“It’s the right thing to do, and it’s priceless PR. Companies always tell us they need an educated workforce. They’re right, and much of that workforce is created in the petri dish of our libraries.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
In Oral History Project, Composers Speak For Themselves
Aaron “Copland’s voice, with its Brooklyn tinge, can reveal different perspectives than notes or words crafted for the page. That’s the point of some 2,000 interviews that make up Yale’s still-growing Oral History of American Music,” which “was founded 40 years ago by librarian Vivian Perlis, and [is] still the only project of its kind.”
A Whitney Satellite Could Be A Good Idea (Note Caveats)
“The success of an undertaking like this hinges not on the size but on the quality of the space, which is never thought about enough and never by the people who really know what they’re doing where museums are concerned. … When will [trustees] ever learn to listen, and to people who have the right experience?”
Small-Press Debut Novel, Tinkers, Wins Fiction Pulitzer
Paul Harding’s “Tinkers got great reviews but is published by Bellevue Literary Press, a small, 3-year-old, non-profit publisher affiliated with New York University’s School of Medicine. … The last time a small publisher won the fiction Pulitzer was in 1981, for John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces, released by Louisiana University Press.”
Rae Armantrout Wins Pulitzer Prize For Poetry
Armantrout, who was diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2006 while she was writing her prize-winning book, “said she ‘actually was expecting to die during the second half of the book’ but she also found the act of writing consoled her.”
Is James Levine’s Absence Debilitating For His Orchestras?
“Part of the job of being a music director at an orchestra or an opera house involves simply being there: that is, being fit and focused enough to provide stability, foster growth and, most essential, bring artistic plans to fruition.”
Art Institute Curator To Head U of Michigan Museum of Art
“Joseph Rosa, the John H. Bryan Curatorial Chair of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago, … will take over at one of the leading collegiate art museums in the country, which recently completed an expansion designed by Allied Works Architecture.”
Jennifer Higdon Wins Pulitzer Prize in Music
“Higdon’s Violin Concerto is the first orchestral score by a self-published composer to receive this accolade which also includes a cash prize of ten thousand dollars.” (With a video interview from the archives.)
Columbia J-School Ignored Jury In Picking Drama Pulitzer
“It’s a familiar story, but as chair of this year’s jury … I can’t help being ticked off. Two points, in particular, rankle: the blinkered New York mentality and the failure to appreciate new directions in playwriting. The board had an opportunity to correct these long-standing shortcomings, and it blew it.”
In Praise Of Non-Nutritive Reading
Peter Plagens: “NNR is based on the scientifically established dietary principle of consuming piles of non-nutritive fiber, so that the stuff can speed through your system like thousands (or tens of thousands, or millions, or whatever–I’m not too good at organic chemistry) of whisk brooms and keep your pipes slick and clean for the processing of healthful food.”