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Friday, July 3, 2009
last updated @ 02:31 PM pst
AJBlogCentral | rss
culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
rock culture approximately
critical difference
Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
Richard Kessler on arts education
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Douglas McLennan's blog
Dog Days
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Art from the American Outback
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Mind the Gap
No genre is the new genre
No genre is the new genre
Performance Monkey
David Jays on theatre and dance
David Jays on theatre and dance
Plain English
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Real Clear Arts
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude
dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...
media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...
Martha Bayles on Film...
music
Creative Destruction
Fresh ideas on building arts communities
Fresh ideas on building arts communities
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
PianoMorphosis
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera
theatre
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Public Art, Public Space
Another Bouncing Ball
Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
BY TOPIC: architecture | culture | dance | ideas | issues | jazz | media | music | people | publishing | theatre | visual
CULTURE
About Last Night
TERRY TEACHOUT on the arts in New York City
(with additional dialogue by OUR GIRL IN CHICAGO)
TT: He said, she did In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review two West Coast plays, the Los Angeles revival of David Mamet's...
Posted July 3, 2009
TT: Almanac "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that...
Posted July 3, 2009
TT: So you want to see a show? Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable...
Posted July 2, 2009
TT: Almanac "For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack...
Posted July 2, 2009
TT: Snapshot Benno Moiseiwitsch plays the first movement of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto in 1944, accompanied by Constant Lambert and the London...
Posted July 1, 2009
The Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of Arts & Culture
Truth, beauty, trust Patrick Lynch over at "A List Apart" has some useful thoughts about balancing design and content in web site construction. And his thoughts on that balance have implications beyond the web site, and throughout how arts and cultural managers do...
Posted June 30, 2009
Considering the Creative Ecology I had a great visit to Austin, Texas, last week to talk with artists, arts managers, creatives, and other community members. Building on their cultural planning of the past years, they are working to forge a ''creative alliance'' to advance...
Posted June 29, 2009
A glimpse inside the Obama arts policy I'm in Austin, Texas, for a two-day conversation on the 'creative ecology' leading to a public presentation/discussion on Wednesday night. So, I'll likely not be posting to the blog this week.In the meanwhile, take a moment to watch this segment...
Posted June 23, 2009
Of boards, bungles, and the two-headed beast The theater world in Milwaukee is reeling from the sudden announcement this week from Skylight Opera Theatre that they had dismissed their artistic director, and that the managing director would be taking over artistic leadership. Opinions are flying. Protests are...
Posted June 19, 2009
Amateur vs. professional The rise of digital media and networked communications is bashing apart the traditional boundary between amateur and professional, particularly in the creative fields. As Clay Shirky defines the 'professional' in his fabulous book Here Comes Everybody:A profession exists to solve...
Posted June 18, 2009
blog riley
rock culture approximately
RESEGREGATING THE CHARTS "The Beatles hit white America like the biggest thing to happen maybe ever, and they hardly hit black America at all..." Elijah Wald in TIME, talking about How The Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll (Oxford). Erik Himmelsbach, LA Times Michealangelo Matos, AV...
Posted June 25, 2009
THE GAINSBOURG CHRONICLES Image via Wikipedia "I feel a nostalgia for an age yet to come." Matt Kane see also: Warhol as Batman, with Nico...
Posted June 19, 2009
UNDERREPORTED STORY OF THE MONTH: HEALTH CARE INSURANCE SECTOR PROFITS FROM TOBACCO INVESTMENTS UPDATE: new links Related articles by Zemanta Life, health insurers invest big in tobacco (beinghealthyhomeandaway.blogspot.com) Health, life insurers hold billions in tobacco stocks: NEJM article (scienceblog.com) Health Insurers Own Tobacco Stocks Worth Nearly...
Posted June 18, 2009
YOU'VE COME A LONG WAY BABY A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that life and health insurance companies in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain invest heavily in tobacco companies. Tobacco use is a major cause of fatal lung diseases...
Posted June 15, 2009
BACKHANDED ENDORSEMENTS I get a special chill whenever I find myself agreeing with EVERYTHING Ralph Nader says. And Matt Taibbi is not GOD-ON-A-STICK, but he can be pretty persuasive....
Posted June 11, 2009
critical difference
Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
Best Advice Ever If only Alice Hoffman had given a thought to David Shipley and Will Schwalbe's "Send" before she raged on Twitter Sunday about Roberta Silman's Boston Globe review of her new novel, "The Story Sisters."I sympathize with Hoffman; truly I do....
Posted June 30, 2009
One More Reason to Love Nancy Franklin From her review of HBO's "Hung," yet another perfect line:"I'm a little concerned that I'm making this sound clever; it's not."...
Posted June 29, 2009
Share the Guilt A friend just mentioned a conversation with a woman who, until recently, was an artistic director at a prominent regional theater. Prompted by Emily Glassberg Sands' college thesis on female playwrights -- and consequent reports that female artistic directors and literary...
