The Koret Foundation’s recent arts and culture give underscores an encouraging trend in this cash-flush region. While the tech monied classes may be cool to the arts, other Bay Area funders have been stepping up over the past few years.
Author: Douglas McLennan
Fences Don’t Just Keep People Out, They Come To Define Us
If one looks at history, the answer seems obvious: What fences have very often indicated is not simply what is mine and what is yours, but, more subtly, who I am versus who you are. This tendency is based on the human inclination to define one’s identity in contrast to someone cast as a different, an untrustworthy Other best kept at a distance.
Big Media Consequences In CBS/Viacom Drama
No matter who emerges the victor in what promises to be a prolonged series of courtroom showdowns, both companies will be profoundly affected, and the broader media landscape fundamentally transformed.
In 1968 American Culture Was Ablaze With Revolution. Sound Familiar?
The aftershocks of the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the backlash that followed are with us. We are still looking at dystopian and apocalyptic fantasies, still running from zombies, still watching cities erupt, still fighting over basic human rights. The movies have been conscripts in this continuing culture war and to look back at 1968 is to understand what has and hasn’t changed.
A Newly-Discovered Rembrandt?
Art dealer Jan Six now says that he has discovered a new Rembrandt, a portrait of an unidentified young man that he purchased at a Christie’s auction in London in 2016 for 137,000 pounds, or about $185,000. If he is right, “Portrait of a Young Gentleman” would be the first wholly unknown Rembrandt painting to be attributed in 44 years — and worth many millions more.
Stolen Costumes Returned To Dance Company After Media Campaign
Third year students, who were halfway through a tour of England and Wales when the van was taken, launched an appeal to find the costumes and raise money to replace other items in the van, which included lighting, sound and rehearsal equipment. Last night (May 14), a member of the public found the costumes in an open garage in Bromley-by-Bow in London, close to where the tour vehicle was last tracked, and called Ballet Central to report the news.
A Revelation In 2018: Beauty In Music Is A Revolution?
“I’ve rediscovered the part of my brain that can’t decode anything, that can’t add, that can’t work from a verbalized concept, that doesn’t care about stylish notation, that makes melodies that have pitch and rhythm, that doesn’t know anything about zen eternity and gets bored and changes, that isn’t worried about being commercial or avant-garde or serial or any other little category. Beauty is enough.”
Lawsuit Accuses Obama Library Planners Of “Bait And Switch”
A federal lawsuit filed by a Chicago nonprofit in an attempt to block the Obama Presidential Center from being built in Jackson Park accuses organizers of pulling an “institutional bait and switch” by shifting the center’s purpose away from being a true presidential library.
The Rise Of TV Has Disrupted How We Think About The World
“To what moment does the rise of television respond? And what is the significance of this medium? Above all, new television responds to an omnipresent loss of normative authority, of a robust failure of humans to feel at home in their world: to trust their governments, their leaders, their role models, their traditions and, ultimately, even their senses. New television confronts this state of affairs artistically and politically, presenting – like film – some order to such a world, but over weeks and months and years.”
America’s Concert Ticket-Selling Business Is Effectively A Monopoly (Screw The Consumer)
Live Nation is by far the largest ticket provider in America, thanks in part to President Barack Obama’s Justice Department, which approved the company’s merger with Ticketmaster in 2010. Ticketmaster controlled over 80 percent of the market before the merger, and that holds true of Live Nation today, buttressed by its role as the nation’s largest concert promoter and owner of over 200 venues. Because Live Nation manages over 500 major music artists, they can demand that venues wanting to host concerts exclusively use Ticketmaster instead of a competitor.