Author: Laura Collins Hughes

France’s Shrine To Its Architecture Reopens, Redone

“On Monday President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who is increasingly faulted, even by his own government, for usurping the responsibilities of his top ministers, stepped into the role of culture minister. At a low-key ceremony he inaugurated La Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, (the City of Architecture and Heritage) in Paris, which reopened after a $114 million, decade-long makeover. … With three galleries and 86,000 square feet of space, the City of Architecture and Heritage bills itself as the largest architectural museum in the world.”

So. Jude Law Is Playing Hamlet. The Heart Sinks.

“I know it’s happening under the brilliant Michael Grandage, I know he won award-nominations as a young thesp, I know he’s a decent age for the part – but still my heart thuds instinctively to the floor. … Hamlet can be many things – sardonic or guileless, fey or brutish, heart-rending or clownish, emotionally transparent or impossibly remote – and in the best performances he (sometimes she) succeeds in being all of those things at once. One thing Hamlet can’t be, though, is mediocre.”

Pining For Lee Miller, Erotic Object

“I don’t think I’ve ever made this complaint before but The Art of Lee Miller, a centenary celebration of one of the most famous women in surrealist art that is about to open at the V&A, would be better if it included more nude images of the artist.” The exhibition of Miller’s photography “would be a better, less prissy experience if it were more ready to acknowledge that Miller’s body was what made her central to modern art in the age of Picasso, Cocteau and Man Ray.”

WTC Memorial Could Take A Lesson From Dublin Spire

The Spire of Dublin “gains its power from its engineering, rather than from symbolism. Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with the design for the World Trade Center Memorial–it is relentlessly literal; the two tower footprints, the names of the victims, the inevitable visitor center. (It must be said that this is chiefly the fault of the committee that created the original program.) Wouldn’t it have been better if the memorial had been … uplifting and inspiring, but also mute?”

Does Less Work + More Slacking = Greater Creativity?

“Goofing off is not a waste of time — well, not always. Exhibit A: Albert Einstein. He was a world-class loafer. In 1905, he was working as a clerk at a Swiss patent office, spending a lot of time spacing out. A ‘respectable federal ink pisser’ is how Einstein described himself. Yet it was at work, daydreaming one day, watching a builder on a nearby rooftop, that he experienced ‘the happiest thought of my life’ — a thought that soon blossomed into his ‘special theory of relativity.'”

Queens Restaurants Host Thriving Bootleg Trade

“Queens prosecutors thought they needed specially trained sniffer dogs to root out stashes of pirated DVDs. All they really needed was an appetite. Inside many restaurants along Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, roving vendors descending on diners offering pirated movies are becoming a common sight. Their wares range from films rated G through XXX, as well as compact discs of Mexican, Colombian and Caribbean musical stars.”

In Battle Vs. Terrorism, Prisoners Lose Religious Texts

“Behind the walls of federal prisons nationwide, chaplains have been quietly carrying out a systematic purge of religious books and materials that were once available to prisoners in chapel libraries.” While titles by C.S. Lewis, for example, make the list of government-approved religious works, it is not a very long list. Some who minister to prisoners “say that an administration that put stock in religion-based approaches to social problems has effectively blocked prisoners’ access to religious and spiritual materials — all in the name of preventing terrorism.”