Posted June 26, 2009
The Meek Won't Inherit the Stage When I worked at the conservative New York Sun, I tended to keep mum about politics. A lot of the liberal staffers did the same. But after the paper folded last fall, just as the presidential election went into overdrive,...
Posted June 25, 2009
Women, Don't Beware Women Quick! Name the five most influential female artistic directors in the American theater. You have 60 seconds.* * *Now, in one minute, do the same with men.* * *How'd you do? I'm guessing much better on the second question than...
Posted June 24, 2009
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
POV: The Challenge of Teaching Art in the Public School System Creativity is the opposite of conformity and is nurtured by a supportive, positive environment that allows students to engage in creative play and honest communication; a place where their fears and vulnerabilities are, at least, acknowledged and not ridiculed.On this...
Posted July 2, 2009
Making Room At the Table: An Interview with the Author of a Needs Assessment for Arts Education and Special Needs Students in NYC Public Schools I am really happy to be able to bring you an interview with two really swell colleagues of mine: Stephen Yaffe and Don Glass, who have teamed up on Making Room At The Table: A Needs Assessment of Arts Education...
Posted July 1, 2009
Jane Remer's Cliffnotes: The Myth of the Arts and School Reform, Redux In today's entry for her recurring guest blog, titled CliffNotes, Jane Remer leapfrogs from my most recent blog entry, to three big points. I would also like to point you to a very thoughtful post responding to that very same...
Posted June 29, 2009
Arts Education Should Align with School Reform. Really? Among advocates and wannabe advocates, I have lately been hearing that arts education must align with school reform. I heard this the other day at a splendid presentation by Narric Rome of Americans for the Arts and Najean Lee of...
Posted June 24, 2009
Arts Education on NPR: Name that Instrument! The State of Arts Education Today, on The Takeaway, there was a segment on the NAEP Arts Assessment 2008.Click here to go straight to the media player for that segment: Name that Instrument! The State of Arts Education.It's worth a listen, they had a very...
Posted June 19, 2009
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Microsoft CEO Predicts All News Content Online In 10 Years Steve Ballmer, speaking at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, said he doesn't see a recovery for the news industry after the recession:"I don't think we are in a recession, I think we have reset," he said. "A recession implies recovery...
Posted June 24, 2009
Power Curve: Four (Short) Stories About Empowering Audiences A few years ago arts organizations had the bright idea that they should sell tickets online. Not wanting to invest much in the effort, they turned to the obvious ready-made ticket seller: Ticketmaster. It wasn't an encouraging experience. Orchestras reported...
Posted June 24, 2009
Bill Ivey Talks About Obama and the Arts and Whether America Should Have a Secretary of Culture Bill Ivey was chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts during the Clinton administration. More recently he has been director of the Curb Center at Vanderbilt University, and, after last year's presidential election, ran the Obama administration's transition team...
Posted June 23, 2009
Will Technology Make Our Intellectual Property Laws Obsolete? Interesting take on the future of copyright and patent law by Eric Reasons:Every business model relying on intellectual property law (patent and copyright) is heading for massive deflation in our lifetimes. We've seen it with the music industry and newspapers...
Posted June 22, 2009
The Text Revolution - Why Text Is More Efficient Than TV In the TV Age the tube has dominated breaking news. Watching crucial moments of a big dramatic story on TV can be compelling, and the TV news audience has dwarfed newspaper readership. It is accepted wisdom that TV owns the...
Posted June 21, 2009
Dog Days
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
Congress Calls Me to a Meeting in My Own Home I was surprised to answer my home phone the other night and have my local Congresswoman's pre-recorded voice invite me to stay on the line to participate in a Phone Town Hall Meeting. I'm an advocacy guy and my family...
Posted June 25, 2009
Are You Talking About Today or Tomorrow? Monday was a big day for arts policy and data wonks. We got two major arts focused reports from the federal government and substantial media coverage for both. The NEA released its 2008 Arts Participation survey findings and the Department of...
Posted June 17, 2009
Rallying To Save Arts Education Part 2 In my experience, sitting through local government meetings is generally dull. Not because the topics are unimportant or because the decisions are of little consequence but because the meetings lack the focus of drama or ritual. As a result, time...
Posted June 8, 2009
Rallying To Save Arts Education Part 1 It's been a full advocacy week in San Diego since I wrote last Thursday. Richard Kessler posted on his AJ blog yesterday that the Board of Trustees of the San Diego Unified School District voted to keep the Visual and...
Posted June 4, 2009
Survey Says... I missed my weekly Thursday entry last week to devote the night before to prepping the CA Arts Advocates Action Alert calling for support of Assembly Bill 700, The Creative Industries Economic Revitalization Act. Today, we'll find out if it...
Posted May 28, 2009
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
'Erotic' religion. Your favorite kind. From a review of Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s new book, The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious. It’s a doozy. “Philosophy begins, then, with the questioning of certainties in the realm of knowledge and the cultivation of the love of...
