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Fifty Years After An Earthquake In Italy: A Radical Public Art Experiment

While such “Concrete Utopias” are now getting attention in museums, it was actually the concrete Utopian city of Gibellina Nuova that became an open-air laboratory for assessing the healing capabilities of public art. Today, 50 years since the earthquake struck, many look back on Carrao’s radical experiment in civic engagement, rehabilitation, and unification as a cautionary tale. But new efforts are now underway to realize a more pragmatic version of that utopian dream.

If There Can Be A Single Book That Defines Iran And Iranians, It’s This One

The 11th-century verse epic Shahnameh (Book of Kings), the longest poem ever written by a single author (Abolqasem Ferdowsi) is perhaps the single most important source of the history and lore of pre-Islamic Persian civilization. It’s also considered the founding work of the modern Persian language, and some give it credit for the language’s survival.

Banksy Protests A “Banksy” Show In Russia In Banksian Fashion

When Banksy’s correspondent implores the artist to put out a press release expressing his displeasure, he replies with appropriate irony: “Hmm—not sure I’m the best person to complain about people putting up pictures without getting permission.” Instead, it seems, he just chooses to post the text exchange as a dig at the Russian “Banksy” show.

New York Times And Guardian Theatre Critics Get Together And Compare Their Greatest-Play Lists

Earlier this summer, the Times critics got together and hashed out their choices for the 25 best plays of the last 25 years; a month later, Guardian senior critic Michael Billington assembled his own list of Britain’s best scripts from the last decade. And on “one very sticky afternoon last month,” Brantley invited Billington over to his (un-air-conditioned) temporary London flat for a chat.

USC’s New Kaufman School Aims To Be A Harvard Of Dance

“In 2015, [the University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance] opened its studios to its inaugural class, now poised to graduate. Their accomplishments are a testament to (and test of) Kaufman’s unique approach: Grads will have studied a vast array of styles, spearheaded interdisciplinary projects, and completed a rigorous liberal arts education.” And getting in isn’t much easier than it is at Harvard, either.

Empty The Museums – Most Of What’s There Belongs Elsewhere

Simon Jenkins argues for the return not just of artifacts looted from other countries, but pretty much any art not created for a museum or gallery: “I want to see the Parthenon marbles as Phidias intended, even if recarved by a computerised jig. … Sensible people would long ago have replicated them and sent the old ones back to Greece. … So many great works – not all of them – derive meaning from where they originated. Malraux was right: a museum is without walls, a place of the imagination.”