“Stories have been circulating for nearly 400 years about the apparently strange compulsion that led otherwise sensible merchants, nobles and artisan weavers to spend all they had and more on tulips, only to land in bankruptcy and ruin” – and pulling the entire country’s economy down with them – “when the bottom fell out of the market in February 1637.” Historian Anne Goldgar argues that this narrative is a moralistic Victorian invention and that primary documents from the late 1630s tell a somewhat different story.
Author: Matthew Westphal
‘The Yellow Shark’, Frank Zappa’s Astoundingly Difficult Suite For Orchestra
One of the reasons the 17-movement work is so rarely performed, despite Zappa’s celebrity, is the fiendishly tricky rhythm in some spots. (You know how triplets are three-notes-in-two? One spot has 23-notes-in-18.) And then there are the movement titles, which range from “Outrage at Valdez” (about the Exxon oil-tanker spill) and “Food Gathering in Post-Industrial America 1992” to “Dog Breath Variations” and “The Girl in the Magnesium Dress.”
‘Scandal’ Was Even More Groundbreaking A TV Series Than You Think
Matt Zoller Seitz: “Shonda Rhimes’s Scandal, which ends its seven-season run Thursday night, is a rare revolutionary TV drama that never became full of itself. It dealt in controversy on the regular, tackling everything from racial politics and sexual power dynamics in a workplace to PTSD, executive privilege, and the efficacy of torture, even letting its heroine have a rare TV abortion that was entirely elective and presented as no huge deal. … Scandal was also a little miracle of genre fusion, somehow managing to be several seemingly incompatible shows at the same time.”
At New York City’s Public School For Dance
“‘Justin,’ yelled the ballet master Patrice Hemsworth. ‘Move your arms. Good, good, good. Boys, you look beautiful. Go girls. Use your shoulders.’ She watched silently for another few beats and then, as the recorded music stopped, yelled out: ‘The feet were good but, the arms have to work with it. And you’re rushing like crazy.'” A reporter visits Ballet Tech, a city academy for middle- and high-schoolers founded by choreographer Eliot Feld.
EU Considers Law To Consider Robots To Be People (The Way Corporations Are)
“A 2017 European Parliament report floated the idea of granting special legal status, or ‘electronic personalities,’ to smart robots, specifically those which (or should that be who?) can learn, adapt, and act for themselves. This legal personhood would be similar to that already assigned to corporations around the world, and would make robots, rather than people, liable for their self-determined actions, including for any harm they might cause.”
Broadway Introduces New App For Vision- And Hearing-Impaired Audience Members
“Cell phones in theatres may no longer be taboo. Well, at least in this case, where 12 Broadway theatres now offer GalaPro, a new app that expands accessibility services by providing audio description, captioning, and dubbing to audiences at every performance.”
MoMA Acquires The Painting That Provoked Rudy Giuliani To Try To Shut Down The Brooklyn Museum
Billionaire Steve Cohen is donating Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary to New York’s Museum of Modern Art. “The canvas stirred controversy at the Brooklyn Museum during the 1999 ‘Sensation’ exhibition of works by the Young British Artists from the collection of advertising mogul Charles Saatchi. Giuliani criticized Ofili’s painting as an affront to Catholics. The work remained on display for the show’s duration, amid a First Amendment legal battle, and Giuliani ultimately abandoned his efforts to evict the museum and cut its city financing.”
Harper’s Magazine Fires Editor In Chief For (He Says) Opposing Controversial Article
Ousted editor James Marcus says that his dispute with publisher Rick MacArthur was over Katie Roiphe’s “The Other Whisper Network: How Twitter feminism is bad for women,” the magazine’s March cover story. The essay attracted attention – including a brief boycott of Harper’s by writers – following reports that Roiphe planned to use it to out the creator of the crowdsourced list of “Shitty Media Men” who had engaged in predatory behavior toward female colleagues.
League Of American Orchestras Launches Program To Help Black And Hispanic Musicians Get Orchestra Jobs
“The new initiative – [called the National Alliance for Audition Support and] created by the Sphinx Organization, the New World Symphony and the League of American Orchestras – will train musicians for auditions, pair them with mentors, showcase their work in concerts and give them stipends to travel to auditions. It is the latest effort to diversify American classical music, which has lagged behind other fields.”
Nine Artists Accuse L.A. Gallery Of Stiffing Them On Work Sold
“Long before dealer Clyde Beswick established CB1 Gallery in Los Angeles, he spent 13 months in prison for embezzlement. Now, more than 20 years later, a group of artists is accusing the gallerist of breaking the law again. In an open letter published on Tuesday, nine artists claim that the dealer, along with partner Jason Chang, stiffed them repeatedly and engaged in a pattern of ‘systematic and unfailing’ abuse.”