Cities suddenly realized they need artists and arts groups. Is this a good thing? Maybe. “The city commissioners didn’t understand the arts that well, but they understood the results. It’s a cash cow.”
Tag: 03.01.12
Being Alive Means Being In Pain (Look! A Puppy!)
Humans deal with a lot of different kinds of pain, and our brains can learn to distract us from it, through stress – or something a little more pleasant.
Seriously: Trust Your Feelings (They’re Smarter Than Your Reason)
“Every feeling is like a summary of data, a quick encapsulation of all the information processing that we don’t have access to. (As Pham puts it, emotions are like a ‘privileged window’ into the subterranean mind.) When it comes to making predictions about complex events, this extra information is often essential. It represents the difference between an informed guess and random chance.”
How Does Fran Leibovitz Feel About Polar Fleece? (Just About How You’d Expect)
Leibovitz: “I actually hiked once, and it’s possible that it was the worst experience I ever had outdoors. And I was in Alaska–a very beautiful place. To me, it’s meaningless. I don’t see the point of it. It’s a hard–physically–thing. I found it hard. And when you get there, there’s nothing there, just more of what you passed.”
Artists Fan The Flames Of The Occupy Movement
“If Occupy feels so 2011, guess again: Creative types are among those keeping the spirit of the protest alive – including calls to action.”
Study Suggests Theatre Can Influence Opinions On Issues
“The researchers found a correlation between this change in attitude and an audience member’s “strength of emotional response to the production.” While careful not to claim cause and effect, they found a link between experiencing an intense gut-level response to the material and shifting one’s position on the issues it brought up.”
Giant Rock Bears Down On LA County Museum (And It’s A Hit With The Crowds!)
“The 340-ton boulder traveling from Riverside to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art continued to be a big crowd pleaser Thursday on the second pit spot of its 105-mile journey, this time in Ontario.”
LA’s Museum Of Contemporary Art Loses Its Financial Leadership (And That Raises Questions)
“Three Museum of Contemporary Art officials with key financial roles — the chief operating officer, fundraising director and a trustee who chaired the board’s finance committee — have left MOCA in the last three months. They had been at their posts less than a year.”
Making A Game Out Of Learning Shakespeare (So What’s Wrong With That?)
A new app for learning Shakespeare makes it fun. But “I fear that sometimes the design of apps, even if they’re intended for education, is trying to cater to an entertainment bent.”
How Merce Cunningham Will Live On
“There are about fifty dances that have a good chance of being licensed by other companies…. I’m trying to figure out how to encourage American companies to do their first dance and, more importantly, to get them to bring in their second dance…. “