How John Adams Became Irrelevant?

Adams still gets standing ovations, and “Harmonielehre” is a staple of the symphonic literature, but his relevancy has tapered off over the last 15 years. How did this happen? When did this happen? The answers could only be in Adams’ heart and mind, if he indeed can step back to see the current state of his art.

As Mainstream Museums Diversify What Happens To Culturally-Specific Institutions?

With mainstream institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum diversifying to engage wider and more representative publics, what becomes the role of so-called culturally specific institutions—like El Museo, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art—that were born out of efforts to compensate for such museums’ deficiencies?

How The LA Philharmonic Became A Player

How the LA Phil became the envy of classical music may be what everyone wants to know. It’s maybe even more useful, though, to ask why as well. The story of the LA Phil feat is ultimately about a reason for being. Every great orchestra has had its heydays when it has been uniquely true to its place and population and purpose and art and era.

Social Media New? Nope – We’ve Had A Sharing Culture Forever

Long before mobile phones or even photography, diaries were kept as a way to understand oneself and the world one inhabits. In the 18th and 19th centuries, as secular diaries became more popular, middle-class New Englanders, particularly white women, wrote about their everyday lives and the world around them. These diaries were not a place into which they poured their innermost thoughts and desires, but rather a place to chronicle the social world around them – what’s going on around the house, what they did today, who came to visit, who was born or who died.

Meet The LA Philharmonic’s New Chief

“The challenge is to find an integrated approach that enlarges the number of people who are in our orbit,” he says. “As demographics change and people become more distracted, the notion of how you create compelling experiences on stage and how you build vast community around them is, I think, the next frontier. I don’t think we fully know how to do that yet.”