“Manhattanites may only need to hail a cab this month to see a few famous works of modern art. The work of portrait artists Chuck Close and Kehinde Wiley will travel atop 500 taxicabs starting Monday, thanks to a second installment of an exhibition that strives to bring art to the streets of New York.”
Tag: 01.10.11
The Young Vic’s Boot Camp for Directors
“This is very much the point: to remove young directors from a life of pure theatre (where the only thing that matters is finding plays and putting them on), and expose them instead to the nuts-and-bolts of how buildings run. It’s intended to be mutually beneficial: the trainee gets mentored, while hard-pressed regional artistic directors get another pair of hands.”
The Problems With ‘There’s a Brain Area for That?!’ News Stories
“[The public] allure of many neuroscience studies is that they can be made to offer ‘deceptively simple messages’ about human behavior. … [That] spiritual feelings can be localized to specific parts of the brain is important to neuroscientists. But how important is it to you? Put another way, is it really surprising that religious and spiritual feelings occur in the brain?”
Soothing Ballet Dancers’ Agony of the Feet
“Margot Fonteyn once said that, if people knew the physical agony ballet caused its dancers, only those who enjoyed bullfights could bear to watch it.” In England, efforts to ameliorate the suffering are starting to bear some (small) fruit.
Debbie Friedman, ‘The Jewish Joan Baez,’ Dead at 59
“[Her] modern melodies updated the music in synagogue services worldwide … She took the sound of 1960s and 1970s American folk and pop, and made a connection with Jewish tradition that broke down the distance between the cantor and the people in the pews.”
Can Volunteers Really Take Over Britain’s Libraries?
“The threat to hundreds of libraries is being recast as an opportunity to bring in volunteers, and finally provide concrete examples of how the “big society” may work in practice – and, though any library is better than none at all, you have to wonder about what will transpire. How volunteers will convincingly step into the space left by trained librarians, or maintain six-day-a-week opening, remains unclear.”
US Supreme Court To Hear Price-Fixing Case Against Recording Labels
“The US supreme court has allowed a landmark lawsuit against the four major record labels to proceed. According to the plaintiffs, Sony, Vivendi-Universal, Warner Music and EMI colluded in the early 2000s to keep download prices high, while preventing consumers from burning purchased songs to CD.”
Study Ranks Most Literate Cities In America
“The most literate city in America is Washington, according to a survey released Monday by Central Connecticut State University, followed by Seattle and Minneapolis.”
The Rise Of Artist-Endowed Foundations
“Artist-endowed foundations are a sleeping giant of philanthropy. They are rapidly expanding in number–close to 300 have been identified in the US at the last count–and financial strength, commanding approximately $2.7bn in combined assets.”
Koons Threatens SF Gallery For Selling Balloon Dog Bookends
“What is perhaps most irksome about Koons’ claims on the Balloon Dog idea are deeper questions that reach beyond the law: How can an artist who became rich and famous by appropriating objects whose very everydayness is their calling card justify claiming rights in the forms of the objects he appropriates.”