“When he got to Bilbao a month before [the Guggenheim Bilbao] opened, says Frank Gehry, ‘I went over the hill and saw it shining there. I thought: ‘What the f*** have I done to these people?” … The museum was opened 20 years ago this month, by the king and queen of Spain, since when it has become the most influential building of modern times. It has given its name to the ‘Bilbao effect’ – a phenomenon whereby cultural investment plus showy architecture is supposed to equal economic uplift for cities down on their luck.” Rowan Moore looks at Gehry’s icon and his thoughts about it (he hates the idea of a “Bilbao Effect”) and at why the phenomenon hasn’t worked so well in other cities that have tried it.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Hippie Lingo In The 21st Century – A Risible Relic? Not Entirely
Linguist Geoff Nunberg: “Fifty years after the Summer of Love, that’s been the fate of a lot of the language we associate with that era – faded psychedelia, sort of like acid rock and tie-dye, except that nobody ever tries to revive it. … But it’s striking how many words from the hippie era are still with us, from ‘uptight’ to ‘bummer’ to ‘freak show.’ As brief as the moment was, it changed the way we think and talk.” (includes audio)
Wayne McGregor Creates Choreography From His Own DNA Code
The “resident brainbox of British dance” tells David Jays about how he got a lab to sequence his entire genome (“three billion bits of information,” McGregor says excitedly, “60 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica”), created a series of “choreographic events,” and uses a software algorithm based on his DNA to sequence those “events” differently for every performance. (Yes, he knows that’s hard on his dancers.)
HBO Defends Its If-The-South-Won Series ‘Confederate’ But Acknowledges It ‘Screwed Up’ The Announcement
“The concept, especially the revelation that a modern form slavery will be depicted, spurred a furious backlash on social media and in essays from high-profile writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay,” and HBO’s CEO acknowledged that the idea deserved more explanation than a three-paragraph press release. (Oddly, no one seems to be pointing out HBO’s tactical error in initially spotlighting producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, who created Game of Thrones and are white, rather than executive producers and lead writers Malcolm Spellman and Nichelle Tramble Spellman, who are African-American.)
Kazuo Ishiguro Wins Nobel Prize For Literature
The Swedish Academy cited the 62-year-old British author of The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, and The Buried Giant for “novels of great emotional force [in which he has] uncovered the abyss beneath the illusory sense of connection with the world.”
Santa Found Dead? Tomb Of Real St. Nicholas May Have Been Discovered In Turkey
The body of Nicholas of Myra, the beloved fourth-century bishop whose figure morphed over the centuries into the jolly old Santa Claus seen everywhere each December, was long thought to have been disinterred in 1087 and taken to the Italian city of Bari, where his shrine was built and remains to this day. But it seems that the Crusader merchants who took the remains away 930 years ago got the wrong guy: a team of archaeologists says they believe they’ve found the tomb of the real St. Nicholas under his old church in Myra, now Demre on Turkey’s southern coast.
‘Charlie Hebdo’ Launches A U.S. Edition – And It’s Not At All What You Might Expect
The French original of the magazine is (in)famous for its ferocious, often blunt and sometimes offensive satirical cartoons. The American version – a limited-edition (four parts), online-only project – is graphic journalism: a Paris-based American reporter joined one of Charlie‘s cartoonists for a trip along the Northeast Corridor for a look at the American left.
Puerto Rico’s Museums Start To Reopen, And To Help With Relief, After Hurricanes Irma And Maria
The main museums in San Juan and Ponce report that they suffered minimal damage from the storms. While most but not all are open, their staffs are all back at work, helping with rescue and rebuilding efforts and offering free programming for their suffering communities.
‘Shameful’: David Geffen Calls Out Wealthy New Yorkers For Not Donating To Geffen Hall Renovation Plan
“That a city that has as many wealthy individuals who’ve made a fortune in New York – that they couldn’t show up and support the most important cultural institution in New York, I think is too bad and shameful. New York deserves to have the best concert hall for the Philharmonic. New York should have the best of everything.”
Arthur Janov, 93, Father Of Primal Scream Therapy
“Through his treatment of celebrities – among them entertainers John Lennon, Yoko Ono and James Earl Jones – Dr. Janov became a celebrity in his own right beginning in the 1970s. In a best-selling book, and in appearances on television programs such as The Dick Cavett Show, he converted curious onlookers to committed followers with an enticingly simple explanation of psychological ailments, and what he billed as a near surefire way of resolving them.”