Posted July 3, 2009
Spoleto: Some patterns I've noticed at the festival Cats: Philip Bimstein, the composer, wrote a piece called Cats in the Kitchen. It was performed during the Music in Time series. It calls for oboe and flute to play along with prepared soundtrack that featured the sound of...
Posted June 8, 2009
Spoleto: the American premiere of Good Cop Bad Cop Reality TV isn't really real. Maybe you've noticed. It's more like an enormous vetting process that demands, if not humiliation, then a deep and abiding display of humility before the eyes of God, America, and Simon Cowell. If you...
Posted June 7, 2009
Spoleto: Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet When Ezra Pound said, "Make it new," he was urging modernist artists, mostly poets, to find value in the past from the point of view of the present. Orchestras and dance companies have done just that, but over time, they...
Posted June 7, 2009
Spoleto: the American premiere of Don John What does Gisli Orn Gardarsson got that other guys ain’t got? OK, so he has a face like Clive Owen. OK, so he has a physique like Matthew McConaughey. OK, so he’s also a gymnast — limber, strong, durable. OK,...
Posted June 5, 2009
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Here's Johnny I missed the 2/3 train at 14th street at an embarrassingly late hour last night because I was taking a faux toe of the Public Enemies poster for this blog. Naturally, I left the house (" ") today and forgot...
Posted June 30, 2009
Talk to me about Dilettante Sometimes it's hard being Amanda. For example, when I think of lots of cool people to interview for (le) blog, and they say yes, and then I don't have time to write the questions? Yes, at times like that it's...
Posted June 25, 2009
Don't you carry nothing that might be a load I'm glad our mom didn't come to The Wiz at City Center with my sister and me tonight. If she had, then from the first moment Ashanti stationed herself downstage center and started to sing, Aliza and I would have...
Posted June 24, 2009
Go go gadgets Has anyone tried the New York Phil iPhone app? I'm told it currently has 2.5 out of 5 stars. Reviews, please! As previously mentioned, I can't get an iPhone because I refuse to let go of my Verizon family plan,...
Posted June 22, 2009
You know what really grinds my gears? ...is when presenters ask for materials just for the sake of asking for materials. Are they redecorating their offices with these things?? Collecting Christmas gifts for their cousins?Here's an e mail that came into IMG from one of The King's...
Posted June 17, 2009
Mind the Gap
No Genre Is the New Genre
Meeting Cute We kind of touched on this last week, the idea that beauty in art sells. Something similar crops up in the most brilliant advertising, though its manipulation is almost always much more blatant (or at least accepted/expected). If beauty is...
Posted June 29, 2009
Blogger Book Club II: Beautiful Meaninglessness By Devin Hurd This is not rocket science. Ignorance is as good a reason to speculate as impudence or curiosity. Thousands of brilliant readings have arisen out of ignorance--some of them mine, none of them Freud's. Did I read this...
Posted June 27, 2009
Blogger Book Club II: Wrestling With Beauty By Alexandra Gardner Okay, I admit it--this book made my head spin. In order to reframe some ideas that I absolutely do find applicable to music, I kept imagining silly scenarios that would illustrate the different ways in which...
Posted June 27, 2009
Blogger Book Club II: Musician in the Middle By Amanda MacBlaneHickey's interpretation of the dominant-submissive dynamic between a work of art and its beholder, drawing on Gilles Deleuze's analysis of Masoch and Sade, claims that: The traditional, contractual alliance between the image and its beholder (of which...
Posted June 26, 2009
The Man Could Move He was a slight man on a huge stage wearing a glittery glove. Now it seems like it should have been ridiculous, even in 1983, and yet he sang, he moved, and the room filled to the brim. We...
Posted June 26, 2009
Performance Monkey
David Jays on theatre and dance
No half measures There was no halfway house with Pina Bausch. As my editor remarked earlier today, you were either a devotee or sceptic, and if a devotee you were very devoted. There will be many tributes to Pina Bausch in the next...
Posted June 30, 2009
'Pick up the gun and shoot the bastard!' I was much tickled this afternoon to read the performance artist and lecturer Lois Weaver recalling a visit to David Hare's play The Secret Rapture. Her colleague Peggy Phelan, a reluctant co-attendee at the matinee performance ('this sea of the...
Posted June 28, 2009
Swan in a neck brace We critics - dressed in our usual dowdy - were discombobulated when we arrived at Sadler's Wells last week for English National Ballet's tribute to Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. There was a red (actually black) carpet, and a healthy jostle of...
Posted June 25, 2009
Sickness in the royal blood Helen Mirren sickens in the sunlight, bends double with torment, makes clammy advances to her stepson and scrabbles at herself in remorse. It's quite unlike the starchy home life of our own dear queen, as portrayed in Mirren's previous Oscar-winning...
