“Two entire galleries have been under [the British sculptor’s] firm control for some months now. The lighting has been changed, venerable objects have been shifted in and out. Even a floor has been raised. … It is the first time a living artist has been allowed to intervene with the Hermitage’s collection in this way.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Revisiting The Playboy Of The Western World Riots
“Ireland in 1907 saw itself as ready for self-rule and it expected its artists to promote the image of a steady, sober, self-reliant people. Instead, with The Playboy of the Western World,, Synge gave them a play in which a village loon splits his father’s head open … and is promptly installed as a hero by excitable women and drunken men.”
David Hallberg Talks About Joining The Bolshoi Ballet
“I am shaking in my boots, but you know, I do feel an amount of pressure, not only with that first performance, but also with doing this justice. I mean, I think it’s really important for an American to go to a company as storied as this, as historical as this.”
Utilitarians Are Not Nice People: Study
You know the utilitarian credo: Jeremy Bentham’s “the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.” A pair of researchers disigned a study “to ask what sort of people actually do have a utilitarian outlook on life. Their answers, just published in Cognition, are not comfortable.”
Covent Garden Launches Worldwide Cinema Program
“London’s Royal Opera House has launched an ambitious programme of cinema screenings, including a production of Madam Butterfly shot in 3D. Ten operas and ballets will be shown in more than 700 cinemas in 22 countries during the 2011-2012 season.”
Ballet Boyz To Make 20 Short Films For UK’s Channel Four
“Dance duo the Ballet Boyz have been commissioned to make 20 short films as part of Channel 4’s new arts strand Random Acts.”
Students Occupy Scotland’s Royal Conservatoire Over Tuition Hike
“Around 30 undergraduates staged a short sit-in at Scotland’s leading performing arts academy in Glasgow after it became the latest institution to announce fees of £9000 a year for students from England, Wales and Northern Ireland.”
How Humans Changed Time, And Time Changed Humans
“In 2000 BCE or 850 CE there was no culturally agreed-upon 1:37 p.m. It simply did not exist and it could not have existed. We invented it and all of the time-behavior that goes with it. Then we used that time to imagine entire new ecosystems of human activity into existence.”
Neuropsychology And Bobby McFerrin’s ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’
Maria Popova “unpack[s] the verses to explore the scientific wisdom they contain in the context of several studies that offer lab-tested validation for McFerrin’s intuitive insight.”
Meet Hollywood’s Top Counterfeiter
“Ross Macdonald is a forger. And many of his most exquite forgeries – or, more precisely, replicas – are currently seen, if you look closely enough, on the new season of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.”