“This one thing that we’ve lost in our society is the understanding that exploration, understanding, and creating thinking is what got us to where we are, that made America the ‘idea nation,’ the country that founded Apple and IBM, that invented the car and the airplane.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.21.15
Give or Get
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2015-04-21
First came The Bradys. Now come The Imaginists.
AJBlog: Lies Like Truth Published 2015-04-21
Recommendation: Charles Lloyd
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-04-21
The Long Journey
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2015-04-21
Circuitry
AJBlog: PianoMorphosis Published 2015-04-21
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Toni Morrison Has Had It: ‘I Want To See A White Man Convicted For Raping A Black Woman’
“We need to have a conversation about race. This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back. And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes.”
The New Whitney Museum ‘Might Just Solve The Impossible Problem Of Contemporary Art,’ Says Jerry Saltz
“Believe it or not, I am in love with what this building represents – and with its perfectly titled inaugural show, ‘America Is Hard to See.’ The show includes 600 works by around 400 artists, drawn entirely from the museum’s collection of over 21,000 works by 3,000 artists, and it makes me think this museum might just point to one way through the current morass.”
Two-Thirds Of A Billion Dollars In 50th-Birthday Gifts for LACMA
At a gala last Saturday, Los Angeles’s flagship museum unveiled the artwork donated to it for its golden anniversary, including a Monet, a Memling, an Ingres, and a Giambologna sculpture.
Whatever Happened To LACMA’s Missing Goya? Imelda Marcos, That’s What
Turns out that the museum, concerned about its authenticity, sold deaccessioned Portrait of the Marquesa of Santa Cruz in 1978. The then-First Lady of the Philippines acquired the canvas for her personal aggrandizement the benefit of her nation. (The Philippine government finally took possession of it last year.)
Barre To Barracks: Dancer Trains For Role By Training With Real Soldiers
Shelley Eva Haden: “When choreographer Rosie Kay cast me as the only woman in a revival of her work 5 Soldiers, I didn’t fully appreciate what it meant until I spent five days with 4th Battalion the Rifles. The infantry were undergoing a full-battle exercise and I was the only female among more than 80 soldiers.”
Pulitzer For Music Goes To Julia Wolfe’s “Anthracite Fields”
Describer by the jury as “a powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th century,” Anthracite Fields was commissioned by the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, which premiered the piece last April with the Bang on a Can All-Stars.
What’s Jon Stewart Going To Do With Himself Now?
“What I’m doing. Whether it’s standup, the show, books or films, I consider all this just different vehicles to continue a conversation about what it means to be a democratic nation, and to have it written into the constitution [sic] that all men are created equal – but to live with that for 100 years with slaves. How do those contradictions play themselves out? And how do we honestly assess our failings and move forward with integrity?”
Raw Nerve: Françoise Mouly
The art editor of The New Yorker – the woman who has chosen hundreds of striking, witty, and sometimes powerful covers – talks with Grace Bello about using visual imagery to master English, what comics can tell us about the state of a culture, and collaborating with husband Art Spiegelman on the seminal graphic magazine Raw.