Posted June 23, 2009
On the money We can probably file this under marketing rather than fund-raising, but the Goodman Theatre's latest wheeze - a money-back guarantee for a new play by Migdalia Cruz - is certainly eye-catching. I've written a piece for the Guardian's theatre blog...
Posted June 19, 2009
Plain English
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Diva details The current revival of La traviata at the Royal Opera House could easily have been one of the great performances ever staged there. Richard Eyre has returned to direct his 1994 production, with its staggeringly wonderful, lavish sets by Bob...
Posted June 28, 2009
Shakespeare Propelled? (photo Nobby Clark)Chip off the (solid oak - he's Peter Hall's son) old block Edward Hall leads Propeller, an all-male company dedicated to performing the works of Shakespeare. I try to see all their productions; they're usually superb, and...
Posted June 24, 2009
Summertime, and the Opera's easy We've forsaken sun and sand for chilly June nights and picnics in the shelter tent. Summer opera festivals are increasingly prevalent, ever more fun, and gaining in cultural weight. We've recently seen a pair of operas that would not...
Posted June 23, 2009
Clarity without a concept Recently I've detected something curious happening in the dramatic and lyric theatre, a tendency to clarity, to narrative simplicity and straightforwardness. In a way it's the opposite of the Konzept school that has so long dominated performances in Europe, with...
Posted June 15, 2009
Is it still the same old story? Do all artists have a "late period," in which they exhibit power coupled with exuberance, occasionally even surpassing some of the work they made when younger? Or is this venerable fireworks display only achieved by great artists? The list is...
Posted June 5, 2009
Real Clear Arts
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
Celebrating the Fourth With Public Art: WaterFire To celebrate the Fourth of July, here's a look at WaterFire, the public art installation in Providence -- 100 bonfires burning along the city's three rivers. Started in 1994, it's 15 years old now, but locals say it still draws...
Posted July 2, 2009
Listen Up: The Contemporary Art Market Confidence Report Podcast Remember that "confidence report" from London-based ArtTactic that I wrote about here several days ago? Most of the study, which involves interviews with key participants in the art market, was behind a pay wall, and I was able to give you...
Posted July 2, 2009
Brooklyn's Lehman Addresses the Problem of Permanent Collections Back to my lunch with Arnold Lehman, director of the Brooklyn Museum,* which ensued after I noted here that on a recent visit the special-exhibition galleries were full but the permanent collection galleries were empty. This is a problem of museums' own...
Posted July 1, 2009
Sold: Embattled Financier Ezra Merkin Sells His Famed Rothkos According to pals at The New York Times, J. Ezra Merkin, the financier who lost billions of his investors' money in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme, has agreed to sell his famed collection of Mark Rothkos (plus some Giacomettis) for $310 million....
Posted June 30, 2009
Collector Fuhrman Extends Lifeline To Orphaned Artists Here's one contemporary art collector who's trying to help out artists: Glenn Fuhrman, the co-managing partner of MSD Capital LP, which manages money for Michael Dell, is giving artists whose galleries have closed a show this summer. My friend Lindsay Pollock...
Posted June 30, 2009
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Givin' It All Up for Nothin' My latest effusion for ARTicles, the blog of the National Arts Journalism Program -- a response to Laura Collins-Hughes's protest against publications expecting writers to write for free....
Posted July 3, 2009
M & M, a farewell The choice of Mahler's Eighth Symphony for Lorin Maazel's farewell concerts as music director of the New York Philharmonic no doubt satisfied someone's sense of symbolism. The Eighth completed Maazel's tenure-long Mahler symphony survey. It's very big, and hence seems...
Posted July 2, 2009
"Coraline" (the show, not the novel or the animated film) I've liked Stephin Merritt's music with his various East Village bands (especially Magnetic Fields and their "69 Love Songs"). I liked it so much that I hooked him up with my friend Chen Shi-zheng, whom I had originally hired to...
Posted June 29, 2009
Michael Jackson REDUX My latest contribution to ARTicles, the blog of the National Arts Journalism Program, wherein after some perfunctory comments on Jackson himself I lament the grotesque media overkill that is sullying his memory more than any weirdness on his part could...
Posted June 29, 2009
Conflicting thickets My latest posting to ARTicles, the blog of the National Arts Journalism Program, in which I worry about critical independence in online publications sponsored by local arts institutions....
Posted June 25, 2009
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - Arts, Media & Culture News with 'tude
Let the Homage Begin For the 50th anniversary celebration of William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch, which begins any minute now -- it's scheduled for July 1-3 at the University of London Institute in Paris -- have a look at the cover of the original...
Posted June 23, 2009
Harold Norse, R.I.P. He died earlier this week in San Francisco just short of his 93rd birthday. I met him on a bitterly cold winter day in Paris, in 1962. I was keeping warm sitting in a seedy little cafe behind the Place...
