museum exhibition devoted to Hemingway and his work? It could be simply that no one thought of it before.”
The ‘Queer Tango’ Movement Comes Into Its Own
Marina Harss: “For many people, including me, the word tango conjures the image of a pantherlike milonguero, hair slicked back, in a breathless embrace with a lithe, rapt partner, skirt slit to her thigh, trembling at his every touch. … But, no surprise, this image has very little to do with the reality of the tango as it is experienced by those who dance it. … Men are dancing with men, women with women; women are leading and men are learning to follow. Often, these roles shift mid-dance.”