“The surprising departure of Jed Bernstein last month after just 27 months as president of Lincoln Center was prompted not by a change in career plans, as announced, but by the discovery that he” – well, he did one of those things chief executives tend to lose their jobs for doing.
Author: Matthew Westphal
‘A True American Moral Hysteric’ – The Man Who Tried To Censor All The Mail In The Country
“At an early age, Anthony Comstock felt he was destined for glory.” What he became is the leader of what suffragette Victoria Woodhull described as “the American Inquisition” – adding, “We should no more think of comparing Comstock … with Torquemada, than of contrasting a living skunk with a dead lion.”
Michelle Dorrance Talks Nouveau Tap Dance
The dancer-choreographer-MacArthur ‘Genius’ talks with Leonard Lopate about renovating the genre and the world premiere of her piece ETM: Double Down. (audio)
Top Posts From AJBlogs 05.03.16
“The Work Will Do the Work” ??
“The work will do the work.”
Wait. Not so fast. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-05-04
SF MoMA and Museum Architecture: Killing A Meme
Have you seen the new Snøhetta-designed expansion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art? I’ve seen only pictures, but it should in my opinion put to rest the line many museum directors have been using in recent years … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-05-03
Lookback: my personal clichés
From 2006: One of the travails of writing a biography of a great artist is that you find yourself returning repeatedly to certain words and phrases – especially superlatives. The nice thing about word processing is that … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-05-03
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Can A Book Be Good Even If Its Politics Are Terrible?
Adam Kirsch: What could be more cruel than Dante’s Inferno, with its sadistic vision of divine justice? … Art will always exceed ethics, including political ethics, in the same way that the possible exceeds the desirable.”
Zoë Heller: “If we couldn’t find anything to delight or instruct us in the works of sexists, racists, anti-Semites and people who believe in the divine right of kings, our literary canon would barely fill a medium-size handbag.”
Fire Destroys India’s National Museum Of Natural History
“A fire swept through the National Museum of Natural History in New Delhi early Tuesday, spreading downward from the top floor and possibly destroying the 160-million-year-old bones of a dinosaur … The building sustained major damage, and most of the museum’s exhibits were destroyed.”
Marisol, Silent And Mysterious Pop Artist, Dead At 85
“Her bright, boxy sculptures of people represent[ed] a range of American life – everyone from the Kennedys to a dustbowl farm family to the artist herself. The works, which combined painted and minimally carved wooden figures with found objects like shoes and doors, were funny but incisive, simple-looking but expertly made.”
‘Rent’ – An Oral History Of The Musical That Changed Broadway
“Today, it’s impossible to imagine contemporary musical theater without Rent‘s influence, but as with any new musical, its evolution was far from smooth. Here, the cast of characters who brought Rent to life recall the winding path that led to Broadway history.”
Why Really Bad Art Suddenly Metastisized All Over Moscow
“It was as if the city had been invaded by a horde of aliens with flamboyantly bad taste. The Moscow intelligentsia recoiled in horror.” Masha Gessen writes that “the aesthetic assault is a logical part of Moscow’s – and Russia’s – political progression.”
Can A Studio Claim Copyright Over The Entire Klingon Language?
Paramount has sued the makers of a crowdfunded Star Trek fanfic film titled Axanar, with the studio claiming intellectual property rights over (among other things) the entire Klingon language, which was created by linguist Marc Okrand for the Star Trek film series but has since caught on with tens of thousands of enthusiasts.