“Parents sing, sing, sing in the early years of children’s lives–and then it stops. … Once children are at school age, after a toddlerhood of joy in singing, parents begin to consider their musical ability, they look into the future, ambition sets in, music lessons enter stage left, and suddenly, without anyone noticing it, singing has been dealt a critical blow.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Another Group That Really Ticked Nixon Off: Modernists
At the end of a memo to his chief of staff, in which he sneered at “those who are on the modern art and music kick,” the 37th president added: “P.S., I also want a check made with regard to the incredibly atrocious modern art that has been scattered around the embassies of the world.”
In Opera, A Spare Production Can Be A Good Thing
At a time when opera companies’ formerly lavish production budgets are out of reach, it’s worth noting that “many of the greatest moments in stage directing for opera have involved bare-bones approaches that got out of the way and allowed the music and its drama to take center stage.”
On Jeffrey Deitch’s MOCA Agenda: Hitting Up Past Clients
“Having sold them art, he’ll try to sell them on giving large sums of money to MOCA, in hopes of delivering the museum from what he describes as an ‘austerity budget’ that can’t support a program of exhibitions commensurate with its reputation….”
British Museum Won’t Lend Cyrus Cylinder To Iran Just Yet
“On Jan. 5, inscriptions similar to the Cylinder’s were found on two pieces of cuneiform tablets from Babylonia in the museum’s collections. The pieces will be studied to shed light on the Cylinder’s ‘missing’ or ‘obscure’ passages, the museum said, and presented at a London workshop involving Iranian colleagues.”
New York Art Dealer Jeffrey Deitch To Head LA MOCA
“Deitch, 57, founded his gallery, Deitch Projects LLC, in 1996 and operates from three spaces, two in SoHo and another in Long Island City. He plays a P.T. Barnum role, providing funds, vision and support to young artists including Tauba Auerbach, Kehinde Wiley and Kristin Baker.”
Google Tries To Pacify Chinese Authors
“Google has agreed to hand over a list of books by Chinese authors that it has scanned in recent years” and “also apologized for any misunderstanding that might have angered authors and said it would work to forge an agreement on digitizing books by early summer.”
Eric Rohmer, A Father Of Nouvelle Vague, Dies At 89
“A former novelist and teacher of French and German literature, Mr. Rohmer emphasized the spoken and written word in his films at a time when tastes — thanks in no small part to his own pioneering writing on Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks — had begun to shift from literary adaptations to genre films grounded in strong visual styles.”
Examining The Boys’ Club Of Late-Night Comedy Writing
“[I]f aliens landed tomorrow and analyzed the writing staffs of late-night comedy shows — Earth’s daily dose of mainstream humor — they might draw the conclusion that laughter is almost exclusively the domain of the human male.” What’s up with that?
When A Play About Corporate Crime Becomes A Must-See
“Enron,” the hit play, transfers to the West End next week. “In London, it’s already taken more than £1 million in advance bookings — small beer compared with the £40 billion that the Enron energy corporation owed when it went bankrupt in December 2001, but pretty darn impressive for a play about number-crunching in Texas.”