Category: issues

Michael Kimmelman on the Cafesjian Center for the Arts in Yerevan: “Imagine an Art Deco version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon stretching nearly the height of the Empire State Building, its decorations coded with Armenian symbolism. Did I mention the artificial waterfalls?” What the Center will house, however, is a different question.

In this era of live blogging and TiVo time-shifting, “[p]eople are, if anything, more insistent on keeping their bubbles of cultural innocence intact. Heaven forbid they should learn that, in a romantic comedy that opened three weeks ago, the guy gets the girl in Act 3.”

What with the movie, the Mayan calendar, and the solar-galactic-alignment thing, one NASA astronomer has “been getting about 20 letters and e-mail messages a day from people … scared out of their wits,” seriously wondering if they should euthanize themselves and loved ones before the end of the world less than three years hence. So the agency “felt it was prudent to provide a resource.”

“A contact lens that harvests radio waves to power an LED is paving the way for a new kind of display” – graphics transmitted right onto the lens and into its wearer’s field of vision. Uses might “include subtitles when conversing with a foreign-language speaker, directions in unfamiliar territory and captioned photographs.”

“Thanks to what was billed as the largest individual philanthropic gift made to a cultural institution in the bay area, the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center will be renamed the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts.” The donation is thought to be upwards of $20 million.

“Modernity both exalts and threatens remote Aboriginal societies, yet there is no path of retreat back to some gilded pre-contact time. In fact, the academic penetration of the north is now at its height, our knowledge of the Yolngu, the clan groups round Oenpelli and the people of Groote Eylandt is incomparably greater.”

“At a time when record labels and, to a lesser extent, music publishers, find themselves in the midst of an unprecedented contraction, the last thing they need is to start losing valuable copyrights to ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s music, much of which still sells as well or better than more recently released fare. Nonetheless, the wheels are already in motion.”

“How many video game addicts also do drama? Probably very few. Away from central London, professional theatre and music struggle to compete with multi-channel television, video games, pubs, clubbing and IT networking, a situation exacerbated by 25 years during which arts and culture have been downgraded in the curriculum, and the chance of being enthused decreased by the daunting documentation and fear of litigation that deters schools from organising trips.”

“The cultural responses to totalitarianism and the censorship of the arts differed from country to country. But one common thread through the undergrounds of the Eastern Bloc was that artists wanted their ideas to spread and be considered by the general population. A freedom of speech, however constrained, was very much fueled through the arts.”

The Royal Opera House plans a full-fledged northern branch at Manchester’s Palace Theatre, which was owned by Live Nation; new owner Ambassador Theatre Group may or may not want to proceed with the deal. Says ATG’s CEO, “At a time when everybody is tightening their belts, we need to all be sure we can find the money to do it.”