The New England Journal of Medicine is publishing a scientist’s observation that Rembrandt might have suffered from a vision disorder known as “lazy eye.” “Consequently, Rembrandt probably had little depth perception, which might have actually been an asset, since artists have to depict a three-dimensional world on a flat canvas.”
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Shakespeare Portrait On View
To celebrate its 150th birthday, London’s National Portrait Gallery is planning to display a controversial portrait said to be of William Shakespeare. “The so-called Chandos portrait, which has been the subject of fierce debate over whether it really does feature Shakespeare, is set to be joined by other controversial portraits of the writer whose life is little documented.”
20,000 American Indians To March For Museum
Some 20,000 American Indians are expected to march in Washington DC next week to celebrate the openin of the National Museum of the American Indian. The museum is “the first national museum in the United States to be dedicated exclusively to Native Americans and the first to present all exhibitions from a native viewpoint. The procession, which culminates in the opening ceremony, will begin with a tropical flourish, as Hawaiian conch-shell blowers signal the start from the balcony of the Smithsonian Castle.”
Taking The Artistic Temperature Of 9/11
More and more artists are making art about difficult events of the past few years. “In the week of the third anniversary of 9/11, it’s worth asking how they’re doing. For, ever so slowly, writers, film-makers and dramatists have begun to address the twin events that have dominated the start of the 21st century: the attacks on New York and Washington and the subsequent Iraq war.”
Wrong Way For The Abbey
Dublin’s Abbey Theatre has dug itself a deep hole. “The theatre, which produced playwrights from Sean O’Casey to Brian Friel, has seen the centenary of its foundation by WB Yeats marred by the disastrous box office of its anniversary programme, a deficit of almost €2.5m (£1.7m), a sudden plan to axe a third of its staff, and a decaying building that is a health hazard. A bitter email by its artistic director, Ben Barnes, has stoked tensions.”
Blame Game – Abbey Director Apologizes
Ben Barnes, artistic director of Dublin’s troubled Abbey Theatre, has found himself in yet another emergency meeting, this time over an e-mail he sent to international colleagues, distancing himself from his theater’s difficulties. But, having apologized for and retracted the criticisms he made of the theater’s board in the e-mail, he remains in his job.
The RSC’s Fine New Life
The turnaround of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the past year has been amazing. Artistic director Michael Boyd was visibly jubilant at the company’s most successful Stratford season in 10 years, the slashing of the crippling deficit he inherited – and above all confounding the advisers who warned him Middle England would stay away from his current season of 17th century Spanish plays: “I’m glad my optimism about human nature has been rewarded.”
New Ideas For UK Arts Funding?
Sir Christopher Frayling has some new ideas as he takes over as chairman of the British Arts Council. “Eighty per cent of the cash we give out goes to regularly funded organisations and a quarter of these take almost 90 per cent of the grants. Many of them have been on our books since 1947, and are receiving money in the same proportion. Too many people see the Arts Council as a cashpoint machine with a complicated pin number. We have got to be more than that. A lot of the most interesting developments in the arts are inter- disciplinary. So we could be looking at new categories for funding”.
Been There, Deja That
French for “already seen”, déjà vu is “the sort of fleeting, intimate experience that reveals itself more readily to novelists than to researchers. As recently as the 1990’s, social scientists doing population surveys asked about it in the same breath as they inquired about poltergeists and contact with the dead. But new research on memory has opened a promising window on the phenomenon, providing both possible explanations for the sensation and novel ways to create and measure it.”
The Vanishing Intellectual
“We inherit the idea of the intellectual from the 18th-century Enlightenment, which valued truth, universality and objectivity – all highly suspect notions in a postmodern age. As Furedi points out, these ideas used to be savaged by the political right, as they undercut appeals to prejudice, hierarchy and custom. Nowadays, in a choice historical irony, they are under assault from the cultural left.”