“Late last spring, I drove up the coast from Los Angeles in search of surviving members of the Beat Generation. Interview times had been procured with the poets Ferlinghetti (now 98), McClure (84), Snyder (87), and Diane di Prima (82), as well as Beat-adjacent novelist Herbert Gold (93). When I told people about my plan, the most common response was, “They’re still alive?” After all, the loose collective’s three most famous avatars are long gone. William S. Burroughs and Ginsberg died within four months of each other in 1997. After chronic alcoholism, Kerouac’s organs finally burst in 1969.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
A Fundamental Shift In How Philanthropy Works?
“Over the past decade, as groups have become more sophisticated at assessing the impact of their work, and as digital payment systems have advanced throughout the developing world, a number of carefully designed field experiments have affirmed the effectiveness of unconditional cash transfers to the poor. Such charitable transfers challenge assumptions, dating back centuries, that impoverished recipients will squander money given directly to them. It turns out that the poor often know much better than outside experts how to improve their own condition.”
What German And Austrian Orchestras Were Willing To Do Under The Third Reich
“What the two orchestras had in common was a nationalistic ethos, a belief in the superiority of Austro-German musical culture that approached triumphalism. One of the darkest manifestations of this ethos was their shared reluctance to hire Jews. The Berlin Philharmonic employed only four Jewish players in 1933, while the Vienna Philharmonic contained only 11 Jews at the time of the Anschluss, none of whom was hired after 1920.”
Van Cliburn Was The Biggest Music Star In The World. and Then He Wasn’t. What Happened?
“It seems that what happened was that Cliburn simply stopped growing, as though he was trapped in a creative stasis like a bug in amber. One thinks of James O’Neill, a distinguished actor who was the father of Eugene O’Neill. In later life, he only took on one role—Dumas’s Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo—and eventually played it more than six thousand times around the world. He made a great deal of money, but reproached himself for what he considered the squandering of his gifts. Likewise, Cliburn returned again and again to the Tchaikovsky concerto, long after he had ceased to have fresh insights into it.”
Jobs Of The Future For Humans Will Require Emotional Intelligence
“Only a tiny percentage of people in the post-industrial world will ever end up working in software engineering, biotechnology or advanced manufacturing. Just as the behemoth machines of the industrial revolution made physical strength less necessary for humans, the information revolution frees us to complement, rather than compete with, the technical competence of computers. Many of the most important jobs of the future will require soft skills, not advanced algebra.”
Is The Controversy Over Hedy Weiss’ Chicago Theatre Review Overblown?
Theater is of course a highly public endeavor, and the world outside is a big bad place, with lions and tigers and critics who have opinions. If its practitioners want safety, they should practice their craft behind closed doors.
Why Performance Art Has Become A Hot New Thing (Again)
As performance art becomes more popular, it is changing. Many are embracing elements of dance, film, theatre and sculpture, even street theatre and rap music. “Performance art was stuck in the 1970s: protest, people cutting themselves,” RoseLee Goldberg, the founder of Performa, said last year. “Some years ago I wondered: why don’t we have visually dazzling, emotional and intellectually challenging performance? Why does everything have to be a single gesture performed on the Lower East Side?”
Turning Simon Rattle Into A Digital Abstract
“The London Symphony Orchestra teamed with techies from the University of Portsmouth and Vicon Motion Systems, who captured Rattle’s movements while conducting, appropriately, Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Digital artist Tobias Gremmler was then called in to convert the gestures into animated films.”
Man Brings Ornament To “Antiques Roadshow” And Finds Out He Has A £1 Million Faberge
“The expert said it’s probably the second time he’s ever done that type of valuation. I think he was reluctant to say £1 million and nervous to say it was worth that much. We’ve had one of the most significant jewellery finds in 40 years of Antiques Roadshow history – but we don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
Have Older Women Become The Hot New Things In The Art World?
“Demand for older, female artists like Herrera, who was famously 89 when she sold her first artwork and is now a ripe 102, has risen sharply in recent years, the result of a perfect art-world storm. As institutions attempt to revise the art-historical canon, passionate dealers and curators see years of promotion come to fruition, and blue-chip galleries search for new artists to represent among those initially overlooked, prices and institutional recognition for artists such as Carol Rama, Irma Blank, Geta Brătescu, and Herrera have soared.”