“The purpose of the museum is to show that innovation requires failure,” Dr. West said as he introduced some of the exhibits in a video posted this month on the YouTube channel of Fredrik Skavlan, a Scandinavian talk show host. “If you are afraid of failure, then we can’t innovate.” He said he started the museum “to encourage organizations to be better at learning from failures — not just ignoring them and pretending they never happened.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Why Does Our Musical Taste Get Frozen In Our Youth?
“It’s simply not realistic to expect someone to respond to music with such life-defining fervour more than once. And it’s not realistic, either, to expect someone comfortable with his personality to be flailing about for new sensibilities to adopt. I’ve always been somewhat suspicious of those who truly do, as the overused phrase has it, listen to everything. Such schizophrenic tastes seem not so much a symptom of well-roundedness as of an unstable sense of self. Liking everything means loving nothing. If you’re so quick to adopt new sentiments and their expression, then how serious were you about the ones you pushed aside to accommodate them?”
Claire Chase Wins This Year’s $100K Avery Fisher Prize
Chase, 38, became the first flutist to receive the Fisher Prize, which is awarded every few years to recognize musical excellence, vision and leadership (and whose payoff was increased this year from $75,000). The prize comes half a year after Ms. Chase stepped down from leading the International Contemporary Ensemble, the vital new-music collective commonly known as ICE, to focus more on her performing career.
Can Berlin Really Afford A Dazzling New Museum Of Modern Art?
“The museum, set to be built in the center of the Kulturforum—a collection of museums that includes Mies van der Rohe’s New National Gallery, the Kunstbibliothek art library, and neighboring the Hans Scharoun-designed Philharmonic—has been controversial from the outset. Herzog & de Meuron won a second competition, after the initial one hailed no winner.”
Why The CIA Secretly Funded Arab Art For Years
Suspicions about the almost sudden spread and funding of American art movements such as Abstract Expressionism led critic Max Kozloff to describe it in a 1973 essay as“a form of benevolent propaganda.” But while much is known about CIA funding for American art during the Cold War, their support for Arab art during the same period has rarely been discussed.
Director Jonathan Demme, 73
Mob wives, CB radio buffs and AIDS victims; Hannibal Lecter, Howard Hughes and Jimmy Carter: Mr. Demme (pronounced DEM-ee) plucked his subjects and stories largely from the stew of contemporary American subcultures and iconography. He created a body of work — including fiction films and documentaries, dramas and comedies, original scripts, adaptations and remakes — that resists easy characterization.
This Year’s NFL Football Draft Is At The Philadelphia Museum Of Art (Huh?)
“Standing on those steps and seeing that this is such a heroic moment, this is a culmination for these [draft picks], we set out on, ‘Could we create a theater? Could we build a theater here?’ ” said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s senior vice president of events. “We know it’s going to be complicated. We know it’s going to be audacious. But this is what we have to do, and the Parkway itself was natural. It’s a home to so many iconic events over the years.”
Do We Really Need To Dress Up When We Go To The Opera?
“Americans might say that their freedom of self-expression is being denied if they are told how to dress. I think we can learn that self-expression and respect for certain traditions are not mutually exclusive. I have seen many of my fellow citizens dressed in attire more suited to a workout at the gym or for mowing the lawn in restaurants, offices and theaters. This detracts from the specialness of certain occasions.”
The Extraordinary Steppenwolf Theatre Leader Martha Lavey Dies At 60
An indefatigable, unstinting and intellectually voracious artistic director who reinvented Chicago’s most audacious and aggressive theater for a new era, Martha Lavey wrestled the Steppenwolf Theatre Company — kicking and screaming — into the 21st century. And in her cajoling, bullying, flattering, outwitting and otherwise leading its hugely talented but famously passionate and opinionated ensemble of tightknit actors toward reinvention and expansion for changed times, this artistic director of more than 20 years became one of the most important figures in the illustrious history of the Chicago theater.
NPR Pioneer Robert Siegel To Retire After 40 Years
“This is a decision long in the making and not an easy one. I’ve had the greatest job I can think of, working with the finest colleagues anyone could ask for, for as long a stretch as I could imagine. But, looking ahead to my seventies (which start all too soon) I feel that it is time for me to begin a new phase of life. Over the next few months, I hope to figure out what that will be.”