The Scottish government is studying an idea of transforming an old building into A Scottish version of Tate Modern or the Guggenheim. “Arts insiders say the 15,000sqm building could become a Scottish version of the Tate Modern or the Guggenheim.” But Sir Timothy Clifford, the flamboyant director general of the National Gallery of Scotland, has told culture minister Patricia Ferguson that the project smacked of “regional towns in England.”
Blog
Why Publishers’ Obsession With Short Attention Spans?
There’s research to say that’s what people are afflicted with. But “the data that exist come from people with short attention spans, the kind who participate in focus groups and telephone surveys relied on by corporate research. Guess what? SAS in, SAS out. Well-educated, successful people with good incomes and long attention spans don’t waste time on focus groups or telephone marketing surveys. They’re too busy reading books, serious magazines, and long-form journalism.”
Are Lit Teaching Standards Failing Students?
Nine years ago Britain institutes a national literacy framework for teaching English. “But the framework has now become a double-edged sword – it provides schools with a common programme to ensure that children have a broad diet of fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry. It has helped us think about the way in which words, sentences and texts weave together. However, for many teachers the framework has become a strait-jacket that limits children’s progress. It has trapped us into ‘delivery’ mode with teachers trotting through objectives without thinking about whether these are relevant to children’s needs.”
Harper’s Without Lapham
“These days, a decade is a long time to be editor of one magazine, and Lewis Lapham has been editor-in-chief at Harper’s for 28 of the last 30 years. But now he is handing the job to his deputy, a man whose byline—Roger Hodge—I once assumed to be a twee Canterbury Tales pseudonym. It turns out Hodge is not only real but intelligent and thoughtful. He grew up on his family’s ranch in Texas and started at Harper’s as an intern at 29, in 1996.”
“Purple” Overamplified, Overheated, And Overhyped
John Lahr writes that “The Color Purple” fails on a number of levels. “Marsha Norman’s libretto is a kind of color-me-purple comic-book outline: it gives us the externals of the plot but not, in any meaningful sense, the internal life of the characters, who function more as anecdotes than as dramatic influences on Celie. As a result, what is earned sentiment in the novel becomes mere sentimentality in the musical. Everything is as literal as a street sign, and sometimes not as interesting.”
Kennedy Center Honors
Actor Robert Redford, singers Tony Bennett and Tina Turner, the actress Julie Harris and the ballerina Suzanne Farrell were feted for this year’s Kennedy Center Honors Sunday night.
Actress Drought For Oscar
It’s been such a bad year for actresses in Hollywood, that it’s difficult to find worthy nominees for Oscar. “There are names being bandied about, but they’re the product of desperation rather than honest cultural buzz, and they go to the heart of what’s wrong with Hollywood at the moment. More than ever, male movie stars sell movies. Consequently, more than ever movies are built around male roles. Increasingly, the pickings for women aren’t just slim but nonexistent.”
Milwaukee Has A Public Art Problem
“How is it possible a city now defined around the world by its art museum could suffer such a drought when it comes to public art? This is a question that is raised perennially, with lots of strong opinions voiced and little change resulting.”
Second Thoughts About Denver’s New Opera House
Denver’s Ellie Caulkins Opera House opened to lots of praise this fall. “But it didn’t take long for the positive to turn negative. Suddenly, according to certain music critics and members of the public, this, that or something else is wrong with the same building that was so effusively extolled just weeks earlier. Everything from the angle of the seats to the shortage of drinking fountains to even the positioning of the Dale Chihuly chandelier came under attack.”
Bernheimer: A Tragedy That Wants (Cautiously) To Be A Masterpiece
Martin Bernheimer writes that Tobias Picker’s “American Tragedy” gets a good production at the Met. But “Picker’s score is undeniably crafty, also cautious and well-mannered to a fault. It deals knowingly in second-hand operatic devices, cranking out good mood music and gutsy cliches at every turn. There are no surprises here, no shocks, and very few dissonances. The first-nighters seemed grateful. An American Tragedy may be the perfect modern opera for people who hate modern opera.”