“With a new entrance on Spruce Street,” the SEI Innovation Studio “is readied to play host to a rotating installation of fine art (care of the West Collection) and studio space that will cultivate new talent and performance pieces.”
Tag: 11.14.13
Dior To Fund Restoration Of Marie Antionette’s Pretend Milkmaid Cottage
“The fashion house Dior is to sponsor the restoration of the Queen’s House in Versailles. … The house was Marie Antoinette’s rustic hideaway, where Louis XVI’s queen played out a fantasy life as a simple milkmaid until the revolution of 1789 imposed a sterner reality. The house was abandoned after the revolution.”
The Real Problem Millennials Have With Opera? “Our Phobia Of Unblunted Emotion”
Jeremy Polacek: “Rather, we’re more apt to ridicule something for being overly emotional or mock someone who is. … Characters in opera don’t share their feelings so much as disgorge them. Performances teem with huge, unburdened emotions. To [a generation] ironically allergic to such unalloyed sentiment, opera can seem a most strange, outlandish thing.”
Revamp The Way You Hang Art, Rejuvenate Your Museum
When Matthias Waschek became director of the Worcester Art Museum two years ago, it was a conventional small-city museum conventionally fading away. In two years, he’s fundamentally changed the way the museum displays its art (less Met Museum, more Barnes Foundation) – and enlarged the donor base and increased attendance by 70%.
Polish Pianist Builds Leonardo da Vinci’s Piano
“Leonardo da Vinci dreamt up the Viola Organista in the late 15th century as a marriage of keyboard and string instruments. But he never built it, experts say. Virtually forgotten, it has come to life thanks to a Polish concert pianist with a flair for instrument-making.”
Lower Manhattan Residents Protest World Trade Center’s Fortress-like Security Plans
A group of Lower Manhattan residents is preparing to sue the New York Police Department over its security plan for the World Trade Center, saying that the plan will leave the center in “fortresslike isolation” and the area around it “as impervious to traffic as the Berlin Wall.”
The Music World Is Small; Why Can’t Critics Review Friends Or Family Members?
“One risk, it’s true, is that personal partiality may sway a reviewer to be overly kind to an undeserving work; but even more, there is a risk that a too-honest review can destroy a friendship.”
In Ballet – Unlike Opera – Shaking Up The Classics Is Practically Required, But Why?
“Ballet music should serve the drama – i.e. the ever-renewable choreography – whereas in opera, the music is the drama’s main substance and inviolable.”
Why The Ruling For Google In The Book-Digitizing Case Is A Good One
“The principle of fair use has come under so much fire in recent years that it’s nice to see someone supporting the idea that there is a public benefit to the widespread availability of content. And the ruling doesn’t prevent anyone from suing in the future if Google oversteps its bounds.”
Shakespeare Scholar Anne Barton, 80
“She is perhaps best known in the U.S. for her introductions to Shakespeare’s comedies in “The Riverside Shakespeare,” the backbreaking tome American undergraduates have been lugging in their knapsacks for generations.”