Author: Laura Collins Hughes

On The Vital Link Between Criticism And Creativity

“Real creativity … and real criticism share something that cuts to the heart of why art and literature matter to us: they are dynamic dialogues with what we’ve done before and what we will make in – and of – the future. As Oscar Wilde puts it: ‘Surely, criticism is itself an art … Criticism is, in fact both creative and independent … The antithesis between them is entirely arbitrary. Without the critical faculty, there is no artistic creation at all, worthy of the name.'”

Bosendorfer, Take 2: No Slapstick This Time, Please

“After the last one fell off the back of a lorry with a crash heard around the world of classical music, a very grand piano heading for a remote corner of Devon will be handled as delicately as a newborn babe. An £85,000 hand-built Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand is being presented by the firm to the eclectic Two Moors festival, a feast of classical music” whose previous Bosendorfer won fame with its unfortunate unloading calamity.

Smithsonian’s Museum-To-Be Carves An Online Space

“Though its physical construction is years away, the National Museum of African American History and Culture today is inaugurating an online spot where visitors can help shape its content. One feature of the Web site, named after the museum, is a Memory Book, where people can submit a story, photograph or audio recording that tells something about themselves or a moment in African American history.”

Knowing Van Gogh Through His Pen (And His Brush)

“Few written documents have the power to immerse readers in the mind of an artist — to get at the heart of how an artist thinks. This is partly because nothing can get us closer to art than art itself: Everything else is ancillary or anecdotal. It is also because few artists with literary gifts choose to put pen to paper, when they could be putting brush to canvas or chisel to marble.” Vincent van Gogh’s letters are among the exceptions to the rule.

What Would Jane Jacobs Say About Today’s NYC?

Good question, though a new exhibition about her doesn’t try to answer it. “We are all Jane Jacobsites today. … Obviously many people take Jane Jacobs’s name in vain, and many on either side of the urban debate claim her for their own. But the important thing is that — with the exception of a few younger urbanists rebelling against their parents — her vision of the world has overwhelmingly won the day.”

Taking Up The Baton, Alsop Puts Her Plans In Motion

This week, Marin Alsop became the first woman to lead a major American orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. “But smashing through gender barriers is only one of the ways Maestro Alsop is trying to rethink and rejuvenate the symphony orchestra in the 21st century. Her other plans are more radical. She aspires to make symphony halls welcoming places, not austere temples of culture where only the cognoscenti dare enter.”

Are Audiences Ready For Hollywood’s Anti-War Fare?

“In the question of whether Hollywood can sell its antiwar agenda, perhaps the issue isn’t liberal versus conservative, but earnest versus escapist. … But Hollywood may not be the most reliable of institutions to serve as a national conscience. Movies are a business first, a harbinger second.” And whether there’s a substantial audience willing to fork over cash to see the new anti-war films is an open question.

The Hopper Landscape Isn’t In The Truro Dunes

As the debate rages over saving the Cape Cod landscape Edward Hopper painted, Verlyn Klinkenborg finds it all a little odd. “I believe in protecting open land on almost any pretext and surely the dunes of South Truro deserve to be protected because they are part of the larger ecosystem of the Cape Cod National Seashore. What puzzles me is the idea of the Hopper landscape. The landscape Hopper saw, as an artist, is already protected. It exists only in his paintings, nowhere else.”