“‘Our challenge was to reinvent the campus,’ architect Renzo Piano says of Columbia University’s proposed $7 billion expansion. Actually, the plan now making its way through New York City’s arduous approval process looks more like a dumbed-down real estate deal than a vision for the future.” In Harlem, “Columbia has not closed off streets to make a gated, intimidating superblock, as its old campus does. Yet the size and bulk of the proposed buildings make the streets anything but inviting to the surrounding neighborhood….”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
When Art Means Sailing A Wooden Submarine
“Duke Riley, a heavily tattooed Brooklyn artist whose waterborne performance projects around New York have frequently landed him in trouble with the authorities, spent the last five months building … a rough replica of what is believed to have been America’s first submarine…. He wanted to float north in the Buttermilk Channel to stage an incursion against the Queen Mary 2, which had just docked in Red Hook, the mission objective mostly just to get close enough to the ship to videotape himself against its immensity for a coming gallery show.” The New York City police had other ideas….
Fringe Spoof Of Terrorism Draws Protests
“The shadow of Osama bin Laden fell across the start of the Edinburgh Fringe festival yesterday as a new show, ‘Jihad: The Musical,’ publicized as ‘a madcap gallop through the wacky world of international terrorism,’ prompted an online protest to Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain….”
With CT Scanner, Unraveling The Mystery Of Demetrios
“As Demetrios, a 2,000-year-old Egyptian mummy belonging to the Brooklyn Museum, lay on the table of the ’64-slice’ CT scanner, a cluster of art curators, conservators and medical specialists looked on, riveted by the macabre spectacle. While mummies have been subjected to CT scans for more than two decades, it was a first for the museum…. The goal was to gain insights into who Demetrios was, how he died and what his mummified remains might tell them about Egyptian funerary practices.”
For His 150th, Scholars Take A Fresh Look At Elgar
Marking the 150th anniversary of British composer Edward Elgar’s birth “are many broadcasts, celebrations, major publications. But exactly what Elgar stood for and what is unique about his music are more than ever being questioned. … Old assumptions are being challenged, clichés rejected. And in a welcome development, the major festival is in America, which Elgar visited several times to conduct his music.”
A World-Class Architect Ventures From The Fringes
Portuguese architect Ãlvaro Siza seldom builds outside Europe and “has spent his career quietly working on the fringes of the international architecture scene. … Yet over the last five decades Mr. Siza, now 74, has steadily assembled a body of work that ranks him among the greatest architects of his generation, and his creative voice has never seemed more relevant than now.”
Ballet, The Feminine World Where Men Call The Shots
“None of America’s most prominent ballet companies are run by women. According to a study by Dance/USA’s director of research and information, John Munger, in 2002 86 percent of the country’s 43 ballet companies with budgets of $2 million or more were run by men, while 5 percent were led by a male-female directorship. The landscape has since grown starker. … And there are precious few female choreographers working on larger stages….”
Has The Time For Public-Access TV Passed?
“For many people, public access TV is still symbolized by ‘Wayne’s World,’ a ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch that portrayed two slackers doing a so-bad-it’s-good program from a basement rec room. But today, the Waynes of the world have a whole new stage on the Web. Homemade videos are viewed by millions each day, giving anyone with a video camera and a fast Internet connection their own ‘show.’ So do we still need public access TV?”
Audiences Like Melody. In O.C., That’s What They Get.
Tim Mangan takes a look at the offerings in Orange County’s upcoming season and notes that, “for the most part, the new music that is being played isn’t all that challenging (not that it has to be). But there is, and always has been, a huge lacuna in the modern repertoire that is performed here in O.C., and it makes it difficult for listeners to hear any new music with a perspective that will allow them to comprehend it or place it in some sort of historical continuum.”
Graffiti: Art Or Blight? The Debate Continues.
“As a city volunteer rolled dark green paint over a bright jumble of scrawlings and imagery on a fence at Warm Water Cove Park on Saturday, Paul Barron stood alongside holding a yellow sign with an ornately lettered message: ‘Celebrate Graffiti!’ ‘Painting over artwork isn’t gonna prevent any crime,’ Barron, who described himself as a professional muralist and graffiti artist, told reporters who had come to witness a culture clash on a balmy morning at San Francisco’s southern waterfront. ‘They’re taking away our voice … killing the only pure form of art.'”