Docents as Engagers
Some time ago in a forum discussing community engagement, someone asked me what the role of docents should be in engagement work. It was a light bulb question for me. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2018-01-02
Author: Matthew Westphal
How Futurists In 1968 Envisioned 2018
“Much of [the book] Toward the Year 2018 might as well be science fiction today. With fourteen contributors, ranging from the weapons theorist Herman Kahn to the I.B.M. automation director Charles DeCarlo, penning essays on everything from ‘Space’ to ‘Behavioral Technologies,’ it’s not hard to find wild misses. … But for every amusingly wrong prediction, there’s one unnervingly close to the mark.”
‘My Ideal Theatre’: Playwright David Hare Dares To Dream
For a start, “the ideal theatre – let’s call it the Playhouse – will not be in the centre of London. It will be in a place where people actually live. That means either a regional city or a residential district in the capital.”
Some Of The Best Dancers In New York Work For The NBA
“Sure, New York City is home to lots of dance troupes, but if you’re a dance fan these two groups may not even be on your radar. Don’t be a snob. The Brooklynettes and the Knicks City Dancers perform intricate choreography during the breaks between quarters of pro-basketball games, in arenas with 360-degree views. And they are not messing around.”
When A Film Critic Watches A Movie About Events He Was There For
Kenneth Turan on watching The Post and All The President’s Men: “Experiencing that as an adult, and as a critic, has been more complex, even unnerving, and different every time. My range of reactions have also given me insights into what films do and how they do it that I may not have gotten absent that personal connection.”
The Performance Art Installation That Sums Up 2017, And Maybe The Human Condition
Wesley Morris writes about Yoann Bourgeois’s The Mechanics of History, which features men continually climbing a staircase, falling onto a trampoline, and bouncing back onto the stairs – all on a slowly rotating program. (Morris saw it at, of all places, Paris’s Panthéon.)
Four Refrains About Classical Music That I Do Not Want To Hear In 2018
Music advocate and Kennedy Center trombonist Doug Rosenthal: “You didn’t ask for it, but here are things I’d love to never hear this upcoming year. Admittedly, I write this post wearing my Grumpy Pants. But I’m also donning my Optimism Cardigan. So join me for another list. Because hey, anything to distract you from that champagne headache, am I right?”
‘Quite Simply The Greatest Theatrical Poem Ever Written’: Michael Billington On ‘Macbeth’
“If Macbeth continues to obsess us, it is because it seems both modern and timeless. We see all around us today the corrosive folly of overweening ambition and the insecurity that breeds tyranny. But Macbeth can never be reduced to a set of moralistic, crime-does-not-pay platitudes. It … has a language that eats into the soul.”
‘The Biggest Art Travesty Of 2017’: Indianapolis Museum Of Art Turning Itself Into ‘Newfields’
Following up on his contribution to CityLab‘s “Your Entire City Is an Instagram Playground Now” (last entry), Kriston Capps goes on a tweetstorm: “[In] the IMA’s rebrand as Newfields – an experience park – … the IMA’s board and director turned their backs on the museum, its curators, its collections, its accumulated knowledge, its history, and its legacy.”
The 100 Greatest Nonfiction Books In English (A Highly Arguable List From The Guardian)
Given in reverse chronological order, from Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction (2014) back to the King James Bible (1611), Robert McCrum’s choices include historical monuments (The Federalist Papers, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman); landmark reference works (Samuel Johnson’s and Noah Webster’s dictionaries, Roget’s first thesaurus); great memoirs (Ben Franklin, Frederick Douglass, Vera Brittain), scientific texts (A Brief History of Time, On the Origin of Species, reportage, polemics; provocative modern choices Barack Obama, Naomi Klein) – and a few WTF titles that’ll make you go, “Wait, that’s not nonfiction!“