Category: issues

“It has been described as both ‘creepy’ and ‘cool’. But amid the publicity surrounding a provocative art project that creates ‘facial reconstruction’ sculptures based on the analysis of DNA on cigarette butts, chewing gum, and other detritus collected from the streets of New York City, one question has remained unasked: is it legal?”

“About 75 miles southwest of Shanghai is a beautifully restored, 1300-year-old ‘water-town’ called Wuzhen where Chinese tourists flock each year.” Yet with a landmark new performing arts center and an equally new international theater festival that’s both artistically challenging and a big box-office success, Wuzhen is making a bid to become a cultural destination along the lines of Avignon, Aix, and Edinburgh.

“With a wide-ranging programme that included the BBC Proms, Cirque du Soleil, concerts by Gary Barlow and Emeli Sande, boxing and tennis tournaments and the world premieres of Skyfall and Titanic in 3D, … [the London venue] reported a record year for business in 2012 with operating income growing 4.3% to £16.8 million to produce an operating surplus of £4.5 million.”

“Few products are so underpriced that an entire subsidiary industry exists to take advantage of the discrepancy. Yet concerts and sporting events consistently price their tickets low enough that street scalpers risk jail time to hawk marked-up tickets, and StubHub makes hundreds of millions a year in revenue.”

“That’s what most people believe about their email, for instance — sure, the email provider could read it, but probably nobody is going to bother. We assume that we will hide in the crowd, protected by its very size.”

“What I heard fell into two distinct categories. First, there’s not much to do, and the little there is to do is of low quality and/or unsafe. The second category of complaint boiled down to: Entertainment in my neighborhood is geared toward white people, and I feel out of place.”

“Compared to the massive changes in the American university since the Second World War, it’s the resilience of the humanities that should be surprising.”

“The reality is that it’s kind of a tougher economic time, and we do have to worry about living after graduation. I don’t want to be doing what I love and be homeless.”

“Janet Archer, who is currently director of dance at Arts Council England, will take up her post in July. Creative Scotland has been without a leader since Andrew Dixon resigned in December last year.”

“They see something defined as “art”; they don’t have a rewarding or relevant personal experience (or at least not an experience that fits with a high ticket price); so they decide the arts are not for them. Meanwhile they are having arts experiences in bits and pieces throughout their lives, but don’t connect them with the arts at all.”