A major Mexican city has “become a crucible for an unusual experiment in enlightened police training.” It is sending its officers to school to get culture. “The experiment began early in 2005 with reading and writing classes. It has since mushroomed into an entire literature course with its own constantly expanding editorial series. The principle is that a police officer who is cultured is in a better position to be a better police officer.”
Tag: 10.23.06
The Chosen Ones
“All over Britain, tens of thousand of teenagers have begun working their way through books that have been chosen by exam boards as the best examples of contemporary literature. Anyone who has done Eng Lit A-level will know how these books – even the necessary “quotes” from these books – can become the ones you remember for the rest of your life. No author can foresee the judgment of posterity, but there is one certain way of extending the lifespan of one’s literary creations: become a set text.”
Vivaldi Gets The “Amadeus” Treatment
Hoping to duplicate the success of Milos Forman’s “Amadeus” movie, movie producers are planning a biopic on the life of Vivaldi. “Amadeus is what we are going for. They set the template for this form, and there’s been not much between then and now. That was a wonderful film. We want to make a film of that calibre. Maybe better.”
Russian Gallery Attacked
“A group of men burst into a Moscow art gallery, destroying work by an ethnic Georgian artist and beating up the owner, it was claimed yesterday. The attack follows the seizure by officials of political art the same gallery had displayed.”
Inconceivable (What Art Is)
“Perhaps conceptualism, minimalism, whatever we’re going to call it (even the philistine term ‘modern art’ is still, unbelievably, current) has lasted so long because the public is still baffled by what is going on. The achievement of the high renaissance was obvious, and it was over in a moment; Mannerism lasted a bare 50 years. Eighty years on, we are still gazing uncomprehending at replicas of Duchamp’s readymades.”
The Opera Director And The Homeless Shelter
“It’s not unheard of for high-flying directors to return to grass roots. Graham Vick spends part of each year staging community productions with his Birmingham Opera Company. And Warner was partly responsible for establishing the outreach wing of English National Opera. Yet it still seems incongruous to find him at work in a community centre on the outskirts of Newcastle, patiently explaining stage technique to a homeless woman who has missed her cue.”
Parks – “Historically Aware” And “Linguistically Complicated” Theatre
Suzan-Lori Parks was the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for theatre. “The author of nine full-length plays, most of which are taught at drama schools across the country, and one of the founders of a wave of multilayered, historically aware, and linguistically complicated theatre, she aims to defeat what she calls ‘the Theatre of Schmaltz’ — ‘the play-as-wrapping-paper-version-of-hot-newspaper-headline.”
Tomb Robbers Lead Police To Ancient Egyptian Tombs
Thieves trying to rob ancient Egyptian tombs were captured by police. “That led archaeologists to the three tombs, one of which included an inscription warning that anyone who violated the sanctity of the grave would be eaten by a crocodile and a snake.”
Help For UK Museum Collections
The UK’s Heritage Lottery Fund is establishing a £3m fund to help museums whose acquisitions budgets have been slashed. “Museums have felt that in the flood of lottery money spent on new or remodelled buildings, the importance of the collections they hold has been forgotten. The situation has been predicted to become more acute, with the Heritage Lottery Fund squeezed by declining lottery ticket sales, and by the new lottery good cause, the 2012 Olympics.”
Is Toronto International Dance Festival On The Way Out?
The festival lost money. “This year’s festival was the first time the event, formerly known as the fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists, featured mainstage shows with invited artists. Many of the performances were poorly attended.”