“The sight of my father’s or mother’s script on a small white envelope was what I anticipated right until mail call, after lunch, and what kept me going for the long afternoon hours afterward. I liked letters on which their handwriting was rushed and slightly illegible, because if I had trouble deciphering the handwriting the letter lasted longer. When my grandmother wrote, I had difficulty deciphering her elegant, Palmer Method hand, but I enjoyed the antique nature of the challenge. It felt as if I were playing tennis with a wooden racquet.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Claim: Our Museums Have Been Taken Over By A Culture Of Complaining
“Since Robert Hughes wrote his book over 20 years ago, the culture of complaint has become ever more prevalent. Complaining has become an art form and a way of life. Much of contemporary art (as represented on the other floors of Tate Modern’s new extension) is a complaint about greedy corporations and the inhumanity men show to men – or, more often, to women. And it invites us to join in. Tate Exchange touts itself as ‘a space for everyone to collaborate, test ideas and discover new perspectives on life, through art’. That is, it’s a space for complaining. The corrosive effect of turning complaining into an artistic endeavour is becoming clear.”
Washington Ballet Returns To Using A Live Orchestra
“We won’t sell one more ticket if we have live music in the orchestra, and it’s about $100,000 a week. We have to move forward strategically and sensibly, and use the money for the orchestra where we can get the most out of it.”
Toronto Artists Being Pushed Out By Soaring Rents
“According to commercial real estate statistics provided by the Toronto Real Estate Board, commercial space in the city’s west end has increased on average from $15.89 per square foot (annually) for spaces under 1,000 square feet in 2006 to $26.44 in the third quarter of this year.”
Will AT&T’s Deal For Time Warner Kick Off A New Round Of Media Consolidation?
“Analysts were split on whether AT&T’s move would spur other companies to combine. Several attributed AT&T’s play as a way to position itself as a more robust competitor to Google and Facebook, which capture the lion’s share of online advertising, and Amazon and Apple, which have strong customer relations.”
Cities Fight Over Proposed Iconic Gehry Building Plans For Hollywood
“Since renderings were unveiled last year, the discussion has turned away from Gehry’s daring architecture to whether the 334,000-square-foot development is simply too large for the famed boulevard. The main tower, at 15 stories, would be the tallest building to be erected on the Sunset Strip in more than 30 years.”
Madeline Thien Wins This Year’s Governor General’s Prize For Writing
“Thien, a 42-year-old Montreal writer, has been awarded this year’s English-language fiction prize for her breakout novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing. The prize, which celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, counts many of the giants of CanLit among its previous winners: Hugh MacLennan, Gabrielle Roy, Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, Robertson Davies, Timothy Findley, Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, Rohinton Mistry, Michael Ondaatje.”
Novel Claim: The 1980s Was A Golden Age For TV
“The ’80s bridged the gap between the medium’s tumultuous birth — when it seemed as if it couldn’t decide whether to be vaudeville, legitimate theater, radio with pictures, or free-form video art — and its Peak TV maturation, a period of increased artistic sophistication and overwhelming quantity, literary pretensions, and cinematic effects.”
Curtis Institute Fires Its Board Of Overseers
“Deeply disappointed” is the way overseers chairman Lowell J. Noteboom characterized his reaction in an email to other overseers. “I believe the discontinuance of the overseers is a significant loss to Curtis and that the administrative burden could have been managed in ways that would not have required such drastic action. That said, there seemed to be no will to craft a different solution,” he wrote.
Carlos Acosta’s Experimental New Hybrid Dance Company
“I think sometimes dance is very segregated,” Acosta said at the UK launch of his new company. “This is an experiment; not many people have done it before. When you create half the company from ballet and half from contemporary it creates an energy, it could be a bomb … it is like two different animals.”