It was once thought that working class people didn’t read the classics. But the reverse was true. “Working-class autodidacts read the classics in part because contemporary literature was too expensive. A 1940 survey found that while 55 percent of working-class adults read books, they rarely bought new books. An autodidact could build up an impressive library by haunting used-book stalls, scavenging castoffs, or buying cheap out-of-copyright reprints such as Everyman’s Library, but these offered only yesterday’s authors.”
Tag: 12.04
Art Of The Fake
Smithsonian anthropologist Jane Walsh is working on a database to help identify fakes. There are many more in museum collections than anyone is willing to admit. “Any museum–I don’t care what museum it is–has fakes, because fakes are ubiquitous. I have a friend who works at the Holocaust Museum as a conservator, and even they have forgeries–Star of David badges and prison uniforms that were made for Hollywood films and later sold by dealers as authentic artifacts.
What Constitutes A Successful Museum?
From the outside, today’s American museums look prosperous and happy. “Yet all is not well in the art museum profession,” writes Maxwell Anderson. “Within the confines of their boardrooms, American art museums today are beset as never before by disagreement about their priorities. The difficulty in measuring success in art museums today stems in part from the fact that, over the last generation, art museums have shifted their focus away from collection-building and toward various kinds of attention to the public—without balancing these two imperatives and without a consensus on what constitutes best practices in the latter.” So how do you measure success at the modern American museum?
Burned By Branding
Why have so many managers bought into the idea that success is mostly a branding issue? “From dry academic papers to self-help blockbusters, the literature of the branding guru is notable not for clarity or coherence, but for a tendency to lapse into a form of post-modern patois – a managerial gibberish that has infected everything from psychometric profiling and ‘third way’ political discourse to the pseudo-intellectual ‘mission statements’ of conceptual art.”
The Pavarotti Legacy?
“How good was Pavarotti? Will he be remembered a century from now, as we remember such indisputably great tenors of the past as Enrico Caruso, Beniamino Gigli, or Lauritz Melchior? Possibly, but not necessarily. To be sure, he was in his prime a remarkable singer, without doubt the foremost lyric tenor of his day, and well beyond his fiftieth year his luminous, pointed tone and crisp diction retained much of their quality. On the other hand, Pavarotti was never a distinctive interpreter, and his acting was at best barely competent. Instead, he cultivated an expansive, outgoing manner that charmed his listeners at the expense of the dramatic credibility of the operas in which he appeared.”
What Does It Take To Be Creative?
“Almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work. Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. Intrinsic motivation — people who are turned on by their work often work creatively — is especially critical.”
Climbing On The BandWagon
Band music isn’t anything a lot of serious classical composers have spent much time thinking about. And yet, a new generation of composers is finding opportunity in the world of bands. “Many music professionals believe that bands and wind ensembles offer composers distinct advantages over orchestras, like vast amounts of rehearsal time, the potential for multiple performances (thanks to a well-connected network of university band directors), opportunities to reach new audiences, and sometimes significant financial incentives.”
Columbus Dance Fears Rockettes
Columbus, Ohio’s BalletMet had a hugely successful debut in New York recently, and artistically the company seems to be on a firm upward trajectory. But the company is anxious on its home turf about a threat to its annual cash cow Nutcracker. “The Rockettes’ impending Columbus debut has the folks at BalletMet fearing that seasonal audiences will opt for novel entertainment over a familiar hometown favorite.”
Public Radio’s Record Year
Public radio in America had a record year last year, with more listeners and more money raised than ever before. “The cumulative audience, those that tune it at least once per week, grew by 1.4 million listeners, to a national total of 27.2 million.” This follows two years of growth.
Drawn To The Representation Side
There was a time when if you were an absractionist, that’s what you stayed. Maybe no longer. “In today’s anything-goes atmosphere, switching camps—from abstraction to representation or vice versa—is not considered exceptionally radical, or even brave, but it still gives us pause.”