“In the art and design world, the fate of the prospective museum has become a matter of global import: with everyone from the Louvre to the Hermitage looking to set up outposts abroad, Helsinki has become the latest battleground in an ongoing conflict over how – and whether – small cities and emerging countries should accommodate expansionist mega-museums.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Yoko Ono And The Myth That Deserves To Die
“Why is it such a perennial youthful rite of passage to misunderstand, to underestimate, even to hate Yoko Ono? What is this strange power she continues to wield? … Beginning to love Yoko Ono is a dangerous experience, because then you wonder: If Yoko Ono was something more than the woman who broke up the Beatles, then what other lies have I been told?”
Crowdfunded Novel Wins The Bookseller’s First Book Of The Year Award
“The prize is intended to recognise the publisher as well as the book, and goes to both [Paul] Kingsnorth and Unbound, the crowdfunding publisher which released The Wake last year … The novel is set in 1066, and tells the story of guerrilla fighters who take up arms against the Norman invaders in the Lincolnshire fens. It is written in a reimagined version of Old English after Kingsnorth found that modern English ‘didn’t fit’ the world he was creating.”
American Ballet Theatre At 75
“In France, and later in Russia, ballet had to reinvent itself alongside political revolution. In America, ballet was reinvented again, and American Ballet Theatre is a main character in the story of ballet in this country.”
How Oakland Ballet Rescued (And Made) Dance History
“For decades, [company founder Ronn] Guidi had been fascinated by the repertoire of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. … He engaged the original choreographers, or their appointed emissaries, and he reproduced the decor and costuming of the original productions, some of which were originally signed by museum names – Picasso, Derain, Chanel, Bakst, Benois and Goncharova. Dances we despaired of ever seeing live arose from the pages of the history books on the Paramount stage.”
‘I Was Born Homosexual; I Chose To Be Gay’: On Sensibility And (Or Versus) Same-Sex Attraction
“Implicit in the notion that an apartment like mine can ‘be gay’ – and that you, despite any politically correct training against saying so, could easily recognize it as such – is an understanding of gayness as something more than a basic sexual orientation. … Gayness may be found not just in whom you sleep with, but also in the sort of sheets you insist on sleeping between.” A longread by J. Bryan Lowder.
Do Gay Men And Lesbians Share A Sensibility? And How Do Their Sensibilities Differ?
A dialogue between the two editors of Slate‘s LGBT blog, Outward: June Thomas and J. Bryan Lowder.
How Procrastination Works
“Procrastination is, in essence, stealing from yourself. The reason goals are so hard to reach, many psychologists think, is because each person believes they are really two people: Present Me and Future Me. And to most people, Future Me is much less important than Present Me. Present Me is the CEO of Me Corp, while Future Me is a lowly clerk.”
Why You And I Should Care About Game Theory (It’s Actually Useful)
“Despite a heady term that calls to mind algebraic equations requiring chalkboard walls that lift up to reveal entire second sets of chalkboard walls, game theory’s a relatively easy concept: It’s using math, rather than your intuition, to make decisions. It’s Moneyball, not just peering from a distance and saying, ‘Looks like an athlete to me.'”
Do We Look At Domestic Fiction Differently Based On Whether A Man Or A Woman Wrote It? Cheryl Strayed And Pankaj Mishra Weigh In
Mishra: “Novels about suburban families are more likely to be greeted as microcosmic explorations of the human condition if they are by male writers; their female counterparts are rarely allowed to transcend the category of domestic fiction.”
Strayed: “Notions of domesticity and femaleness are so entangled that many presume it’s the only thing women can write about … There’s been nary a day in the past decade that I haven’t had to set someone straight about the fact that I wrote my books for people, not women.”