Author: Matthew Westphal

So Why Shouldn’t Joe The Plumber Publish A Book?

In a much-noted New York Times essay last Sunday, Timothy Egan grandly harrumphing about the likes of Sarah Palin and campaign celebrity Samuel Wurzelbacher (“Joe the Plumber”) landing book contracts while so many talented and trained writers languish unpublished. And yet, Michael Pastore points out, if the writing of books was permitted only to trained professionals, consider whose works would never have seen print: Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, the Bronte sisters, Getrude Stein, W.E.B. DuBois…

The Institutionalization Of Street Art: Now It Has Its Own Awards

“The same week that Mark Leckey was announced winner of the Turner Prize 2008 Matt Small and JR scooped top prize at the first ever Street Art Awards. Last night, at the end of an evening of urban bazaar-style partying, Small was announced winner of the urban art category, while JR won the street art section. To an outsider street art and urban art may seem like the same thing. But delve a little deeper and you will notice that street art is public and is usually done outside, whereas urban art is private and is usually done inside. It’s not a question of different aesthetics, rather a question of different production ethics.”

Come Now, Britain Hasn’t Changed That Much

A brouhaha has broken out over changes on the vocabulary included in the latest version of the Oxford Junior Dictionary. New additions include blog, broadband, bilingual and biodegradable. Fair enough. But missing from the children’s reference are monarch, duchess and coronation; altar, bishop and vicar; and beetroot, marzipan and porridge. Even moss and fern are gone. OUP points out that today’s UK is much less rural and more multicultural than in the past, and that “We are limited by how big the dictionary can be – little hands must be able to handle it.”

Phantom Recordings Of The Opera Restored (But Are They Really Any Good?)

Those century-old gramophone recordings of Caruso, Melba and their contemporaries that were retrieved from the vaults of the Paris Opéra last year have been extracted from their urns, dusted off and digitized – and they can now be heard. (One soloist and teacher at the Opéra avers that those old singers with their old vocal techniques just aren’t up to our modern standards: “Most of them would not get past the quarter-finals in a contest nowadays.”)

Time To Rehabilitate Paul Rudolph?

In 1963, Modernist architect Paul Rudolph had such a success with his Art and Architecture building at Yale that no less than Time magazine pronounced him a boy wonder of his profession. Within a couple of decades, his style was considered outmoded; his buildings, deemed obsolete due to the requirements of ever-advancing technology, began succumbing to the wrecking ball. Is it time for a museum retrospective to revive Rudolph’s reputation?

The World’s Most Intimidating Architectural Project

“Two of Britain’s most-renowned architects are in the running for the single most audacious renovation in history: the redevelopment of Mecca. Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid are among 18 architects to have been approached about redesigning Islam’s holiest city by building a mosque complex to host the three million Haj pilgrims who visit every year.”

In Madrid, Mortier Sings A Similar Song

In his first press conference since being named the next artistic director of the Teatro Real, Gérard Mortier described hopes and plans notably similar to those he had for New York City Opera before he walked away from the top job there. He says the Real has “enormous potential”; he wants to open the theater to the city and bring in lots of new audience members, including young people; he wants 35 percent of the repertoire to be 20th-century works (and says that, in his experience, “the public reacts effusively to modern opera”).

Gee, Maybe This Could Have Stopped Prop 8

“A gay version of the Bible, in which God says it is better to be gay than straight, is to be published by an American film producer. New Mexico-based Revision Studios will publish The Princess Diana Bible – so named because of Diana’s ‘many good works’, it says – online at princessdianabible.com in spring 2009. A preview of Genesis is already available, in which instead of creating Adam and Eve, God creates Aida and Eve.”

Renzo Piano To Design Major Reconstruction Project In Malta’s Historic Capital

The Maltese government has approved a plan for architect Renzo Piano to undertake a reconstruction that could change the face of Valletta, the country’s capital. While the old walled city is filled with attractive Baroque buildings, the City Gate as it stands now is notoriously rundown and unattractive. Piano is to design a new landmark structure for the City Gate as well as a new Parliament building on the site of the old Royal Opera House.