It’s My Bag
AJBlog: Out There Published 2015-03-06
Why I Love BJ’s, Part 2 – “Basket Case”
AJBlog: Out There Published 2015-03-10
Breaking: Met Names New President
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-03-10
He got game
AJBlog: Performance Monkey Published 2015-03-10
[ssba_hide]
Author: Matthew Westphal
English National Opera Hires New CEO Above Artistic Director
“The ENO, widely viewed as in crisis, has employed Cressida Pollock” – a management consultant from McKinsey and Co. – “as its interim head, quietly adding a new layer of authority above artistic director John Berry.”
ISIS Destroys Third Ancient Site In Three Days
“On Friday, the group razed 3,000-year old Nimrud and on Saturday, they bulldozed 2,000-year old Hatra – both UNESCO world heritage sites.” On Sunday, they reportedly went after Khorsabad, which “was constructed as a new capital of Assyria by King Sargon II shortly after he came to power in 721 BC.”
“They Want To Turn The Clocks Back To Year Zero”: Why ISIS Destroys Ancient Monuments
“Destroying some of the world’s greatest archaeological and cultural treasures is something that flows from a fanatically purist interpretation of Sunni Islam as first laid down in 7th-century Arabia and revived more than a millennium later.” (scroll down to third headline)
These Ideas Must Die
“Rather than asking if a new idea is a good one, we ask whether it’d be better if some of the ideas we cling to were killed off.” For instance, testing products on mice. (podcast)
“The Notion That No Current Popular Music Is Of Quality Is Philistine”: Robert Christgau Lets Loose
“Christgau – who under the influence of a glass of iced coffee was sometimes so intense that he would not let his interlocutor finish a sentence – spoke from his home in New York” with Scott Timberg.
How Britain’s Theatre Reinvented Itself In The Face Of Funding Woes
Lyn Gardner: “What do we mean by ‘the nation’s theatre’? Think back just 30 or so years and the answer was probably fairly straightforward. It was Shakespeare on our main stages across the country, the big flagship companies such as the NT and the RSC, the state-of-the-nation plays by David Hare, … the loved but often ailing network of regional theatres across the country frequently reviving classic plays and modern classics. Now the answer to the question is far more complex. It is still, at times, many of these things but it is much, much more.”
Van Gogh Landscape To Be Shown For First Time In 100 Years
“Le Moulin d’Alphonse Daudet à Fontvieille, which depicts vivid green grapevines leading up to a windmill with broken wings in the distance, is a work on paper that he created with graphite, reed pen and ink and watercolour shortly after he reached Arles, in the south of France.”
Philadelphia’s Prince Music Theater Saved
“Coming to a choice parcel on Chestnut Street just west of Broad: neither a chic new condominium nor another drugstore. The Prince Music Theater isn’t going anywhere. The defunct theater in the center of town was sold Thursday to the Philadelphia Film Society – a transaction that not only gives the film group a new home, but also preserves the hall’s role for arts groups that cannot afford pricier venues like the Kimmel Center.”
American Tourists Caught Carving Names Into Rome’s Colosseum
“The Californians, aged 21 and 25, snuck away from their tour group on Saturday and began scratching their initials into the amphitheatre with a coin. They managed a ‘J’ and an ‘N’ around 8cm high, before taking a selfie with their handiwork.”