“Andrew Butterfield, an art dealer and Renaissance scholar, had seen the two-and-a-half-foot tall wooden sculpture several years before, in a photograph, and thought it was ‘really fantastic.'”
Month: October 2015
Terry Gross’s 40-Year, 13,000-Interview Master Class In Conversation
“Over the years, Gross has done some 13,000 interviews, and the sheer range of people she has spoken to, coupled with her intelligence and empathy, has given her the status of national interviewer. Think of it as a symbolic role, like the poet laureate – someone whose job it is to ask the questions, with a degree of art and honor. Barbara Walters was once our national interviewer, in a flashier style defined by a desire for spectacle. Gross is an interviewer defined by a longing for intimacy. In a culture in which we are all talking about ourselves more than ever, Gross is not only listening intently; she’s asking just the right questions.”
The Postmodernist Apartment In The Brooklyn Museum’s Storage Vault
“A completely intact apartment by American Postmodern architect Michael Graves has been in storage at the Brooklyn Museum since it was acquired in 1986. Similar to other Postmodern designs by Graves, the apartment features ornamental design, an eclectic blend of classical references and muted color palettes.”
Digital Journalism Tries To Straddle The Apple-Google, App-Web Divide
“Apple wants mobile devices to be filled with apps. Google supports a world where people browse the web for most things. Now websites are increasingly caught in the middle of those competing visions.”
Should Art Be Timeless Or Should It Speak To Something More Current?
Adam Kirsch: “If you Google ‘Homer’ and ‘bees,’ you get images of Homer Simpson, not quotations from the Iliad.”
James Parker: “I resent it, this mania for topicality. Update, refresh, delete cache, clear history, change your underpants.”
(But they agree that if you aim for timelessness, you’ll probably miss.)
Misty Copeland To Produce Primetime Dance Drama For Fox TV
“The untitled project, which has been set up at Fox through 20th Century Fox TV, follows a young, hip and diverse group of aspiring dancers as they fiercely compete for places in a top ballet company.”
Will New Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Be Good For The Arts?
Well, he’d have to be better than Stephen Harper, who cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to arts and culture programs and to the CBC. In fact, Trudeau has promised to reverse many of those cuts.
Examining Steven Spielberg’s Fascinating Shift From Popcorn Movies To Politicized Ones
The films propelling his swift ascent – Jaws (1975), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), or E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982) – were free of anything resembling politics or ideology. But over the course of his career, Spielberg’s cinema has become increasingly self-aware and culturally engaged. His latest movie, Bridge of Spies, is a Cold War spy drama that’s interested not so much in the cloak-and-dagger espionage stuff, but rather in the moral and political issues at stake, both within its narrative and in present-day America. This is a fascinating reversal from earlier in the director’s career.”
What Does It Mean to Be a Private Intellectual?
For thirty-five years at Harvard, George Scialabba did his clerical duties, and then wrote commanding philosophical essays after work.
Unfinished Story … How The Ellipsis Arrived In English Literature
“Dr Anne Toner believes she has identified the earliest use of the ellipsis in English drama, pinning it down to a 1588 edition of the Roman dramatist Terence’s play, Andria, which had been translated into English … and in which hyphens, rather than dots, mark incomplete utterances by the play’s characters.”