Posted June 13, 2009
More Than One Way to Bang That Can Spent a few hours listening to the performances at the BANG ON A CAN Marathon 2009 with a friend of mine who has little patience for la sonorité artistique. She described much of what she heard as "beehive music." I...
Posted June 1, 2009
El Senor Chomsky Nails it again with his latest piece of essential writing about the so-called "core American values" and "moral authority" claimed for and by the United States since its founding: "Unexceptional Americans." The shorter version with the longer title -- "Why...
Posted May 21, 2009
El Senor Ehrenstein As usual, he's right on target ... his latest bull's-eye....
Posted May 18, 2009
DANCE
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr and guests talk about dance
Diana Vishneva in Frederick Ashton's "Sylvia" I review her debut as Sylvia for the Financial Times. In the cave with ogre Jared Matthews. (He might have bit into the part with more appetite: would have helped Vishneva's comic turn.) Photo by Gene Schiavone for ABT....
Posted July 3, 2009
Moon Walker (with added insight from Paul Parish and Brian Seibert, critic and tap historian. Scroll down) A friend called Thursday night, and I was slow to pick up. When we finally caught each other, he quipped, "Yeah, I know, you've been busy mourning Michael Jackson." But I'd been mourning him for years. A young Michael...
Posted June 27, 2009
Wild Thing Diana Vishneva approaches her roles with a completeness of imagination that makes the usual day-after review--this worked, that didn't--feel especially meager. For example, in Swan Lake most ballerinas identify the swan queen Odette's creaturely gestures with her fear, her...
Posted June 25, 2009
June doings while Foot rests (plus long ps. on the Ratmansky premiere at ABT) Dear Reader, In order not to tempt me to write posts, when I have other, less tempting things to do, I am declaring a hiatus here for the next few weeks. But to not leave you completely high and...
Posted June 1, 2009
Frankie Manning, "Never Stop Swinging" This just in: Tonight (Thursday) at 10:30 on WNET/Ch. 13, a documentary on Frankie Manning, the late King of Swing. Sorry for the late notice: I just noticed myself. It doesn't look like it's going to be broadcast outside of...
Posted May 3, 2009
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on Dance et al.
Four Events at American Ballet Theatre American Ballet Theatre / Metropolitan Opera House, NYC / May 18 - July 11, 2009 ON THE DNIEPER As celebrated in Russia as the Mississippi is in America, the mighty Dnieper River has accreted to itself a history, an atmosphere,...
Posted June 28, 2009
Dreams, Now and Then New York City Ballet: George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream / David H. Koch Theater, NYC / June 16 -21, 2009 George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, screening of the 1967 film / Baryshnikov Arts Center, NYC / May 26,...
Posted June 22, 2009
Rite of Spring School of American Ballet Annual Workshop Performances 2009 / Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC / June 1 (matinee and evening); June 3 (evening) "But first a school," Balanchine is said to have replied to Lincoln Kirstein, when the...
Posted June 3, 2009
Seeing Stars American Ballet Theatre / Metropolitan Opera House, NYC / May 18-July 11, 2009 Nina Ananiashvili in Alexei Ratmansky's Waltz MasqueradePhoto: Rosalie O'Conner Always an exceedingly star-conscious company, American Ballet Theatre opened its annual spring season (May 18-July 11, at the...
Posted May 28, 2009
Renovating the House of Atreus Martha Graham Dance Company: Clytemnestra / Skirball Center, New York University, NYC / May 12, 15, and 16, 2009 Genius though she was--as a dancer, as a choreographer, and as the inventor of the only Western dance technique apart from...
Posted May 13, 2009
MEDIA
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
A Quasi-Kosher 4th With Yankees, Mets, Weinsteins One of the reasons I became what people call a "food writer" was my clam-broth baptism in the behemoth, much-mourned Brooklyn restaurant called Lundy's. That fish palace on Sheepshead Bay coalesced a constellation of 20th-century American values: collective melting-pot festivity (it seated...
Posted July 3, 2009
Did Judy (Garland) Cause Stonewall (Riots)? June 22 is the 40th anniversary of Judy's death -- like Marilyn's, the result of an overdose that whether accidental or intentional will never be clear. Some think that Garland's gargantuan two-day funeral -- 20,000 fans and friends attended --...
Posted June 22, 2009
Laaam-bert! "I'm trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader," says Adam Lambert -- remember him? -- as he comes out in the new Rolling Stone. Quelle, quelle surprise, but congratulations nonetheless. Yet comments like that are as boilerplate...
Posted June 9, 2009
Paradox: Podcast About Photos (of Sufi Memorials) Lisa Ross's photos of obscure Chinese shrines to Sufi saints have an impact that goes beyond anthropological or political record-keeping. I have written recently about her show at New York's Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, up until June 13, for online's Obit Magazine....
Posted May 29, 2009
Archie Pops the Question, to ... So who will the wrinkled redhead bring to bed -- assuming he hasn't already? As a fourth-grade student at Midwood, Brooklyn's P.S. 238, I struggled with my carrot-top best friend, another Jeffrey, over who was Archie and who Reggie....
