Tag: 12.05.16

Back Before Valentino, One Of Cinema’s First Heartthrobs Was Asian-American

Back Before Valentino, One Of Cinema’s First Heartthrobs Was Asian-American
“America’s teenage girls and swooning housewives fell for his charms, but French intellectuals like the novelist Colette and Polish-born filmmaker Jean Epstein sang his praises too. … If People magazine had existed during the late 1910s, [Sessue] Hayakawa would have undoubtedly been declared the ‘Sexiest Man Alive.'”

Baltimore Evicts Artists From Warehouse Complex Due To Safety Concerns

“Dozens of local artists were abruptly evicted Monday from their work spaces at the Bell Foundry building in the city’s Station North Arts District after city officials said they discovered a variety of safety violations in the two-story hub of theater, art and recording studios. The move … came days after a fire in an Oakland, Calif., warehouse used for art studios killed at least 36 people, a reality not lost on many tenants and supporters of the community workspace.” (includes video)

Teaching Critical Thinking Skills? Well, Maybe It’s A Waste Of Time?

“Since the early 1980s schools have become ever more captivated by the idea that students must learn a set of generalised thinking skills to flourish in the contemporary world – and especially in the contemporary job market. Variously called ‘21st-century learning skills’ or ‘critical thinking’, the aim is to equip students with a set of general problem-solving approaches that can be applied to any given domain; these are lauded by business leaders as an essential set of dispositions for the 21st century. Naturally, we want children and graduates to have a set of all-purpose cognitive tools with which to navigate their way through the world. It’s a shame, then, that we’ve failed to apply any critical thinking to the question of whether any such thing can be taught.”

When Japan Went Mad For Art Deco

In the years between the 1925 Paris Exhibition (where the stye became famous) and World War II, Art Deco became as popular in Japan as it did in any other prosperous country. “The cultural hybridity was, in a way, a reversal of the one that emerged in Western Europe in the late-19th century, when Japonism swept through the region, captivating the Impressionists in particular.”

Conventional Wisdom Is That Orchestra Subscriptions Are Dead. But Are They?

“One positive story the classical music field has to tell is a multi-tiered membership approach developed by The Cleveland Orchestra. Instead of building a one-size fits all membership program, the Cleveland Orchestra team identified distinct audience segments that fell through the cracks of their existing loyalty programs. Then, they went about crafting a targeted membership initiative for each of those groups: college students, young professionals, and “gap audiences” that hadn’t responded to traditional subscription offerings.”