Jerry Saltz on Being a Judge on Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist

“The art world has a love-hate relationship with visibility, entertainment, and anything populist. It claims to be open but relentlessly polices its borders for anything as alien as this show was bound to be. Yet Bravo had me at hello. The show appealed to my belief that art only got better once the boundaries between high and low culture were relaxed, most famously by Andy Warhol, then by countless others.”

Global University Education – Will Rest Of The World Out-Innovate US?

“We didn’t just copy European institutions when we adopted the model of the German research university in the 19th century. We improved on them, welding their focus on scholarship to our egalitarian spirit. We can expect that our 21st-century competitors will be similarly adaptable. They’ll take what’s worked for us and do better.”

Serge Diaghilev, the Ultimate Smooth Operator

“From their first performance to Diaghilev’s death, the Ballets Russes were in a state of acute financial crisis, and neither the company nor its director ever had a permanent home. The strategies with which Diaghilev addressed these obstacles are astonishingly modern in their scope. He was a master of spin with a sophisticated understanding of the nature of celebrity and power, a consummate networker, and he knew exactly how to manipulate the press.”

Riccardo Muti Contemplates Chicago

“I am not Toscanini, and I don’t know if I will become 80, but it’s very important that the people in Chicago, especially the musicians, who have invited me, know — I am coming not to make a career, first because what I’ve done, I’ve done. But to make good music, to improve myself. If you are stable, you are dead; there’s only two choices, higher or lower, but there must be movement.”