“The oldest intact European book – the St Cuthbert Gospel – is to remain in the UK after the British Library raised £9m to buy it. The acquisition of the 7th Century copy of the Gospel of St John follows the library’s largest fundraising campaign.”
Tag: 04.16.12
Report: What The Cleveland Museum Contributes To The Local Economy
“By spending $40 million a year on its operations, the museum triggers a total of $60 million in economic impact. The other $80 million in impact comes from spending by 109,000 visitors a year who come to the museum from outside Ohio, or roughly one-third of the audience.”
Michael Kaiser: Why Is “Engaging” In The Arts The New Fad?
“The sense of many is that things must change — our art must change, our approach to marketing must change and the nature of the audience experience must change. If we continue to operate in the same manner as we did in the twentieth century, the arts will die. A serious discussion of audience engagement, however, demands more than platitudes and generalizations.”
An Artistic Response: Destroy A Mexican Museum?
“Eduardo Abaroa imagines that the only response to the Mexican government’s failure to improve the lot of its indigenous peoples in the past half-century is to raze one of the regime’s most significant symbols, the Museo Nacional de AntropologÃa.”
Chinese Government Can Never Defeat The Internet, Declares Ai Weiwei
The artist/activist writes, “[In] the long run, [China’s] leaders must understand it’s not possible for them to control the Internet unless they shut it off – and they can’t live with the consequences of that. The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that.”
Can Non-Christians Fully Appreciate Bach’s St. Matthew Passion? (A Muslim Wonders)
Recently journalist and editor Sameer Rahim asked a priest acquaintance about Bach’s oratorio, and was told that “I should listen to it once a year on Good Friday as part of a church service. Any other time or setting would not be true to the composer’s Christian vision.” So he tried it that way …
Last Of The Borscht-Belt Tummlers, Lou Goldstein, Dead At 90
“Mr. Goldstein, a slender six-footer, performed his antics at Grossinger’s, perhaps the premier Catskills resort, from 1948 until the hotel closed in 1986. He’d hold absurd exercise classes. He’d have a circle of grown men don silly hats and maneuver them onto one another’s heads, with one hand and without letting the hats tumble to the ground.” He was also probably the world’s master practitioner of the game Simon Says.
#EconoHipsters (Hey, Who Showed These Geeks How To Use Twitter?)
Sample tweets: “I saw mortgage backed securities at a loft in Brooklyn in 2004. I thought they were overrated.” “#EconoHipsters seasonally adjusted for the winter quarter before it was cool.” “The economics & happiness literature used to be awesome, before Bhutan went corporate with it.”
Canada’s Venerable National Film Board Is Losing Its Funding (What, We Worry?)
“The cuts appear grave: Less assistance to filmmakers; three to four fewer major projects per year; 73 jobs eliminated. And the Cinérobothèque in Montreal and the Mediatheque in Toronto – popular storefront attractions that offer personal stations for watching 10,000 NFB titles and public screenings – will be closed by September. All this for an institution that last year alone garnered two Oscar nominations. Yet within the film board itself, there’s a sense of renewal.”
Italian Government To Sack National Contemporary Art Museum’s Board
“Less than two years after the opening of Maxxi, Italy’s national museum of contemporary art, the Italian Culture Ministry last Friday initiated procedures to replace the board of directors of the foundation that manages the museum with a government-appointed administrator.”