“[Rolando] Briseño is one of eight artists commissioned by the San Antonio River Foundation to create site-specific art installations on and under the eight bridges spanning the new Museum Reach extension of the River Walk. The landscaped 1.33-mile stretch … opened Saturday.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Emma Bovary Goes Interactive
“Thanks to an unprecedented international collaboration between scholars and volunteers, we can now trace the development of Flaubert’s masterpiece online, draft by draft.”
Fixing Broken Instruments In A Broken Territory
“[A]fter absorbing lessons from visiting volunteer luthiers and a three-month apprenticeship in Italy, Mr. Shelaldeh, 18, has his own instrument repair shop. It is in a former garage around the corner from the [Ramallah] music center, Al Kamandjati (‘the Violinist’). He has learned to fix instruments and replace the hair on bows. He has already made two violins, one with a tiny Palestinian flag on the tailpiece, which anchors the strings.”
Decaying City Turns To The Arts For Salvation (This Time, In Central Russia, It’s Working)
“In a region once known best for producing rockets, petrochemicals and salt – and for incarcerating dissidents in Gulag prison camps – [the city of] Perm is banking on contemporary art, architecture and theater to overcome its weighty past. … The Russian media are already calling it ‘Bilbao on the Kama’.”
Indy Film Finds A Haven On The No-Longer-Idiot Box
“This year IFC will release about 100 films ‘on demand’, meaning they can be called up for a fee in most households that get their television via cable or satellite. … Later this year IFC plans to launch a new on-demand channel to showcase documentary films. Cinetic, a powerful independent-film broker, will also get into the game this summer. Most radical of all is Magnolia,” which will release the Jeff Daniels comedy The Answer Man on cable four weeks before its theatrical opening.
In Duluth, Joint Pain Leads To A New Festival
“A shoulder injury sidelined Samuel Martin from playing his violin last fall. […] The result of Martin’s time off – the Three Bridges International Chamber Music Festival – will be held at various locations in Duluth June 7-18.”
David Ireland, 78, Who Made A This Old House Idea Into Conceptual Art
“After buying [a dilapidated San Francisco Victorian] building in 1975, he embarked on a renovation that became a sort of excavation of the structure’s history. As he peeled back layers of materials, he exposed information about former inhabitants and made collections of remnants, sometimes turning old woodwork and scraps of wallpaper into artworks.”
Could A New Firm Be Taking Over Gehry’s Brooklyn Arena?
“A midwest architectural firm that has designed dozens of professional sports arenas could bump Frank Gehry and his glitzy arena vision from the Atlantic Yards project. Ellerbe Becket, a Missouri-based firm, was tapped last fall to reevaluate the extravagant arena design Gehry conceived for developer Forest City Ratner to lure the NBA’s New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn.”
Obit Mag Picks The Ten Greatest Movie Death Scenes
“What else makes a good death scene? Good dialogue, obviously … Dignity is often helpful but not make-or-break, and sometimes it’s actually a stumbling block. Heavy symbolism is even worse, as in Willem Dafoe’s Christlike pose at the end of Platoon (1986). Get off the cross, Willem, we need the wood.”
Dick Cavett Just Loves Jonathan Miller (Guess He Never Had To Listen To The Whingeing About Opera Houses)
“The thing about Jonathan is that his comic gift is accompanied by another trait … He is one of the most formidable intellectuals in captivity. In that capacity he has fathered many books and articles in scholarly publications on science, physics, religion, politics, the arts, medicine, psychology, mesmerism and just about everything else.”