“American writer Ernest Hemingway had close links with Paris. He first lived there in 1920 and played a marginal, much-mythologised, role in the 1944 liberation of the city. But now, 70 years on, memories of the author are starting to fade.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.01.14
Is This A “New” Piero della Franscesca?
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-09-02
How should we rank the employment prospects of cities?
AJBlog: For What it’s Worth | Published 2014-09-02
David Lowery: The Internet is a Cargo Cult
AJBlog: CultureCrash | Published 2014-09-01
New, Improved Tuning Examples
AJBlog: PostClassic | Published 2014-09-01
Arts Democracy Now!
AJBlog: We The Audience | Published 2014-09-01
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New Opera Cancelled In Russia After Venues Refuse To Host It, Composer Gets Beaten Up, And Death Threats Are Made
Ilya Demutsky’s New Jerusalem is about a vigilante who tracks down and kills pedophiles. Once a video trailer for the premiere was made and word got around, all hell started breaking loose.
Did Someone Just Try To Start A Classical Music Critics’ War In Dallas?
In a 1,274-word online column titled “Classical Music Criticism in Dallas: It’s Time for a Makeover”, D Magazine’s Catherine Womack goes after The Dallas Morning News‘s Scott Cantrell for a 55-word blog post – a quick little kvetch about the word maestro – that Womack calls “insulting and condescending towards both enthusiastic audience members and The Dallas Opera’s newly appointed principal guest conductor, Nicole Paiement, who happens to be a woman.”
Six Steps To Restore People’s Faith In The (Divvied-Up) Corcoran Gallery
“There’s no rescuing the institution known as the Corcoran from this final crisis. And neither the National Gallery nor George Washington is obligated to try, truthfully. But under the new dispensation, leaders at the college and gallery can restore and even improve upon the things that the old Corc got right. Here are six suggestions for ways that the National Gallery and GW can build stronger institutions for the District.”
What People Cured Of Blindness See
A 17th-century thought experiment asks “about a person, blind from birth, who could tell apart a cube and a sphere by touch: If his vision were restored and he was presented with the same cube and sphere, would he be able to tell which was which by sight alone?” Dr. Pawan Sinha, who has organized sight-restoring surgery for hundreds of blind children in India, has an answer.
Syrian Refugee Take On “The Trojan Women” Scuttled As U.S. Denies Performers Visas
“It had the potential to be one of the most galvanizing cultural events of the season: a dozen Syrian women, refugees from that besieged country, performing in Washington a version of a 2,500-year-old Greek tragedy revised to include their own harrowing stories. But now the … State Department rejected the women’s applications for entertainers’ visas for the performances … because it is not convinced that the women would leave.”
What We Really Get From Learning History
Adam Gopnik: “The best argument for reading history is not that it will show us the right thing to do in one case or the other, but rather that it will show us why even doing the right thing rarely works out. … What history generally ‘teaches’ is how hard it is for anyone to control it, including the people who think they’re making it.”
“The Procrastination Doom Loop” – Can Science Help Us Break It?
“When scientists have studied procrastination, they’ve typically focused on how people are miserable at weighing costs and benefits across time. … In the last few years, however, scientists have begun to think that procrastination might have less to do with time than emotion.” As one researcher says, “To tell the chronic procrastinator to just do it would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up.”
The Man Who Made Off With John Updike’s Trash
“[Paul] Moran has kept thousands of pieces of Updike’s garbage – a trove that he says includes photographs, discarded drafts of stories, canceled checks, White House invitations, Christmas cards, love letters, floppy disks, a Mickey Mouse flip book, and a pair of brown tasseled loafers. It is a collection he calls ‘the other John Updike archive,’ … and it raises fundamental questions about celebrity, privacy, and who ultimately determines the value and scope of an artist’s legacy.”