Author: Matthew Westphal

Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.12.18

Fear and loathing in the Renaissance church: Stile Antico sings Victoria’s Holy Week music
Sacred music began tumbling from heaven to earth in the late 16th century, when the words it was sung to became something more than liturgical reference points. It took on more qualities of human speech … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2018-04-12

What Obstacles Will Max Hollein Need to Surmount as Metropolitan Museum’s New Director?
Max Hollein will have two strikes against him — one insignificant, one potentially serious — when he walks in the door this summer as the Metropolitan Museum’s new director. The first liability is irremediable, unless he’s planning a sex-change: … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-04-12

Recent Listening In Brief (short…capsulesque…itty-bitty…not long)
Danny Green Trio Plus Strings, One Day It Will (OA2)
Jeremy Pelt, Noir en Rouge Live In Paris (High Note)
Kairos Sextet, Transition (Dafnison Music)
The Three Sounds, Groovin’ Hard, Live At The Penthouse 1964-1968 (Resonance) … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2018-04-12

 

The World’s Oldest ‘Oral Library’ – And What Bruce Chatwin Did With (And To) It

“Perhaps the oldest oral library in the world was formed over a span of tens of thousands of years in the arid lands of central Australia. There, the Arrernte people developed a complex system of tribal knowledge, beliefs, duties, and ethics” and memorialized it in a series of stories. In the 1980s, Bruce Chatwin spent time in Australia studying Arrernte stories; when he published what he’d learned in the 1987 book Songlines. That book was a hit, hailed by critics and readers in the UK and US; the reaction in Australia was another matter.

J.D. Salinger And His Estate Have Never Let Anyone Make A Film Of His Work – But There’s One Place Where It Happened Anyway

“The virtually nonexistent relations between the United States and Iran extend to their copyright relations. While many countries have agreed to international standards such as the Berne Convention, which affords foreign artists the same copyright protections countries offer to their own artists, Iran has not. And this is how the Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui – one of the premier auteurs of Iran’s New Wave cinema – seized the opportunity that no Western filmmaker could. In 1995, Mehrjui released his film Pari, a composite of Franny and Zooey and ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish,’ from Salinger’s Nine Stories.”

The Entire Idea Of ‘VARK’ Learning Styles Seems To Be A Myth

“VARK, which stands for ‘Visual, Auditory, Reading, and Kinesthetic,’ sorts students into those who learn best visually, through aural or heard information, through reading, or through ‘kinesthetic’ experiences. … Experts aren’t sure how the concept spread, but it might have had something to do with the self-esteem movement of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Everyone was special – so everyone must have a special learning style, too. … [But] a lot of evidence suggests that people aren’t really one certain kind of learner or another.”

Univ. Of Texas, Bowing To Protests, Reverses Decision To Move Fine Arts Library Off-Campus

“For the better part of a year, students, faculty, staff, librarians, museum professionals, artists, and many members of the public [in Austin] worked tirelessly to protest further removal of books and materials, after discovering that, over the summer of 2017, around 75,000 items from the Fine Arts Library had been removed to off-site facilities. The rest of the items held by the library – which predominantly occupied the fifth floor of the Doty Fine Arts Building – also appeared to be at risk of removal.”

Berkshire Museum’s Famous Norman Rockwell Painting Sold To George Lucas’s New Museum

“In February, when the embattled Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, announced it had reached an agreement with the state’s attorney general to sell as many as 40 works from its collection, the juiciest detail was that an undisclosed institution had agreed to purchase and exhibit the lot’s most valuable work: a Norman Rockwell masterpiece titled Shuffleton’s Barbership (1950).” That institution has now been disclosed: it’s the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, founded by Star Wars and Indiana Jones creator George Lucas and now under construction in Los Angeles.

Poet J.D. McClatchy, 72

“The author of eight volumes of poetry, Mr. McClatchy was considered one of the country’s foremost men of letters. He was also a prolific editor, anthologist, translator and critic, as well as the author of a string of acclaimed opera librettos, among them Our Town, for Ned Rorem’s setting of Thornton Wilder’s enduring drama of village life, and the Metropolitan Opera’s condensed English-language production of Mozart’s Magic Flute, designed by Julie Taymor.”