The NRA’s visual logic suggests a new twist in the culture wars. Cities, today, are thriving, and the old rhetoric of the city as a kind of cancer spreading into the heartland no longer works. So the NRA has adopted a new narrative: The city, no matter how successful, is a pernicious collective endeavor that will ultimately decay into violence and oppression. The video in which “Cloud Gate” appears is succinct in this prediction: From its opening images of public sculpture and architecture it moves directly into images of protest and violence and finally an urgent exhortation from the narrator
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LA Times Architecture Critic Quits Paper To Work At City Hall. Here’s Why
“Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has asked me to fill a new post called chief design officer for the city. In that role, beginning next month, I’ll be working in the mayor’s office to raise the quality of public architecture and urban design across the city — and the level of civic conversation about those subjects.”
Museum Gift Shops Evolve As “Experiences”
No longer “just” for buying souvenirs, the modern museum gift shop seeks to extend the experience of the museum. Games out of art, art as products of any sort. Visitor engagement begins when you open your wallet.
European Museums Bet On Virtual Reality
They’re styling it as audience engagement, but if you’re actually in the museum space itself, does a virtual experience really deliver more than the real experience around you?
The Sistine Chapel As A Multimedia Extravaganza In The Heart Of Rome
Balich also has to convince Italy’s traditionally skeptical art conservators that he’s not out to circumvent visits to the real chapel with a glitzy concoction that includes theater, ballet and many, many bells and whistles. “Italy has all these very conservative art critics, and they are against the idea of ‘spettacolarizzazione,’” he said, using an Italian expression for putting on a big show.
Italy’s Largest Opera House (By Far) Defines Itself As Opera Of The People
The Teatro Massimo is not nearly as well-known internationally as those other theaters, but it is an opera house with a back story that few artistic venues can match. That in turn has contributed to bold experimentation in bringing high culture to a troubled community.
Are We Missing Important Lessons About A Sold Out Concert At The Kennedy Center Last July?
“The Celebrate Freedom Rally completely sold out the Kennedy Center with thousands in attendance, and a television audience of millions who watched live on July 1 via Daystar — an evangelical Christian, broadcast television network. The entire event was then re-broadcast four times on July 4 via Daystar. Several weeks later, Dr. Jeffress’ Pathway to Victory website began mailing DVD copies of the Celebrate Freedom Rally to any who requested it via an online registration form. The Celebrate Freedom Rally and Concert taking place inside the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts represents a coup d’état of the cultural and artistic life of the United States.”
How Blockchain Might Radically Change The Art Market
A lot of what makes physical art valuable is its scarcity — there are only so many paintings by Mark Rothko, after all. But digital art has always been different because it can be perfectly copied, ad infinitum. Crypto technology and the blockchain may be able to change all that.
Le Figaro Music Critic: How Music Criticism Is Changing
Christian Merlin: “What to make of the Internet? We tried to determine criteria, but it was difficult because, broadly speaking, none of the approaches worked. A press card? Even I’ve never had one. Remuneration? Most of the music criticism websites don’t pay their authors, so one might say that this isn’t a professional activity. The problem is that today, there are some really competent people writing on those sites. Some things have come out in the wash and the most serious and solid sites have come out in front, even if others are only moderately professional.”
The Andrew Lloyd Webber Effect: Has He Saved The Musical Or Killed It?
Though his music may often sound as if it were written by a man locked in the basement of the Paris opera—hearing late-nineteenth-century music, muffled, from a couple of floors down—he turns out to be very much a boy of the Monty Python generation, his ears full of rock and British comedy.