“So much of our understanding of the arts in this country is bound up with the individual tastes of the listener or consumer. The primacy of classical music as an artful or superior genre has gradually diminished. Increasingly, classical musicians are not so much advocates for their art as apologists. This is not a trend I observe, however, in great art museums.”
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Economists Predicted Progress Would Lead To Lives Of Leisure. But Indigenous Tribes Had Figured That Out Long Ago
“Convinced that mankind had been on a journey of unrelenting progress since we emerged from the swamp, he believed the 15-hour week to be the culmination of hundreds of generations’ collective ingenuity and effort. Perhaps Keynes would have had a different view had he known that the 15-hour week was a reality for some of the handful of remaining tribes of autonomous hunter-gatherers, and that, in all probability, it was the norm for much of the history of modern Homo sapiens.”
He Launched The Careers Of David Lynch, The Coen Brothers, And John Sayles – And Now (At Last) He’s Directed A Movie Himself
“He was sometimes a producer, more often a distributor and exhibitor. He decided to buy Mr. Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) after seeing only half of it and made it a cult hit. Before that, he invented the phenomenon of the midnight movie, with El Topo (1970), selling out the Elgin for six months, followed by Pink Flamingos … Now, at 82, [Ben] Barenholtz has directed his first dramatic film. ‘I’ll never be Kubrick,’ he said, smiling. ‘But I wasn’t afraid either.'”
Should Serious Dancers Really Go To College?
Although schools like Juilliard and Bennington College have made degrees acceptable for modern dancers for decades, the competitive ballet world (which often follows a philosophy of “the younger the better”) tends to discourage higher education.
Not With A Pop, But With A Hiss, The Higher-Education Price Bubble Is Deflating
Derek Thompson: “Altogether, the numbers paint a clear picture: The higher-education market is not bursting, like a popped soap bubble; but it is leaking, like a pierced balloon. What’s going on? The explanation is a little bit of weak demand, a little bit of over-supply, a big crackdown on for-profit colleges, and, perhaps, a subtle shift in culture.”
Arundhati Roy Leads This Year’s Booker Man Longlist
On a longlist thronged with literary titans, whose combined trophy cabinet would include the Pulitzer, the Costa, the Baileys, the Folio, the Impac and the Goldsmiths prizes, Roy – the only author to have won the Booker before – is listed for her novel about an Indian transgender woman, which judges called a “rich and vital book”.
Menil Collection’s New Drawing Institute Will Not Be Opening This Fall
“The public opening of the MDI, originally scheduled for Oct. 7, has been postponed until sometime next year. Three planned exhibitions for the space are also being shuffled. Menil Collection director Rebecca Rabinow said the organization’s earlier move-in plan was ‘probably a little too aggressive.'”
We’re Approaching A Major Turning Point In Trump-Era Pop Culture
Mark Harris writes about how audiences are finding current-day resonance in properties like The Handmaid’s Tale, The Americans, The Big Sick, and Dunkirk that were planned and written well before the 2016 election. However, “this moment is coming into focus just as it’s about to end. … With the advent of autumn we’ll move into a period in which most of the resonance will be planned. … My guess – speaking of questionable forecasting – is that our relationship to Trumpian pop-culture material will start to change in the next few months. Critics and audiences alike can be suspicious of art that looks like it wants to have an effect.”
What The Hell Does Michael Moore Want Now? To Go On Broadway And Change People’s Minds
“Now Mr. Moore, this willfully disheveled, 63-year-old hybrid of Noam Chomsky and P. T. Barnum, expects theatergoers to pay Broadway ticket prices to watch him in a one-man show, The Terms of My Surrender. After his previous documentaries, books and television shows, does he have anything left to say, and does he really believe it will make a difference?” Dave Itzkoff goes to a rehearsal to find out.
Auschwitz Artifacts To Go On Tour, Very Carefully
“More than 72 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the first traveling exhibition about the Nazi death camp will begin a journey later this year to 14 cities across Europe and North America, taking heartbreaking artifacts to multitudes who have never seen such horror up close.”