Author: Douglas McLennan

The New Historicism Of Vagueness (Or Some Such)

Greenblatt and company treated “culture as text”; they challenged such concepts as originality, genius, aesthetic merit, “the classics,” the canon, and “major works” vs. “minor works”; and even as they sought to upend conventional approaches to literary criticism, they sought, too, to overturn what they saw as old-fashioned approaches to the telling of history, producing “counterhistories” that would amount to “assaults on the grands récits inherited from the last century.”

We Knew It: Study Says Trained Musicians Make Better Decisions

“In addition to the rich sensori-motor benefits early music playing may have on the developing brain, music training may also confer long-lasting benefits in complex cognitive functions,” writes a team led by Kirsten Smayda of the University of Texas–Austin. “The music classes offered during many children’s elementary and high-school education in America may result in improved decision-making ability as an adult.”

The End Of Nations And Rise Of The City-State

“This is the crux of the problem: nation-states rely on control. If they can’t control information, crime, businesses, borders or the money supply, then they will cease to deliver what citizens demand of them. In the end, nation-states are nothing but agreed-upon myths: we give up certain freedoms in order to secure others. But if that transaction no longer works, and we stop agreeing on the myth, it ceases to have power over us. So what might replace it? The city-state increasingly looks like the best contender.”

Dancing With Technology Amplifying Movement From Above

One line of experimentation has involved electronic shadows on the stage floor, an effect that can be hard to see from the seats of many conventional theaters. That’s not a problem at the Guggenheim, where the audience is above the dancers. Here’s how it works: An infrared camera scans the dancers’ outlines, 60 frames per second, even as they move, and transmits that information to a computer, which then projects images around the dancers. As Mr. Simkin explained during a recent rehearsal, the speed of the computer processing is crucial. “If there is a lag, the brain sees it as a technological trick,” he said. “If there is no lag, as we can do it now, it is like magic, giving another layer to the movement — like a big dress, my father says.”

Has The Berkshire Museum Overstated Its Financial Difficulties?

The Berkshire Museum wouldn’t need to sell some of its most prized works of art to remain operational if it grew its endowment by $4.5 million, according to an expert on nonprofits. “I continue to believe that they have overstated how much of an emergency they are in,” said Stephen C. Sheppard, “and I think there would exist a clear path to a sustainable, essentially status quo, outcome that would not require deaccession of the 40 artworks.”

Ufizzi Director Leaving To Lead Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum

The first non-Italian to head the Uffizi, Eike Schmidt will leave at the end of his four-year tenure, not entering a second mandate as many had expected he would. The 49-year-old director was initially appointed as part of the Italian government’s sweeping overhaul of the leadership positions in Italy’s leading cultural institutions under culture minister Dario Franceschini.

Summer Movie Box Office Was Terrible. But Hollywood’s Not Too Worried

Even so, studios are unlikely to shift gears anytime soon. Overseas audiences continue to devour what Hollywood serves up. And many studio executives dismiss the recent slump in North America, which remains the world’s No. 1 movie market, as a normal part of a cyclical film business. Box office behemoths, they insist, are just around the corner.