Author: Matthew Westphal

The Rise And Fall Of Tower Records

“A new documentary film called All Things Must Pass charts the rise and fall of Tower, from its origins in a Sacramento drugstore in 1960, to its glory days of cocaine-fueled rock-and-roll excess (topping $1 billion in sales), to its stunning downfall. It features interviews and reminiscences with the store’s employees – some of whom rose from scruffy clerks to become top brass.”

Britain’s Oldest Science Institution Has To Sell Parts Of Collection To Save Itself

“Ninety works spanning three centuries of scientific inquiry are to go under the hammer at Christie’s in December, in an attempt to plug a £2m hole in the finances of the UK’s most venerable science charity, the Royal Institution. The groundbreaking works in the history of medicine, science and the natural world include first editions from scientific luminaries such as Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler, Johannes Kepler and Alexander von Humboldt.”

The Shape Of Things To Come: Is History A J-Curve, An S-Curve, Or A Spike?

“For some ancient Greeks and Romans, history was a downhill slide. … Nowadays some optimists think that history slants in the opposite direction. Some techno-utopians argue that technological progress is following an exponential curve, a J that is bending upward toward the vertical. … At the other extreme are today’s gloomy Malthusians. They view history as a spike, in which industrial and population growth overshoot the limits to sustainability, followed by a sharp crash likely to involve the collapse of industrial civilization … There is a third alternative: The shape of things to come may be a logistic curve or S-curve.”

Flood Of Antiquities Returned To India As Investigation Into Dealer Continues

“What began as a trickle has now become a flood as more institutions around the world return works of art that were bought from Manhattan antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor, who ran the now defunct gallery Art of the Past for over three decades. Kapoor is awaiting trial in India on charges of smuggling looted artefacts worth more than $100m.”

‘Choreographic Objects’ – William Forsythe’s Art Installations

In 1997, “he made his first foray into installation work at the Roundhouse in London with White Bouncy Castle, which had spectators bounding and falling in a giant rubber courtyard. He described it at the time as ‘a choreography that is incapable of being false.’ It’s a description that fits a subsequent substantial body of work that generates movement in spectators – by navigating between the swinging pendulums …, clambering through 200 gymnastic rings without touching the floor …, [or] moving extremely slowly in order not to disturb a whirlpool of fog.”