Posted May 28, 2009
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...
The Legacy of Michael Jackson What did the King of Pop bequeath to the world? Your answer will probably depend on your view of American pop music.If you take the view that American pop music is nothing but a manufactured product designed to exploit human...
Posted June 27, 2009
Social Trust Don't be put off by Clint Eastwood's character at the beginning of Gran Torino (2008). It's a caricature of a cranky old widower, the only white resident left in a Highland Park, Michigan neighborhood, and it's so over the top...
Posted June 21, 2009
Higher Ground It's an old American movie cliche: an affluent but mixed-up white character is helped and guided by a black character who, despite being poor, is blessed with a head that is screwed on straight. In the old days the...
Posted June 14, 2009
Dan Brown Redux Seeing the reviews of the latest Dan Brown phantasmagoria, , I am moved to post my best effort regarding this author and the films that he spawns. It was written about The DaVinci Code but will do perfectly wellas a...
Posted May 22, 2009
Tri-Ocular It's not historically accurate, we all know that now. But How the West Was Won (1962) is nonetheless historic. One of the very few feature films to utilize the short-lived Cinerama technology, it is now available on DVD. And if...
Posted May 8, 2009
MUSIC
Creative Destruction
Fresh ideas on building arts communities
Change or Die You might remember from an earlier post that I was in Chicago this month at the League of American Orchestra's National Conference. Going to the conference revealed the current issues, unspoken fears, and magnitude of the challenge being faced within...
Posted June 25, 2009
Oh Baby, I'm about to lose control! It's a concert week for me. Tomorrow night, the Adrian Symphony Orchestra will present a pops concert to end the season. As of early in the week we had seven seats left to sell and none of them were...
Posted June 18, 2009
Notes from the Upper Balcony Last week, while participating in the League of American Orchestras' National Conference in Chicago, I attended a Chicago Symphony Orchestra Dvorak Festival concert with Sir Mark Elder conducting and Alisa Weilerstein as the very able soloist. My seat was...
Posted June 15, 2009
Tribes in the Arts Click on this for the speech! I found a terrific little speech by Seth Godin on Ted.com, and I think it might be of benefit as we think about drawing communities together around the arts. I've come to respect...
Posted June 3, 2009
Mahler's Instant Community A few weeks ago I was sitting in a box seat at Carnegie Hall looking down on an empty stage. It was only a few minutes before the concert was to begin and the hall was still half-empty. The...
Posted May 24, 2009
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's Freelanc Urban Improvisation
In lieu of JVC Jazz festivals Did you miss the "festivity" of June jazz concerts in major Manhattan venues -- or did you find ways of coping without them? There's so much fine music -- jazz and beyond -- in nearby festive settings, many of them...
Posted June 30, 2009
Zx1 pocket camera stars at 2009 Jazz Awards! I love My Youtube! -- now hosting video clips from my handy new Kodak go-anywhere device of jazz celebs, players and presenters at the Jazz Journalists Association's 13th annual Jazz Awards party at the Jazz Standard (NYC) June 16, shot by debuting cinematographer...
Posted June 29, 2009
Chicago's quirky hero of blues and jazz in NYT Bob Koester, owner-operator of Delmark Records and the Jazz Record Mart, is celebrated in the New York Times' Arts & Leisure section today. He's documented and marketed South and West Side soul, AACM innovation, trad jazz and the Mississippi Delta blues revival....
Posted June 28, 2009
Furor over jazz sexism (continues) Kitty Margolis, Bay Area jazz singer, Facebook and in-person friend, fired up followers re guest blogger Paul Lindemeyer's comments on jazz's historic bias towards men, which I contextualized with reference to Michelle Obama's White House jazz night. Here's what Kitty's people...
Posted June 26, 2009
Michelle Obama refutes jazz as boys' club There are "powerful reasons . . .we ought to consider" for why musicians and listeners "tend to be a brotherhood," according to a self-described "middle-aged white male swing-to-bopper." He's identifying, not justifying . . .Then the First Lady upsets the...
Posted June 23, 2009
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
stomping (and talking) the blues (and jazz and soul and r&b) in new orleans I've tried wherever I can to lend a sense of context to presentations of New Orleans music, in terms of history and especially the current situation. So I was thrilled when The Wall Street Journal asked me to host a...
Posted July 1, 2009
a dirge for culture In my recent Village Voice piece on New Orleans, I made reference to a battle in the Louisiana State Legislature over arts funding, and the deep and cynical cuts proposed by Gov. Bobby Jindal. My friend Ned Sublette, as erudite...
Posted June 6, 2009
muslim voices, youssou's message, sufi songs "Why is music called the divine art, while all other arts are not so called? We may certainly see God in all arts and in all sciences, but in music alone we see God free from all forms and...
