“I expect art to be troubling because I expect people to be troubling. I am prepared to like and dislike something in every work. I can also appreciate the aesthetic genius of a moral monster without feeling that I am becoming inured to monstrosity. Just as I can read Heidegger without becoming a Nazi, I can look at one of Adolf Hitler’s juvenile watercolour paintings and appreciate a bit of pink in the sky there, and understand it as a painting of its era and one by a tyrant at the same time. And if I do this and am judged immoral for it, is it because it is bad for just me or bad for society at large?”
Blog
Stabilization? Met Museum Cuts Its Projected Deficit, Adds To Endowment
“Where a shortfall of $15 million had been projected for the fiscal year 2017, which ended in June, that figure was contained to $10.1 million, according to the report, and the Met said it is on track to eliminate its deficit by 2020. In addition, the museum’s endowments increased by almost $300 million, to a total of $2.9 billion; and the Met said it raised $232 million in philanthropic gifts, membership dues and government support.”
What Place Do Art Fairs Have In Art-Rich Berlin?
“Yet another fair feels like a car company offering another new model: there are already more than enough different cars, besides other options like bicycles, trains and planes. But, like the possibility of a new and really interesting car model entering the stage—an electric one, for instance—there’s always a chance of a new and really interesting art fair showing up. Anything truly innovative could of course change my calendar.”
Memphis College Of Art Says It Will Close
The final decision had been made two weeks earlier, spurred by a combination of declining admissions — down by 35% just this year, according to High Ground Memphis — increasing real estate debt, and the school’s small endowment fund. Tuition at the school is $35,000 per year. While many remain optimistic that the school could remain open, it would take a miraculous $30 million endowment donation to make this possible.
How France Is Branding Its Culture Across The Globe
“The opening of the Louvre Abu Dhabi over the weekend is the latest example of how traditional French cultural diplomacy is being supplanted by brand politics: Abu Dhabi bought the rights to use the Paris museum’s famous name at a price tag of over $500 million over three decades. This example of “soft power” goes beyond museum names such as the future Shanghai Pompidou Center — and can be seen in the exporting of Sorbonne’s academic reputation, the proliferation of Christian Dior boutiques in Asia, the increasingly popular fizz of Moet & Chandon champagne, the cuisine of master chef Alain Ducasse and Louis Vuitton’s status handbags.”
New Plays At The Center Of A Touring Scheme
The organization acts as a producer and manager all in one, from mapping out a show’s tour route to managing it on the road. “We view ourselves as being in service to the artists and the work, and we also view ourselves as being in service to our colleagues who will be our client.”
French Teachers Suggest Practical Alternative For The ‘Masculine Prevails’ Grammar Rule
“The teachers’ objection was not just philosophical; it was philological. The rule, they said in the French version of Slate, was a parvenu (it was enunciated in the 17th century and became widely taught only in the 19th century) and politically motivated (it buttressed French laws that denied women equal rights). … In its place, the teachers suggested using ‘the rule of proximity,’ in which the adjective matches the gender of the noun closest to it, which was common practice for centuries.”
Our Struggle With The Idea Of Scientific “Progress”
“Accelerating scientific invention does not make human beings any more good-natured or reasonable but simply increases their capacity to achieve their goals. In practice, this means the groups that are most powerful will increase their hold over the rest. Schemes for improving the human animal by technological means will not alter these facts. What counts as improvement will be decided by existing human beings, with the most powerful among them having the biggest say. The result is more likely to be enlarged versions of human vanity and cruelty than a higher version of the species.”
Now ‘Downton Abbey’ Has Its Own Traveling Museum
“All the old habitats, including Mr. Carson’s pantry, the servants’ dining room and Lady Mary’s bedroom (faintly scandalous with its memory of Kemal Pamuk’s coital demise) are painstakingly recreated, right down to the forks and spoons arranged just so on the Crawley dinner table. Behind the green baize door lies the servants’ quarters just as you left them, along with Mr. Carson’s old desk, complete with period-era bills and correspondence.”
Oliver Sacks’ Essential Qualities Of Creativity
“All of us, to some extent, borrow from others, from the culture around us. Ideas are in the air, and we may appropriate, often without realizing, the phrases and language of the times. We borrow language itself; we did not invent it. We found it, we grew up into it, though we may use it, interpret it, in very individual ways. What is at issue is not the fact of “borrowing” or “imitating,” of being “derivative,” being “influenced,” but what one does with what is borrowed or imitated or derived; how deeply one assimilates it, takes it into oneself, compounds it with one’s own experiences and thoughts and feelings, places it in relation to oneself, and expresses it in a new way, one’s own.”
