“The plan would fund projects inspired by the island’s unique features: its name; its “vantage point” amid an iconic bridge and two great cities, surrounded by an inland sea; its history as a site of innovation — a world’s fair, an early nexus of commercial aviation, a military installation; and its environmental and ecological conditions. Projects will be solicited from local, national and international artists.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Progressive Rock Was Crazy And Ambitious And Pretentious (And Fans Still Love It)
The prog-rock pioneers embraced extravagance: odd instruments and fantastical lyrics, complex compositions and abstruse concept albums, flashy solos and flashier live shows. Concertgoers could savor a new electronic keyboard called a Mellotron, a singer dressed as a batlike alien commander, an allusion to a John Keats poem, and a philosophical allegory about humankind’s demise—all in a single song (“Watcher of the Skies,” by Genesis).
Blockade Of Qatar Is Affecting Cultural Institutions
“The diplomatic crisis will affect exhibitions as no art from Qatar can be exhibited in these Gulf countries right now. If anyone bought anything in Qatar—not only art works—it would not be easy to export to these countries either.”
Uproar Over “Julius Caesar” Totally Misinterprets The Play
“What makes the ginned-up outrage over the play stupider is that Julius Caesar is hardly an endorsement of political violence. By its conclusion, it is a horror show in which political violence is the Big Bad. The play takes place during the twilight of the Roman Republic, as a representative government is being pulled apart by the twin stars of aristocratic ambition and public gullibility. Shakespeare depicts Caesar’s murder as a great crime that unleashes the very forces the conspirators, led by the manipulative Caius Cassius and the tortured, reluctant Marcus Brutus, were trying to prevent.”
The CIA’s Failed Attempts To Shape Intellectual Discourse
“Its history suggests that the midcentury intellectuals whose work filled the pages of these journals, brilliant though they were, should not have their status inflated to the point of distortion. Ironically, the same thing that made them important — their ability to participate in a seemingly world-historic conflict of ideas — was what compromised their integrity.”
Art Fairs Don’t Make Sense For Middle-Market Galleries (And Yet They Do)
As the middle market shrinks, many dealers are finding they can’t afford to do fairs—but they can’t afford not to, either. “It’s very hard to estimate what the revenue will be, so a gallery’s decision to do a fair is highly uncertain,” says Olav Velthuis, a professor at the University of Amsterdam who specializes in economic sociology. “People don’t realize that fairs are loss leaders for many small galleries.”
Selling Art To Fund Social Justice
“New York art patron Agnes Gund has sold a record-smashing $165 million Roy Lichtenstein painting to create a fund to help address mass incarceration in the United States. Some $100 million from that sale will establish the Art for Justice Fund, to be managed by the Ford Foundation, which aims to raise another $100 million over the next five years, partly from art sales. Gund has thus thrown down the gauntlet to other art collectors to unload their assets to address critical issues of social justice.”
Metropolitan Museum Changes Its Leadership Structure, Subordinating Artistic Leadership To Fiscal Direction
“In a striking leadership reorganization, the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Tuesday announced that Daniel H. Weiss, its president and chief operating officer, will lead and run the museum, filling the new, higher-ranking role of president and chief executive. And in a sign that fiscal responsibility now trumps artistic control, the museum’s next director, who oversees programming, will report to Mr. Weiss, rather than the other way around.”
The Edward Albee Question: Just How Absolute Is Playwrights’ Control Over Productions Of Their Work?
“What nobody seems to question is that Mr. Albee and his estate have an absolute right to control the casting of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” for as long as the play is controlled by copyright. I have my doubts, however, about exactly how absolute that right is. While I’m not a lawyer, I suspect that a friendly judge might well look upon the requirement that Nick be played by a white man (Mr. Albee was identically militant about denying permission to change the sexes of the characters in “Virginia Woolf”) as a racially restrictive covenant contrary to law. On the other hand, the 35-seat Shoebox Theatre would have to lawyer up to fight that battle, and I also doubt they’ve got the resources to do so. My guess, then, is that no theater company will be bringing any such action anytime soon.”
A Bookstore Survival Plan Modeled On Farming?
“The idea of purchasing a season’s or a year’s worth of books seemed like an interesting way to structure thinking about a customer’s relationship to the store,” Haskell said recently. At Blue Hill Books, C.S.B. members can purchase a “share” for a thousand dollars—or partial shares for two hundred or five hundred dollars—and draw on that credit to buy books throughout the year. “It’s not a donation; it’s not an investment.”