“Called De Letters van Utrecht, the ‘social sculpture’ is constantly evolving and continues to expand every Saturday afternoon when one of 22 stone carvers from a local guild chisels a single letter into the stone. As the weeks, months, and years pass by, the poem evolves, continuing indefinitely so long as the city and community members support it.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.21.18
Getting Picasso Right: You Think It’s Easy?
In London a few weeks back, I was fortunate to be there on the day of the press preview for Picasso 1932: Love, Fame, Tragedy at the Tate Modern. You might think. at first, that doing a Picasso show is easy, … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2018-03-21
Why Did the Attorney General Cave in Berkshire Museum Case? My Q&A with the Rockwells’ Lawyer
Those, like me, who were caught off-guard by the astonishing deal (now awaiting court validation) cut last month by the Berkshire Museum and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey feel justifiably blindsided by the AG’s about-face. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-03-21
Maija Kauhanen sings about Child Brides
As you might have noticed from my last posting, this past year’s WOMEX had some pretty powerful women performing. Among them was most certainly Finland’s Maija Kauhanen, whose day case was exceptionally compelling. … read more
AJBlog: OtherWorldly Published 2018-03-21
Meep Meep! Where The Road Runner, Fred Flintstone’s Car, And Other Classic Cartoons’ Sounds Came From
“In this episode of Watch Smarter, Slate‘s video series about hidden tropes in pop culture and beyond, we trace the surprising history of cartoon sounds we all know but have never quite understood. Our story begins with live orchestras in the 1920s and ends, more or less, inside a coke bottle.”
Ojai Music Festival Appoints New Artistic Director
“Chad Smith, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s chief operating officer, … will take over in Ojai for Thomas W. Morris, who is retiring in 2019 after 16 years in the position. Smith will continue to serve in his post at the L.A. Phil while beginning work with Ojai’s 2020 music director, Matthias Pintscher.”
Did America’s Founding Fathers Have English Accents?
Linguist John McWhorter gives a rundown of what we know about how Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and their fellow spoke. (podcast)
This Production Of ‘Julius Caesar’ Needs Stage Managers Versed In Crowd Control – For The Audience
Nicholas Hytner’s staging for the Bridge Theatre in London (starring Ben Whishaw and David Morrissey) takes place on a series of platforms right in the middle of the audience, and the ticket-holders standing in the pit at the center of it all play the mob. Fergus Morgan talks to the stage managers about how they wrangle a new crowd for every performance.
The Proliferation Of Happiness: A Brief History Of Positive Psychology
Happiness studies and positive psychology, which started seriously taking off in the 1990s, are “scholarly fields that combine Eastern religions, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and behavioral economics – but above all represent a shift of focus among some psychologists from mental illness to mental health, from depression and anxiety to subjective well-being.”
Unhappiness Isn’t Just Inevitable, It’s Indispensable
“Because the brain grades on a curve, endlessly comparing the present with what came just before, the secret to happiness may be unhappiness. Not unmitigated unhappiness, of course, but the transient chill that lets us feel warmth, the sensation of hunger that makes satiety so welcome, the period of near-despair that catapults us into the astonishing experience of triumph.” Neurobiologist Indira M. Raman explains why the brain requires that contrast.
Robert Grossman, Illustrator With Sharp Eye And Pen For Political Satire, Dead At 78
“On magazine covers and in newspaper pages, Mr. Grossman chronicled and caricatured a half-century’s worth of politicians, pop-culture figures and social issues. He had a knack for causing a stir with his colorful images, whether they be one-shot covers for magazines like Rolling Stone and Time or serial comic strips for The New York Observer or New York magazine.” One of his most famous images was a National Lampoon cover showing Richard Nixon with a breathtakingly long Pinocchio nose; another was on the poster for the greatest film comedy of all time.
Spanish Booksellers Get Around Ban On Book About Drug Mafia – With Help From Cervantes
“Kicking against what they consider outdated censorship, a booksellers’ association has reacted to the seizure of the non-fiction book Fariña by launching a website [which] includes a digital tool that searches for and locates the 80,000 words that make up the forbidden manuscript from within the text of Don Quixote, extracting them one by one to recompose the banned book. On Friday after two days online, the website had racked up over 30,000 hits, according to the Booksellers Guild of Madrid.”