Liverpool is the UK’s Cultural Capital designate for 2008, and just to prove it deserves the moniker, the city is hosting its first-ever poetry festival this week. The event will include a reading in the crypt of the city’s central Roman Catholic Cathedral, as well as workshops for budding poets and readings by several of the city’s best-known poets.
Month: April 2005
Walker Expansion Almost Complete
When the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis’s popular avant-garde museum, set out to design a major addition to its building, it wanted the architecture to reflect the center’s commitment to art that doesn’t necessarily fit the traditional mold, but didn’t want a building that would seem out of place in the Walker’s existing neighborhood, which includes idyllic parks, historic churches, and a massive sculpture garden. The new addition, designed by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, opens next weekend, “the first in a string of high-profile projects among Minneapolis cultural heavyweights to be completed. The Guthrie Theater, the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Children’s Theater complex and a new downtown library with planetarium are all in progress on expansion or relocation efforts of their own.”
Expanded Form, Expanded Function
“Much of what distinguishes the expanded Walker won’t even be seen by visitors. The complex sits atop an underground labyrinth that includes a 670-stall parking ramp and a network of art storage rooms, frame shops, photo labs and corridors linking the old and new buildings. Huge elevators will carry art from an enclosed loading dock at the south end of the complex to a 14-foot-tall subterranean corridor that parallels Hennepin Avenue. From it, art can be trollied into storage rooms or elevated nine or more stories to the top of the original Walker, one block north.”
A Boston Renaissance
“With more than $1 billion being raised for new museums and other arts facilities, Boston is in the midst of an unprecedented cultural boom, one that museum directors hope will elevate the city as a cultural mecca without overbuilding or saturating the market. The construction wave occurs a century after Boston’s major institutions — the Museum of Fine Arts, Symphony Hall, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum — opened their current homes. This time, the projects are more varied, ranging from a contemporary art museum on the waterfront and downtown theaters to a pair of cultural centers slated for open space created by the Big Dig.”
A Bright Beacon In The Floridian ‘Wasteland’
The Palm Beach International Film Festival may not be Cannes, or even Toronto, but the event has been making big gains in prestige lately, and has even been ranked as one of the world’s top 25 film fests. “PBIFF has become a cultural asset in a state that is mentioned in nearly 11 percent of the Google hits returned by the search phrase ‘cultural wasteland.'”
Lebrecht: Orchestras Need To Break With Stodgy Routine
Norman Lebrecht has been predicting the death of classical music for years, but lately, he has begun to wonder what, if anything, can be done to reverse the decline of orchestral popularity. The short attention-span thesis is popular, but doesn’t hold up when you consider the length of movies and rock concerts. Ticket prices, long thought to be a turnoff to potential concertgoers, are also not to blame, since price cuts at several major orchestras have failed to produce significant new audiences. Lebrecht’s latest theory is that the traditional formula of an evening concert beginning at 7 or 8pm and lasting two hours simply does nothing to attract modern youth. “In Madrid and Barcelona, concerts begin at 10 pm and are thronged by youngsters.”
The Bellow Legacy
“In a recent essay, one of our finer critics, Lee Siegel, asks what is it with Bellow and a number of non-American writers. Martin Amis had an almost father-son relationship with him (and it can’t be said that this was for lack of a literary parent). James Wood co-taught a class with him at Harvard. Ian McEwan’s Saturday pays homage to a Bellovian inspiration. What other American novelist has had such a direct and startling influence on non-Americans young enough to be his children?”
Public Broadcasting Chief Ousted
The president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has resigned less than a year into her tenure, and will be replaced on an interim basis by a close associate of the controversial former FCC chairman Michael Powell. Kathleen Cox was groomed for years to lead CPB, but she apparently fell victim to an increasingly political workplace as conservative politicians ratcheted up their anti-PBS rhetoric over the last year. One observer has described Cox as “an apolitical bureaucrat in an incredibly polarized agency,” an identity which may have been at odds with CPB’s desire to ingratiate itself to its critics in Congress.
Thompson’s Ashes To Be Blasted From Cannon
In keeping with his final wishes, Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes will be blasted out of a cannon. The gun-loving writer will go out with a bang from a cannon mounted inside a 16-metre-high (53ft) sculpture of his trademark “gonzo” fist – a clenched hand on an upthrust forearm with the word gonzo written on it. “It’s expensive, but worth every penny,” his wife, Anita Thompson, said. “I’d like to have several explosions. He loved explosions.”
Burning Out On Pop Culture
Pop culture is, by definition, fun. It’s fun to keep up with celebrities, fun to gossip with friends about the latest fashions, albums, movies, etc. But these days, there’s just so much pop culture to soak in that keeping oneself on the cutting edge is almost a full time job. “How [can] anyone find time to update their LiveJournals, finish reading the new Sheila Heti novel, or get tickets for the just announced M.I.A./LCD Soundsystem show in May? They had to stay up to the wee hours just to kill a few more soldiers in the new Splinter Cell or druggies in Narc. And who had time to wait for the perfect iPod Shuffle moment to magically appear?” Welcome to the phenomenon known as ‘hipster burnout.’