But she did it only by email, which meant she’d have time and space to craft her answers — and, writes reporter Mark Lawson, “the precise replies suggest that her public reticence may come from a fear of being over-specific about details that the work blurs.” – The Guardian
Tag: 10.24.19
This Woman Is Out To Collect And Classify Every Ocher In The World
“For years, [Heidi Gustafson] has been engaged in a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary exploration of the mineral … While there has recently been renewed interest in creating paints from natural pigments, Gustafson’s focus is on ocher alone — and it extends beyond the material’s artistic uses to its scientific, symbolic and spiritual properties.” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine
Another Opera Singer Speaks Openly About Plácido Domingo, And This One Is Well-Known
Brigitte Fassbaender had a long and admired career as a mezzo, and after retiring from singing she went on to run the opera house in Innsbruck, Austria. In her recently-published memoir and a subsequent interview, she says that Domingo’s womanizing habits were very well-known in the opera world and that he repeatedly pursued her without success but was polite about being turned down. (She also has something to say about the Metropolitan Opera and James Levine’s proclivities.) – OperaWire
Lumberyard, The Contemporary Dance Development Hub, May Have To Cancel Its Signature Program
The organization — which used to be called the American Dance Institute until it moved from Rockville, MD into a huge former lumberyard in Catskill, NY — lets dance artists spend one or two weeks at its specialized facility holding advanced technical rehearsals before a new work’s premiere. Lumberyard director Adrienne Willis says that “there hasn’t been a single artist who didn’t say that if they didn’t have this time at Lumberyard, this piece wouldn’t have happened.” But she’s having a very hard time getting funders to agree. – Dance Magazine
The Music Inside Us: How The Brain Hallucinates
“As a composer and researcher in cognition and music, I have been thinking about my mother’s hallucinations and what they might tell us about the nature and role of music today. Neurological research has shown that vivid musical hallucinations are more than metaphorical.” – Nautilus
Elizabeth Warren Hired A Poet For Her Campaign. It Was A Very Good Idea
“In recent months, Senator Warren has become an even more effective storyteller. During a rally last month she conjured the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in rich detail: “It was March 25, 1911; it was a Saturday. And at about 4:45 in the afternoon, people walking through this very park looked up and saw black smoke billowing into the sky.” While still professorial, Warren’s campaign speeches are increasingly verging on lyrical.” – The New York Times
National African-American Museum Is A Conflicted Proposition
“The central question that the museum presents is the degree to which a national memorial to the history and culture of a marginalized people, set in that nation’s capital and funded and supported by that nation’s federal government, can hold the nation accountable to not just its past but its present situation.” – The New Yorker
Where Am I? MoMA’s Impermanent Displays of Its Permanent Collection
Visitors’ general state of confusion is unlikely to be dispelled unless MoMA rethinks its new installation strategy, which may satisfy curators’ desire to shake up static displays, but will vex those visitors who would prefer a better balance between aimless wandering and purposeful navigation among familiar touchstones. – Lee Rosenbaum
The twenty-five record albums that changed my life (8)
I started exploring the long-inaccessible contents of my father’s record cabinets when I was in junior high school. There I found $64,000 Jazz, a sampler released in 1955 as a promotional tie-in to the quiz show The $64,000 Question. – Terry Teachout
The Scholar Who’s Spent 20 Years Searching For Shakespeare’s Personal Library
Says Stuart Kells, “Shakespeare certainly did have books, and he certainly read them. Why, then, have we found none of his manuscripts, and why are there no books with an authentic Shakespeare signature, bookplate, book label or inscription? … But I have confirmed [his library’s] existence, clarified its scale and scope, and documented what happened to it.” – The Guardian