Chairman of the English National opera board, “Smith has been the focus of criticism since the last time he sacked an artistic director of ENO, in 2002, when he was accused of having “shafted” former general director Nicholas Payne. While he has support from some upper management at ENO, he is passionately loathed by many staff and artists.
Tag: 12.16.05
Decommissioning Northern Ireland’s War Murals
“Over the past 20 years, Belfast has become famous (perhaps infamous) for its paramilitary murals, visual depictions of its “troubled” times. In Catholic republican areas, street paintings celebrated the Irish Republican Army; in Protestant loyalist areas they paid tribute to a host of splintered violent outfits such as the UDA, the UVF, the UFF. Things are starting to change. With the help of generous city government funding, community activists are replacing these symbols of war with advertisements for peace.”
What’s Happened To Literary Theory?
Some say it’s dead. Others see sparks of new ideas. “The devolution and fragmentation of theory may well be a survival strategy, an adaptation to the new realities of academic institutions. An optimist might see it as something nobler, a turn from linguistic grand gestures and outdated ideological gambits toward measurements taken on a more humanistic scale.”