Author: Matthew Westphal

Louvre And Musée D’Orsay Begin Emergency Measures As Seine River Floods Paris

With France living through the rainiest January in years, the Seine’s water level is currently 17 feet, twice the normal level, and is expected to crest at around 20 feet by Friday. The Louvre has closed its Islamic art gallery and begun moving parts of its collection to higher floors, and the Musée d’Orsay and Orangerie have joined the Louvre in reducing some visiting hours.

Riots Greet Opening Of Bollywood Epic In India

“Violent mobs have rampaged through several Indian cities this week in a last-ditch effort to stop the film [Padmaavat], based on a five-century old poem about a Hindu queen, Padmini, who immolates herself rather than be captured by a conquering ruler. … The film crew has been attacked, sets have been vandalised, hardliners have threatened to mutilate the lead actor and Indian states have pleaded with the supreme court and prime minister to ban the film.”

Comedy ‘The Death Of Stalin’ Banned In Russia

The country’s Culture Ministry has revoked the distribution license for this English-language satire conceived and directed by Armando Ianucci – two days before the film’s release date and two months after culture minister Vladimir Medinsky insisted that it would be shown in Russia. After a special screening Monday night, one culture official called the film “blasphemous”; another described it as “vile, repugnant and insulting.”

Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.24.18

Glowering at Lowry: MoMA Director’s Renegade Proposals for Collection Management
While supervising the Museum of Modern Art’s second major expansion during his 23-year tenure, director Glenn Lowry has been thinking about how his soon-to-be reconfigured institution should change with the times. If … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2018-01-24

Remembering Ursula K. Le Guin
There may be no contemporary writer who’s shaped me, and many of the authors of my generation, more than Ursula Le Guin, who died Monday. Even though she was nearing 90, Le Guin is the kind of person who seemed like she would live forever: … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2018-01-24

 

 

‘Sudden Savant Syndrome’ – Why Some People Develop Extraordinary Abilities After Brain Damage

There’s Eadweard Muybridge, who was a bookseller until a traumatic brain injury in a stagecoach accident led him to become the pathbreaking photographer he was. There’s the orthopedic surgeon who suddenly became a talented pianist after being struck by lightning, and the slacking college dropout who became a math and geometry genius after a bar fight. How could this happen? Neurologists have two ideas.

‘Roseanne’, A Sitcom Like No Other, Even After 30 Years

“Roseanne Barr is now a Ghost of Television Past, so strange and contradictory it’s hard to believe she was once one of America’s biggest TV stars. From her prime-time pedestal, she brought all kinds of progressive notions about gender and class to the homes of a nation convulsed by a culture war. She found a way to turn the insult of being poor and a woman inside out: Although Roseanne Conner sometimes pretends to be lazy and a lousy mom, she is neither.”

Absence In Montecito: T. Coraghessan Boyle On The Aftermath Of The California Wildfires And Mudslides

“The eerie thing about these nights in Montecito has to do with absence. The absence, first of all, of my neighbors, almost all of whom are under a mandatory evacuation order. They are gone, their houses dark, their cars rolling down other streets altogether – or, in the worst cases, crushed as if for repurposing in the scrap yard.”