On the return to public investments in museums
AJBlog: For What It’s Worth Published 2015-03-03
Music Schools in Transition, Part V
AJBlog: State of the Art Published 2015-03-03
The horse’s mouth
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-03-03
Thirteen, My Lucky Number
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-03-03
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Author: Matthew Westphal
Have We Just Found The Next Terrific Woman Conductor?
Mark Swed: “Word was out. The hall sold out. Presenters from Chicago, New York and elsewhere came to check her out. Managers who didn’t were simply not paying attention. The debut was a preview. Mirga mania can now officially begin.” (What’s more, “[she] was the third exceptional woman to conduct the L.A. Phil in a week.”)
ISIS And Its Sophisticated Cinema Of Terror
“The cinematography is as crisp and chilling as a horror movie. Men in orange jumpsuits kneel on a beach beneath a sky of broken clouds. Executioners hover over them, dressed in black, knives aglint. … This and other recent execution videos released by Islamic State are slickly produced narratives of multiple camera angles, eerie tension and polished editing that suggest the filmmakers are versed in Hollywood aesthetics.”
Was ISIS’s Attack On Mosul Museum Staged? Just Another Of Its “Cinema Of Terror” Pieces?
Christopher Knight, observing that several of the statues destroyed were obviously modern copies: “Earlier snuff videos … show the beheading of soldiers, journalists and humanitarian aid workers. The new video purports to show nothing less than the beheading of an entire civilization. The question is: Does it really? Or is the video, instead, a grotesque perversion of performance art, cynically designed to inflate the image of Islamic State power?”
Iraq’s National Museum Reopens, In Gesture Of Defiance To ISIS
“In response to the destruction of antiquities in Mosul last week by Islamic State militants, the Iraqi government reopened the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad this weekend, with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi speaking out against the terrorist group at the ribbon cutting.”
The Show That’s Turning Islamophobia Into A Laugh Riot
“What do you do if your inbox is clogged up with anti-Muslim hate mail? Turn it into a cabaret show. Daryl Lindsey reports from Berlin on a strangely joyful evening of horrendous abuse.”
Maggie Smith Will Do No More Theatre – “It’s So Exhausting”
“I just don’t think I could cope with it. Almost every Wednesday and Saturday I wake up relieved it’s not a matinee.. … It’s hard enough doing film and television, but at least you know it’s not day, after day, after day. I just found it so exhausting.” (By the way, what she actually said about Downton Abbey is less definitive than you think.)
Stolen 400-Year-Old Books on Their Way Home To Italy
“This is the odyssey of two rare books that were taken from an Italian library and wound up in the hands of a Bay Area rare-book collector. The books are safe and sound, the Homeland Security Department said, and heading home to their rightful owner.”
Should The NYPD Be Deciding When Busking Counts As Art And When As Begging?
“Recently, a busking video went viral. In it a police officer, armed with a gun and club, passed judgment on a busker, who protested by reading out the law covering art in public. He got a loitering charge. Boos are bad, hisses worse and an audience unsatisfied enough to pelt is humiliating. But a criminal record? Does society want such severity?”
The Economics Of Arthur Miller’s Plays
“But it was really his view of the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression: even more than an economic crash, it was a national emotional collapse, ‘like all the winds had stopped, gone dead’ … That sense of existential and economic desperation carries across all his plays.”