Posted June 1, 2009
soft-shell crab po'boys, peach cobbler, and... Ok, Terri persuaded me to begin blogging again in earnest. (But I'm not so sure about pitch to get on Facebook for real.) In any case, here I am again, restarting what I hope will be a daily ritual. Look...
Posted May 14, 2009
talking 'bout new orleans I'll return as a guest on John Schaefer's "Soundcheck" show tomorrow - Monday, 4/20 - to talk about New Orleans. The hook is the annual Jazz & Heritage Festival (4/24-5/3), and the idea is the keep a light shined on...
Posted April 19, 2009
On the Record
Exloring America's Orchestras with Henry Fogel
Why Nominating Committees Should Not Exclude the Executive Director It is sometimes difficult to figure out for whom I write these blogs. Sometimes I cover musical subjects or issues that probably interest both the general music-loving reader and those in the orchestra or music business. But sometimes I feel...
Posted July 3, 2009
São Paulo's Little-Known Orchestral Treasure I wish I could fully explain why I find myself so captivated by the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra. Whatever the reason, it remains one of the most endearing (and little known) stories in the world of symphony orchestras....
Posted June 26, 2009
Nonprofit governance: Best results come from a messy process One aspect of nonprofit governance that frustrates some people (it drives some corporate types batty, in fact) is that it's messy and inefficient. I've noted that before, but it keeps being driven home to me as I visit orchestras around...
Posted June 19, 2009
Thoughts on Strategic Planning Often when I meet with orchestra boards of directors, I am asked about the value of strategic planning, and about how an orchestra should go about it. On some occasions, I am shown a strategic plan, and often it is...
Posted June 12, 2009
The Music Director Search: Resisting Donor Pressure is Essential You might think that this only happens in bad fiction, but in the past year alone I have encountered it in real life a handful of times. A small or mid-sized orchestra is in a music director search, and someone,...
Posted June 5, 2009
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
Revelations I'm terribly, terribly sorry. I lived outside the United States from 1967 to 2006 -- most of my adult life -- and besides, I don't pay much attention to the pop music scene or to the evolution of modern religions. No one had...
Posted July 1, 2009
More NY stories The Belcea Quartet, which is based in London but consists of a Romanian first violinist (Corina Belcea-Fisher), an English second (Laura Samuel), a Polish violist (Krzysztof Chorzelski), and a French cellist (Antoine Lederlin), has, within the last ten days, given...
Posted March 14, 2009
Same old story Art is emotional ambiguity and intellectual complexity, among many other things. We can talk and talk about making art-music more approachable through mash-ups and crossovers and other forms of "outreach," but the hard truth is that not many people possess...
Posted February 12, 2009
One opera and a pile of CDs Thais at the Met last week. According to the program notes, Anatole France -- author of the novella on which Jules Massenet's opera is based -- lavishly praised the composer for his treatment of the subject. There's no denying that...
Posted December 24, 2008
Four New York concerts, and some ruminations When Deutsche Grammophon's recording of Osvaldo Golijov's Ayre came out a few years ago, I was impressed by the effectiveness of the composer's eclecticism. I was looking forward to hearing his opera Ainadamar in concert performance at Carnegie on December 7, with the Orchestra of...
Posted December 7, 2008
PianoMorphosis
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
Matter of opinion After several master classes at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, given by several of us pianists, a student asked me: "Isn't it all just a matter of opinion?" And after so many diverging ideas and approaches, strongly expressed,...
Posted June 29, 2009
First Glass Tim Page suggested I play some music by Philip Glass. It was a solo piano arrangement of part of the opera Satyagraha -- Gandhi's final, Act 3 aria. Tim wanted this music for a solo piano CD we were making...
Posted June 22, 2009
Resolve In classical music, many gestures need to "resolve." A dissonance, a departure from the harmonic (or melodic, or rhythmic) norm needs to be brought back to normality, disturbances need to be calmed -- "action" needs resolution. Chopin: Opus 44 This...
Posted June 16, 2009
Molecular Piano Before, I have spoken of "extreme" piano, related to the phenomenon of "extreme sports" -- I was talking about the masochistic marathon of Alvin Curran's Hope Street Tunnel Blues III. Now, I want to propose the notion of "molecular...
Posted June 10, 2009
Help Wanted Talking to an internet start-up guy, it struck me: I need an intern. There's a new CD -- Time Curve -- coming out very soon on Arabesque (my playing of music by Glass and Duckworth). It's not quite "classical,"...
Posted June 8, 2009
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Those Jangling High C's on the Piano What a pleasure it was to find Robert Carl's new book about Terry Riley's In C (from Oxford) in my mailbox today (or actually, on top of it, which was poor judgment on the mailman's part, since it's rained here every...
Posted July 2, 2009
Column #54 My profile of composer Julia Wolfe is out in Chamber Music magazine this week....
