“Leonard Riggio is the rich person who made Dia:Beacon possible. A demanding, emotional, self-made man — a Brooklyn cabbie’s son who built Barnes & Noble into the dominant bookseller in America — Riggio was the chairman of the Dia board during the years Dia:Beacon was being built. He believed in it with every fiber of his being. When Dia needed a piece of art to round out its permanent collection, he bought it. When cost overruns occurred, he covered them. But last year, Riggio abruptly, and angrily, resigned as Dia’s chairman.”
Tag: 10.14.07
Joffrey Ballet’s New Era
“Ashley Wheater, 48, is poised to give the Joffrey, based in Chicago since 1995, a bit of a kick-start. ‘I want the Joffrey to be the company that it started out being, which was eclectic, with a huge respect for where we’ve come from’.”
Music On The Brain
“Describing a performance does little to explain what really happens when certain sounds — vibrations in the air — hit our ears and are transmitted to the brain. As visceral as music can be, its ethereal effects on the mind remain largely a mystery, even to neurologists. That’s certainly the overriding impression reading Oliver Sacks’ new collection of vignettes, ‘Musicophilia’.”
Seattle Arts Funding Boost In Name Only?
Seattle’s mayor proposes a $1 million increase in the city’s arts budget. But the “arts” are broadly defined. “Of the total $4.2 million in the proposed budget, the lion’s share — $3.2 million — will fund parks projects, a few of which would appear to stretch some definitions of “arts and culture.”
Reconsidering 12-Tone Music
“Among all segments of the audience major misconceptions persist about the 12-tone technique of composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s. Schoenberg’s use of systematized sets of all 12 pitches of the chromatic scale — all the keys on the piano from, say, A to G sharp — was a radical departure from tonality, the familiar musical language of major and minor keys.”
Herman Cornejo – Skipping To The Top (Finally)
Herman Cornejo “has been a principal dancer in Ballet Theater since 2003, having joined the corps when he was just 17. But his rapid ascent has staggered just short of the story-ballet summit; he has never played the romantic lead at Ballet Theater, save for the odd opportunity on tour and in gala highlights. For many dancers, that would be enough. For an artist like Mr. Cornejo, it is not.”
The Remarkable Louise Bourgeois
” ‘It’s not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive,’ Bourgeois has recently stated. You know what she is getting at – at 95, she is still working – but when you see her work laid out like this, there is no mystery.”
The Essence Of Frankfurt
“Frankfurt, attended by 300,000 people from 108 countries, is where the inner workings of the publishing industry are laid bare, where traditionally the big deals are done; and where everyone schmoozes with everyone else until five minutes later when they turn round and stab each other in the back. And this year, at least, everyone’s been unanimous about which back to stab: the dying corpse of what was once the biggest and one of the most prestigious literary agencies in Britain, PFD.”
Language On TV – The Battles Continue
“Language is a singular spoke in a larger societal wheel of complaints about television and pop culture in general that includes racy sexual content and unrelenting violence as well… Nonprofit groups such as the Parents Television Council are pressuring lawmakers to find a way to broaden their powers over the medium in hopes of steamrolling, even rolling back, what they consider the disturbing trends.”
How British Art Has Changed
“The traditional role of the artist has changed beyond all recognition – and we feel that change on the institutional side of the art world as well.”