Ted Gioia talks to Scott Timberg: “Jazz shouldn’t be a kind of nutritional supplement. … This music is exciting. … In every step of its evolution jazz shook up things, and not just the music world, it shook up the culture.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Are Cultural Organizations Really Reaching Low-Income Visitors? A Look At The Numbers
Colleen Dilenschneider: “Data suggest that some types of cultural organizations are perceived as more welcoming than others. Here’s how we could do better.”
Artists In Brazil Protest New President’s Dissolution Of Culture Ministry
There have been demonstrations this week at several cultural landmarks in Rio de Janeiro, and “thousands of others have congregated at cultural institutions in the past week, most directly associated with the Ministry of Culture, in Brasília, Curitiba, Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Fortaleza, and other cities.”
An Email Conversation With Elena Ferrante
“The idea that every ‘I’ is largely made up of others and by the others wasn’t theoretical [in Naples]; it was a reality. To be alive meant to collide continually with the existence of others and to be collided with … The dead were brought into quarrels; people weren’t content to attack and insult the living – they naturally abused aunts, cousins, grandparents, and great-grandparents who were no longer in the world.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 05.19.16
My concert, at last online
I’ll interrupt my posts about the DC Ring, and some of its implications for the future of classical music. Because I want to tell you something special for me — that video of my April … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-05-19
So you want to see a show?
Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-05-19
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The Brief, Wondrous, Dangerous Life Of David Wojnarowicz
The artist, writer, and AIDS activist “was only 37 when he died, but he left behind an extraordinary body of work, particularly considering the uncongenial circumstances of much of his short life. A refugee from a violent family, a former street kid and teen hustler, he grew up to become one of the stars of the febrile 1980s East Village art scene, alongside Kiki Smith, Nan Goldin, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.”
Our Brains Are Not Computers And Don’t Work Like Them (Why Do Some People Find This Hard To, Er, Process?)
“Our shoddy thinking about the brain has deep historical roots, but the invention of computers in the 1940s got us especially confused. For more than half a century now, psychologists, linguists, neuroscientists and other experts on human behaviour have been asserting that the human brain works like a computer.” Robert Epstein reminds us of the (enormous) differences.
Susan Sarandon’s Plan For Retirement? Directing Female-Friendly Porn
“I have threatened, in my 80s, to direct porn. I haven’t watched enough to know what the problems are. Most pornography is brutal and doesn’t look pleasurable from a female point of view. So I’ve been saying that when I no longer want to act, I want to do that.”
‘Bio-Techne’: Robots And Replicants In Ancient Greek Myth
“The beloved myths of Hercules, Jason and the Argonauts, the sorceress Medea, the engineer Daedalus, the inventor-god Hephaestus, and the tragically inquisitive Pandora all raised the basic question of the boundaries between human and machine.”
What Do Regular Folks Who Visit The Barnes Foundation Think? (That’s What Dr. Barnes Cared About)
“Barnes (1872-1951) feuded with the art establishment of his day and disliked most art historians and academic aestheticians. It was the unschooled lover of art he welcomed to his great art collection grounds in Lower Merion.” Now that his collection has been in central Philadelphia for four years, “in Barnes’ egalitarian spirit, we asked visitors, ‘What do you like the most – and why?'” (includes video)