There’s Eli Broad’s new museum in Los Angeles. Paul Allen’s soon-to-open nonprofit exhibition space in Seattle. The sale by Audey Irmas – her foundation, to be precvise – of her Cy Twombly blackboard. “How can anyone from the outside tell the difference between a collector’s cultural philanthropy and his personal tax strategy?”
Tag: 11.04.15
What’s The Impact Of Theatre OUTSIDE Your Theatre?
“Every theatregoer has an example of a play that changed their life to a greater or lesser extent. However, the real question I reckon theatres need to ask themselves is not whether what they do impacts on those who go to their shows but whether what goes on in their building really has a significant impact for those who have never stepped inside it?”
Claim: Free Admission Doesn’t Bring In The Audiences You Think They Will
“Free admission days do not usually engage affordable access audiences. In fact, data suggest that free days often accomplish the very opposite of their intended purpose for many cultural organizations.”
The Many Lives Of Rasputin’s Daughter
Peasant child, St. Petersburg society girl, White Russian fugitive, itinerant exile, cabaret dancer, animal trainer, Rosie-the-Riveter-style machinist in California. “From the beginning of her life in rural Siberia to its end in sunny Los Angeles, nothing about Maria’s life would ever be simple or easy.”
Translation Saves Books, And History Too
“Over the course of reading and re-reading those 1,300 pages, I realized that he’d not only accomplished exactly what he’d set out to do, but also ultimately created the repository of a world which had long since died, opening a window onto Libyan history from 1911, when modernity stormed the Libyan coasts in all its brutality—Libya was the first country in history to suffer an aerial bombardment—all the way to the 1960s.”
Time For Theatres To Ask Hard Questions About Their Audiences
“It would be naive to think that seeing a play makes you a better person. If that was true then we critics who go to the theatre almost every night would be paragons of virtue.”
Houston’s Theatre Companies Are In The Middle Of A Building Boom
“Houstonians will shell out $200 for a touring production of Book of Mormon but would dismiss us based on looks. Or they simply didn’t even know we were here because of the lack of attractiveness factor.”
Easy Come, Easy Go: New Bosch Identified, Old Bosches Discredited
“Experts at the Bosch Research and Conservation Project (BRCP) have confirmed that a drawing previously attributed to one of Hieronymus Bosch’s workshop assistants was actually rendered by the Flemish master himself. … The news closely follows a similar but less celebratory announcement that two other paintings, long believed to be authentic Bosches, were actually imitations.”
Melissa Mathison, 65, Screenwriter Of ‘E.T.,’ ‘Black Stallion,’ ‘Kundun’
“[She] specialized in stories revolving around children. But, as she often said, she made a point of not condescending to them. ‘I go to movies with my children and see fat kids burping, parents portrayed as total morons, and kids being mean and materialistic, and I feel it’s really slim pickin’s out there,’ she [said] in 1995. ‘There’s a little dribble of a moral tacked on, but the story is not about that.'”
Why Humans Need To Believe (What Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, And Even Stephen Jay Gould Get Wrong)
Despite Gould’s split-the-difference approach – science and religion as “non-overlapping magisteria” – “The fact is that religion and science do overlap in people’s minds, in their life choices, in the difficult moral challenges society faces. To strictly deny the power of religion in the world, with billions following a diversity of faiths, is also terribly naïve. The difficult question that needs to be asked is why so many people across every culture need to believe. What is religion providing that so many need to embrace?” Astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser has some ideas.