“The gallery relaxed its strict no-photography policy last month after staff found it ‘increasingly difficult’ to distinguish between guests using free wi-fi to research paintings and those trying to take pictures with mobile phones.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
A Depression Theme At This Year’s Edinburgh Fringe
Lyn Gardner: “It’s always good to talk, and maybe these shows and others are a sign that we are getting better about being honest with each other about our own frailties. When I’ve discussed these shows with other people, several have opened up their own mental-health issues. That can only be good. It’s as if these shows give us permission to talk about the taboo, let down our guard.”
The Best-Selling Identical-Twin Novelists
Maria Konnikova interviews Austin (Soon I Will Be Invincible) and Lev (The Magicians) Grossman – really, they interview each other – about separating (and not) from each other and from the family business: both parents were writers, the black-sheep sister is a sculptor, and they say they’re “failed non-writers”.
Why Should Some Books Be “Guilty Pleasures” And Others Considered Like Spinach?
Rebecca Mead: “The distinction partakes of a debased cultural Puritanism, which insists that the only fun to be had with a book is the frivolous kind, or that it’s necessarily a pleasure to read something accessible and easy … [or] that literary works, especially those not written last year, are placed at the opposite pole to fun.”
Architecture Becomes A Political Battleground In Design Of U.S. Embassies
“But design, the hearing made clear, has become the word that dare not speak its name in an era when American diplomats fear being targets around the world.”
Dancing The Struggles Of Rio’s Slums
Sonia Destri Lie, founder of the contemporary urban/hip-hop troupe Companhia Urbana de Dança: “We looked at photos of protests, of the bodies of people killed by the police, and we started dancing this, improvising.”
How I Learned To Love Van Gogh: Peter Schjeldahl
“Like some other art mavens I know, I thrilled to van Gogh when I was young, and then, with the snobbery of the insecure tyro aesthete, I took to disdaining him for his popularity. Art that wasn’t difficult couldn’t be serious. … In fact, there is no end of difficulty in van Gogh – his own, surmounted.”
Indianapolis Opera Looks To “New Artistic Vision”, Hires Local Theater Pro
The troubled company, which canceled its last production and lost its artistic director, has engaged the former managing director of the Indiana Repertory Theatre to help program the coming fall season and realize a “new artistic vision and business model that reflect the interests of Indianapolis audiences.”
Smithsonian Is Crowdsourcing Transcription Of Historic Documents
“The Smithsonian Institution has … [opened] an online transcription center allowing members of the public to help decipher thousands of digitized pages of Civil War diaries, botanical labels, correspondence and other documents that cannot be easily read by a computer.”
The Recording Industry’s “Antilabel” – And The Niche Musician’s Lifesaver
“For more than 325,000 recording artists, in genres ranging from folk and rap to polka and bhangra” – and yes, classical, too – “CD Baby has become a vital lifeline. For a fee, the company not only sells copies of their CDs and digital versions of their songs, it can also track, collect and distribute royalties for musicians who don’t have – or don’t want – a big record label or song publisher behind them.”