David Devan, Opera Philadelphia: “I think it’s raised the game in terms of people’s aesthetic and performance expectations. If you can go to a movie theater and hear a great singer with a great orchestra with a gazillion-dollar set, that raises the bar for everybody. It did help me raise money to improve the quality of what we put on in the Academy [of Music]. This isn’t about my ego; this is about the necessity of doing work that people will come to. That means there’s a higher standard of care that we must meet.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
What Happened To Great Composers (Do We Have Any Today?)
“The truth is, it’s over. The confident forward march in British music that handed us a lineage of great composers – Britten, Tippett, Maxwell Davies, Birtwistle – has shattered. Given that all the obvious “isms” have been exhausted, composers now face an existential crisis over where music might head next; and, anyway, our culture has decided to privilege ephemeral celebrity over anyone who cares enough about the future to utter anything difficult or challenging. And clued-up composers realise that.”
Turkey Bans Travel By Academics After Coup Attempt
“As you surely know, universities have always been crucial for military juntas in Turkey, and certain individuals are believed to be in contact with cells within the military.”
Google Rolls Out New Museum App That Lets You Explore The World’s Great Museums
Click “Visit” on a museum’s page to get opening times, find out what’s on that day and navigate there in one click. We’ve also been experimenting with a new feature. The Art Recognizer is now available in London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery, Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Just pull up the app, point your phone’s camera to a painting on display and find all the information you want to know about the artwork. We’re planning to roll this out to museums around the world—so stay tuned.
US’s Largest Collection Of Mexican Art Gets A Long-Awaited Home
“This is the single largest collection of Mexican, Latino, and Chicano art in the U.S., with 17,000 pieces. Those include about 800 pieces of Mexican folk art donated by the family of Nelson Rockefeller and work by Mexican artist Diego Rivera.”
Neuroscientists And Philosophers Debate: Does The World Actually Exist?
Where philosophers have long debated how much we should trust our perception of the external world, neuroscientists operate on the assumption that we shouldn’t trust it much at all. According to neuroscience, it’s pretty much all in your head. Your world, through neuroscience’s empirical lens, is a construct you’ve built from patterns your brain has identified in sensory experiences.
If Writers Billed For Their Time And Had To Account For Their Hours…
Here’s what the ledger might look like. Christopher D. Legras investigates.
Detroit Institute Of Arts Embarks On Plan To Become Leader In Showing African-American Art
“The new direction represents the first major shift in programming and collecting priorities since the Spanish-born Salort-Pons, the 46-year-old former DIA curator of European art, succeeded Graham Beal as director last fall. The commitment could transform the DIA into a true national power when it comes to collecting, exhibiting, studying and interpreting African-American art.”
Scientists Release New Improved Map Of The Brain
“Just like regular maps, brain maps are useful points of reference. Scientists use them to agree on what they’re studying in the first place, say, by pointing to something called the “anterior cingulate cortex” and having other people know what they’re talking about. But over time, better data can refine those maps. So a team of researchers have marshaled a huge amount of brain scan data to create a new, precise brain map, published in Nature today.”
A History Of Interpreting Blackness To White Audiences
“So much black intellectual energy has been expended on convincing white audiences simply to care about the exploitation of the black poor and the alienation of the black middle classes. The receptivity of particular white audiences has fluctuated over time, and with it—in tandem, arguably—various indicators of racial inequality. Perhaps just as pressing, then, as interpreting blackness for white audiences is interpreting the causes and consequences of white attention for the rest of us.”