Jumbling Up Culture (Whatever You Want To Call It)

How is it that “high” culture and pop culture separated so thoroughly? “I’m not quite sure how it got to be this way — writers of heavy books on one side, mass media on the other — because it wasn’t always so. The great American cultural blender once produced whole art forms, such as Broadway musicals and jazz, that might well be described as a blend of the two. But nowadays, that gap is so wide that I’m not even sure the old descriptions of the various forms of “culture” — highbrow, middlebrow, popular — even make sense any more.”

Diversify This!

Cultural diversity in the UK is mainstream policy for arts organizations. “The pursuit of aesthetic or historical understanding, of attempting to distinguish good paintings from bad or correct interpretations from false ones, is deemed impossible. Instead, all cultural institutions can do is to revel in ‘diversity’, by promoting different kinds of art and competing judgements. Today’s cultural policy rejects the ways of the traditional cultural elite, and presents itself as far more enlightened. However, if we examine the legacy that cultural diversity policy has rejected, we find that some valuable principles have been lost by the wayside.”

London’s Two New Theatres

London is getting two new theatres (in one). “The old Whitehall Theatre near Trafalgar Square will house a 100-seat and a 400-seat space to create the Trafalgar Studios. The theatre first opened in 1930 and is owned by the Ambassador Theatre Group.” The smaller spaces are intended to attract younger audiences, and the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Young Vic have signed up to produce there.

How Do You Judge A Christo?

How do you judge Christo and Jean-Claude’s project to build gates in Central Park? Is it “possible for the project, once completed, to fail aesthetically. Is there a wrong way to arrange 7,500 gates in Central Park? If not, then in what sense is its realization an artistic success? Proposition: If difference in a work of art does not affect its value as art, then maybe it isn’t art to begin with. If Beethoven had written di-di-di-deem rather than di-di-di-dum, the result would have been not merely different but discernibly worse. If Shakespeare had written “Should I or shouldn’t I” rather than “To be or not to be,” the result would have been not merely different but worse. And if Raphael had painted Plato and Aristotle out of proportion with the rest of the figures in The School of Athens, or if he’d painted Aristotle gesturing up and Plato gesturing down, rather than vice-versa, the result would have been not merely different but worse.”

Natural History Staff Charges “Culture Of Fear” At Museum

Staff at London’s Natural History Museum are charging that a “culture of fear” has taken over the museum. “Twenty-five keepers, professors and managers have written to museum trustees reporting a ‘breakdown of trust at all levels’ caused by the suspension and reinstatement of three maintenance staff. They were suspended in December, six months after an internal audit was unable to account for £1.8 million alleged to have disappeared from the museum’s budget.”

Movies – Now The Real Digital Revolution Takes Hold

As this year’s Sundance Festival showed, digital technology is finally taking over the movies. “Recent breakthroughs have already demonstrated the ability to make movies with the same clarity as 35-millimetre film using high-definition video cameras, and then project them digitally in theatres with no loss in image quality. In 1998, the number of digital video films presented at the film festival could have been counted on one hand. This year, more than 40 per cent of the festival’s 200-plus films were either shot on digital video or projected digitally. The audience has barely noticed the difference.”

A High-Tech Solution To Plagiarism

“For years, educators at colleges and universities have marshaled software tools to ensure that their students’ work is original. Now, tainted by scandals or leery of the Internet’s copy-enabling power, a growing number of newspapers, law firms and other businesses are using data-sifting tools that can cross-check billions of digital documents and swiftly recognize patterns in just seconds.”