“‘Boston’s very conservative, which is both a good thing and a bad thing,’ Ms. Hawley says. ‘It sometimes impedes the kind of thinking that one should do. For example, [the city] sat out the 20th century in the visual arts.'”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
LA Public Libraries May Shorten Hours, Close Sundays
“A wave of early retirements in the Los Angeles library department is likely to lead to Sunday closures at nine of the city’s largest libraries and shorter hours at more than 60 branches as early as mid-April. The plan, which comes up for a vote before the Board of Library Commissioners on Thursday, is just the latest sign of the city’s difficult financial position.”
Study: Artists Have Plumped Up Last Supper Portion Sizes
“In a bid to uncover the roots of super-sized American fare, a pair of sibling scholars has turned to an unusual source: 52 artists’ renderings of the New Testament’s Last Supper. … Over the course of the millennium, [they] found that the entrees depicted on the plates laid before Jesus’ followers grew by about 70%, and the bread by 23%.”
How Legitimate Is The ‘Lost’ Shakespeare Play?
Both Arden Shakespeare and the English professor who championed “Double Falsehood” to the publisher guardedly say they’re convinced it might be Shakespeare’s work, at least in part. “So, we may have not exactly a ‘new Shakespeare play,’ but a play that turns out to have a lot of Shakespeare – ‘fossil verses,’ [the professor] calls them – in it.”
Art-Making Is Messy; Good Arts Managers Work With That
“One does not make art neatly. … This activity does not lend itself to the strictures of planning. And artists naturally rebel if a board attempts to make them create work in a straight line. But good arts managers know how to segment off this part of the work from the rest of the organizational efforts.”
In A Balkanized Existence, Topography Unites
“You travel with your tribe, you reinforce each other’s opinions, you track the same Web sites and you draw from the same wells of information. … What gets lost in such curated cocoons is the sense of what we share: the Bay Area geography, the built and natural forces that shape every one of our lives.” (second item)
Obama Family Sees Addams Family On Broadway
“A health-care joke in the script has been popular with audiences in the week leading to the March 21 Congressional vote on health-care reform, and was especially resonant with Mrs. Obama in the house, observers said.”
Who Needs The Boston Public Library Anyway?
“Why pack kids in for story time … when there’s undoubtedly an App for that?” Sage Stossel’s illustrated lament over proposed library cuts and closures.
Poetic Cultural Synthesis In Jean Nouvel’s Qatar Museum
“Every level of Mr. Nouvel’s project, from its materials to its dominant forms to its sprawling layout, reflects a richly imaginative effort to retain a connection to the fading world of the Bedouins from which modern Qatar sprang, while also embracing the realities of a rapidly urbanizing society.”
Museum Exhibits Are Curated; Why Not Concerts Likewise?
“Classical music is often compared to a museum, and I’ve often said that the field should embrace the comparison rather than rejecting it. … [W]hy can’t the comparison extend to presentation? “