“This year’s shortlist, announced on 6 September, is already the most popular ever. The six books have sold, collectively, 37,500 copies since the announcement, an increase of 127% year-on-year, and up 105% on the previous record-holding year, 2009. And there’s still another three weeks to go until the winner’s announced.”
Tag: 09.26.11
Why Does It Cost So Much To Go To The Museum?
“Super-museums can afford free or inexpensive admission only with government support. The New York museums get substantial sums from the City but not enough to cover free entry. But do they have to charge so much?”
Why Do Museums Charge Admission? (The Answer Varies)
“The Art Newspaper surveyed 30 of the nation’s leading museums and discovered an ideological split, with some focusing on revenue generation and others stressing the museum’s role as a community–and free–resource.”
How Digital Technology Is Changing Your Movie Theatre Experience
“When something breaks on a projector, usually you can get it up and running in a few minutes. And usually it’s a $5 part. When something goes wrong in the digital realm, you have to call your IT department. And I don’t know anyone who likes to call their IT department.”
Doing Good And Looking Good: Designing A New Housing Project In The Bronx
“The rebirth of the South Bronx isn’t news. But Via Verde is. And it makes as good an argument as any new building in the city for the cultural and civic value of architecture.”
New New York Times Architecture Critic Talks About His Mission
Michael Kimmelman: “I’m interested in urbanism, city planning, housing and social affairs, the environment and health, politics and culture – in all the ways we live, in other words, and not just in how buildings look or who designs them, although those things are inseparable from the rest.”
The Issues Raised By The New Phone-Hacking Play
“Glib or not, the project” – Hacked, a series of ten-minute plays based on volunteers’ voice-mail messages – “probes how it feels to discover that you’ve been hacked, and where the boundaries between public and private lie. The writers have taken these one-sided conversations and embroidered them to their own ends: the volunteers, in contrast, have no voice, nor right of reply.”
Ailey Co., New York City Center Sign 10-Year Deal
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has performed at New York City Center since 1971, but the arrangement has not been formalized until now: Both parties will announce Tuesday that the troupe will become the venue’s Principal Dance Company.”
Banned In Beijing: New Opera About China’s First President
“An opera [by composer Huang Ruo] about Sun Yat-sen, China’s first president and Nationalist leader, has been canceled shortly before its scheduled opening at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing because of official objections to the music.”
No Biography Can Encompass Charles Dickens
Even Dickens’s first biographer, his longtime friend John Forster, “found himself emphasising how many different versions of [Dickens] there were. Seen through his eyes, ‘Dickens’ started to sound suspiciously like a group of friends who merely happened to share the same skin.”