“The de Young’s not the only museum with such a Pecksniffian prohibition, but it’s the exception rather than the rule. An exception that mocks the way that art is transmitted from one generation of believers to the next, and mocks the stature of museums within our cultural landscape.”
Tag: 12.15.10
At Issue: When A Critic Criticizes A Dancer’s Weight
“His comment was just below the belt. It’s well established that dancers are at a tremendous risk for eating disorders. Ballet companies are just now dealing with it. So this is really bad.”
What NY DJs Make For Spinning
“Most New York nightclubs will shell out between $50 and $125 per hour for an up-and-coming deejay — and the more established spinners are averaging from $3,000 to $5,000 an hour. And then, well, it gets truly ridiculous…”
MoCA Mural Paintover – Censorship Or Really Bad Planning?
“The Museum of Contemporary Art just got a very expensive lesson, both in money and prestige, on the difference between being an art museum and a commercial gallery. Simply put: At a museum, planning counts.”
Of Critics And Taking Offense
The word “criticism” has a double meaning. There is the ordinary-usage sense of it to mean “fault-finding,” which implies an offended response almost by definition. Less obviously tending to provoke anger and defensiveness is criticism as, in Collini’s words, “the general public activity of bringing some matter under reasoned or dispassionate scrutiny.”
Study: Our Memory For Faces Peaks In Our 30s
In an unexpected discovery, people remember unfamiliar faces best between ages 30 and 34, scientists report in an upcoming issue of Cognition. “Specialized face-processing in the brain may require an extended period of visual tuning during early adulthood to help individuals learn and recognize lots of different faces.”