“Today’s educational establishment is making actual illiteracy look good, like an act of humanity and rebellion. Writing, which ought to nurture and give shape to thought, is instead being used to pound it into a powder and then reconstitute it into gruel. The thoroughly modern grade-A public-school prose style is not creative or interesting enough even to be wrong. The people who create and enforce the templates are, not to put too fine a point on it, people without understanding or imagination, lobotomized weasels for whom any effort of thought exceeds their strength.”
Tag: 05.20.04
Art: A Great Place To Park Your Money (Conspicuously)
Everyone is talking about the hot art market that has seen record prices for contemporary art. “So what gives? The declining dollar and inflation fears certainly make art a decent, demand-driven place for the rich to park their money. In these faux gilded times, the wealthy use art as a Veblenite way to advertise their fortunes — witness gaudy spreads on the Dallas scene in the current Art + Auction and on Los Angeles collectors in the new Art Review and the New York Times. There’s nothing like showing off that boob job or eye tuck in front of a Frank Stella or Cindy Sherman.”
Milwaukee Symphony – Good And Bad News
The Milwaukee Symphony picks up an influential new chairman for its board. The orchestra has also extended music director Andreas Delfs’ contract by three years. “These positive developments come at a low point in the MSO’s fortunes. Attendance has fallen for several seasons, the value of the endowment has slipped to $28 million from a high of over $40 million in 2000, and contributed income has been soft since the economic downturn in 1999. As of March 31, the symphony’s debt stood at $7.1 million, with a credit ceiling of $9 million. That debt includes a projected $3 million shortfall for operations during the current season.”
Electronic Sheet Music
The MusicPad Pro Plus is a five-pound tablet computer that displays music scores. “The $1,200 device, with a 12-inch liquid-crystal-display touchscreen, is the first of a class of computers that enable musicians to store music and edit it onscreen. Soon it will also allow them to communicate with one another over wireless networks. In much the way that portable digital audio players have changed the way people consume tunes, tablets like the MusicPad are changing the way musicians use sheet music, which is so compact that it can be digitally stockpiled far more cost-effectively than MP3 audio files.”
Breaking Up One Of The World’s Great Museums
“Now almost forgotten, the Musée Napoléon briefly contained almost all the works of art then most praised and valued by European connoisseurs at the turn of the 19th Century. All this loot had been removed from its owners by right of conquest. ‘The fate of products of genius,’ as an official declaration on the subject put it, ‘is to belong to the people who shine successively on earth by arms and by wisdom, and to follow always the wagons of the victors.’ Furthermore, obviously, Paris — being the most advanced spot on the globe — was the natural home of the world’s finest works of art.” Then, in 1815, the Musée was broken up and its treasures dispersed…
Conan Doyle Papers Sold
“A trove of Arthur Conan Doyle’s letters, papers and manuscripts, which gathered dust for more than 25 years in a lawyer’s office while its future was debated, was sold on Wednesday for $1.7 million, according to Christie’s, which handled the sale. Numerous items were bought by Bernard Quaritch, a specialist bookseller in London who may have been acting on behalf of unidentified clients.”