Author: Douglas McLennan

In 1975 Bas Jan Ader Set Out In A Tiny Boat As Part Of An Art Project And Was Never Heard From Again

In the years following Ader’s disappearance, rumors began to swirl that it was a deliberate act that was part of the artwork. But, Anderson Ader denies this. She said her husband was making plans for the future, for the work he would do when this piece was complete, and he had no intention of disappearing for good. – The Daily Beast

Academia Is Addictive, Dysfunctional, And A Total Mess. Are We In End Days?

“Academe, as anyone knows who’s tried to leave it, is like a partner who is wrenchingly hard to quit. When it was good, it was amazing. God, the highs! The horizon of your happiness seemed unbounded. But the partner turned out to be a nut job who demanded nothing less than all of you. Move to a different city every year, they stipulated. Subsist on bread crumbs. Completely debase yourself. They constantly evaluated your “performance.” On a whim, they dressed you up in a sailor suit and beat you.” – Chronicle of Higher Education

Why People Were So Charmed By The Kid Who Exclaimed “Wow” After Mozart

“One of the oddities of this whole business is the unmistakable note of relief in so many discussions about it. In the odd cult of people who spend many nights sitting in front of symphony orchestras, there’s a lot of talk, sometimes amused and sometimes exasperated, about the more infrequent visitors who don’t know the rules.”  – Maclean’s

Rising Threat: Museums Versus Authoritarian Governments

“So far the assaults have mostly been rhetorical rather than real. Universities and the press have fared somewhat worse. But straws in the wind include the rewriting of the narrative at the new Holocaust Museum in Budapest by Viktor Orban’s Fidesz government; and a similar intervention by Poland’s Law and Justice Party government at the new Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk, whose director, Pawel Machcewicz, was dismissed when he sought to resist government intervention.” – The Art Newspaper

Fascinating: The Moral Of “Pinocchio” Was Not About Lying, But About Education

“The moral of the story, then, is not that children should always tell the truth, but that education is paramount, enabling both liberation from a life of brutal toil, and, more important, self-awareness and a sense of duty to others. The true message of “The Adventures” is that, until you open yourself to knowledge and your fellow human beings, you will remain a puppet forever — other people will continue to pull your strings.” – The New York Times

An Amazing Legacy: Susan Wadsworth Spent 58 Years Boosting The Careers Of Young Musicians. Now She’s Retiring

Wadsworth founded Young Concert Artists in 1961 with the aim of finding great young musicians and giving their careers a boost. “The results speak for themselves: Among the more than 270 alumni, most largely unknown when they won, are major artists like Ms. Bullock; the pianists Richard Goode, Emanuel Ax and Jeremy Denk; the violinist Pinchas Zukerman; the cellists Fred Sherry and Carter Brey; the soprano Dawn Upshaw; and the composers Andrew Norman and Kevin Puts.” – The New York Times