For the first time in decades, art museums are making a concerted effort to cater to the needs of children, and the museum field trip may never be the same. “The once-a-year docent-led sprint through the galleries is being replaced by more sophisticated strategies. Children are being invited to write labels, dress up in the period costume of a particular painting, and act as docents themselves.” One Boston museum is even embarking on a year-long study to discover just what children get out of the museum experience, and what information they retain.
Tag: 04.14.04
Miss Manners Vs. The Conductor’s Temper
In the last year alone, a conductor in Rio de Janeiro has mooned an audience which was booing the opera he was conducting, and another baton-twirler went on a 10-minute tirade against an audience in Florida for some perceived slight or other. The problem of audience behavior and musician backlash is nothing new in the music world, of course, but when conductors begin displaying their posteriors in public, someone needs to step in, and Judith Martin, better known as Miss Manners, figures it might as well be her. In fact, she’s proposing a career exchange with the marauding maestros. “It is true that Miss Manners can’t count terribly well, but she looks fetching in evening clothes and has some experience at terrorizing people into silence with a mere glance. How difficult can the rest of it be?”
Perhaps A Satire Warning Label Would Help
In an age when a fake news show (Comedy Central’s The Daily Show) serves as a more reliable news delivery vehicle than some real news networks, and when it is increasingly difficult to distinguish opinioniated hype from objective fact in the national media, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the satirical newspaper The Onion has a bit of an ongoing problem with people who take their stories seriously. The paper’s deadpan style may have something to do with it, but another factor is emerging as well: in a society so politically and culturally divided as the US seems to be at the moment, people are ready to believe anything that validates their personal point of view, no matter how absurd it may seem.
Virtually Yours – Off-B’Way Stage Can Use Virtual Orchestra
The New York musicians union has made an agreement with an Off-Broadway theatre to allow use of a virtual orchestra. “The deal will allow shows at the theater to use the machine, which can closely replicate the sound of musicians, but only with union consent. No other Off Broadway theater currently has such an agreement with the union; Broadway producers are banned from using the machine.”
The Humiliations Of Being A Writer
Writers are constantly being humiliated. Is it their nature? Take the book tour stop: “Most frequently, though, no one shows up. Carl Hiaasen arrived for a reading in Arkansas and found a chili-cooking class and a University of Arkansas Razorbacks game scheduled in town at the same time. He ended up autographing books for the salesmen. William Trevor drove for hours to a reading and found the place empty. So he read to the cabdriver and two people who wandered in.”
Some Lessons On Memorials From Berlin
Are there lessons to be learned about the WTC Ground Zero project from Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin? Michael Kimmelman observes that: “in Berlin, as at ground zero, the architecture was chosen before a decision was made about how to fill the building. The balance between form and content has been a vexing issue. Neither the Jewish Museum nor ground zero is immune to box office pressure. Both dubiously equate populism with civic duty.”