Posted June 29, 2009
A Little Slow with the Index Cards Speaking of Robert Ashley, I had a wonderful moment interviewing him a couple of weeks ago. We covered his entire life up to 1979, and then hit Perfect Lives. Of course I think Perfect Lives (then titled Private Parts) was...
Posted June 29, 2009
Young Avant-Gardists at Play Anyone remember this?This is the submission under the name "Dennis" in the 1963 book An Anthology edited by La Monte Young and Jackson Mac Low, and of course it's Dennis Johnson. (Sorry, I have an obsessive personality, and right now...
Posted June 29, 2009
Notating Dennis I've come up with what I think is a comfortable performance notation for Dennis Johnson's November. It's all noteheads in a pulseless continuum, but I needed to preserve his motivically significant phrasing without imposing any kind of rhythmic grid....
Posted June 27, 2009
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Other Matters: Out In The Country If all of July is like this, I'll be a happy cyclist. My Italian friend Vigorelli Bianchi and I did 22 morning miles. The air and light had a crystalline quality more usual In October than summer. The cherry crop...
Posted July 1, 2009
New Picks, Ideal for Summer Please go to the center column and scroll down to Doug's Picks. There, you will find recommendations for two tenor saxophonists, a pianist who sings (or a singer who plays the piano), a pianist and a poet. Yes, a poet....
Posted June 29, 2009
Correspondence: Sound Judgment Ted O'Reilly writes from Toronto about the item in the following exhibit: Nice stuff with the DBQ. I agree with your comments about the sound quality especially. It was in the days of Professionals when that was recorded: both musicians...
Posted June 25, 2009
Brubeck On The Beeb YouTube has posted a few excerpts from programs the Dave Brubeck Quartet did for BBC television in 1964. The musical and the black and white video quality are superb. In the first one, I am struck by Brubeck's delicacy at...
Posted June 25, 2009
A.J.'s Take On The J.J.A. Awards Up to my ears in curricular and non-curricular matters since my return from New York, I may or may not get around to writing more about last week's Jazz Journalists Association awards afternoon. In the meantime, Arnold Jay Smith posted...
Posted June 23, 2009
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of classical music
Old debates Seems like a couple of points often -- always? -- come up when I talk about changes -- aging, shrinkage -- in the classical music audience. Any stats about aging (and there are plenty, proving the aging of the audience,...
Posted June 30, 2009
NOI liftoff Last Thursday night -- June 25 -- was the first National Orchestral Institute concert in which the students tried out the ideas we've talked about here, here, and here. (And, more indirectly, here, too.)The concert was, if you ask me...
Posted June 28, 2009
Updated dire Hell is other people, Sartre famously wrote. But not in my life, and certainly not on this blog. When I posted my estimates yesterday of how much -- in real numbers -- the classical music audience has increased or declined...
Posted June 25, 2009
Dire II Followup to my "Dire Data" post.The National Endowment finds a decreasing percentage of Americans going to classical music concerts. And it's a sizable decline. In the 1982 study, thirteen percent of American adults had attended a classical music performance during...
Posted June 24, 2009
Dire data I'm amazed, from time to time, to see debates still raging in the classical music world about declines in ticket sales and the aging of the audience. You'd think we'd have settled these questions by now. How many cars does...
Posted June 19, 2009
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht
Average age 32: the classical audience in Paris I have written two columns this year about the French renaissance in concertgoing and record buying. Now the conductor Gary Brain, who lives in Paris, tells me that at a recent performance he was given a leflet with the results of a government survey...
Posted June 11, 2009
Musical chaos at the BBC The Today programme, a live breakfast serial of political hard talk and cultural whimsy, flirts daily with on-air disaster but rarely comes unstuck as it did this morning with an item about 80 young composers seeking inspiration from paintings at the National...
Posted June 5, 2009
Oranges are not the only fruit I strolled down to the South Bank last night to witness a literary award which I had no chance of winning. The Orange Prize for Fiction is restricted to works by women. Originated in 1996 by Kate Mosse, who has gone...
Posted June 4, 2009
Schiff runs aground A number of people walked out of Andras Schiff's lecture-recital on Haydn at the Wigmore Hall on Friday night, so I'm told. The erudite Hungarian pianist is in the chrysallis stage of morphing from concert artist to public intellectual, a transition last...
Posted June 3, 2009
Hilary turns the tables Halfway through a Lebrecht Interview for the upcoming BBC Radio 3 series, Hilary Hahn took control and demanded: 'But what about you? I want to know what you think musicians should be doing in this situation. You're supposed to be...
Posted May 27, 2009
PUBLISHING
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on books
All that glitters can be sold How to Sell: I love the title with its echoes of business advice books. It's easy to imagine someone picking up Clancy Martin's novel to get tips on closing a sale - only to get a shock. But I hope...
Posted June 10, 2009
Money for Art, Pt. 2: Replaying the '50s and '90s Justine Smith, Absolute Power, dollar bills, 2005Money for Art, Pt 1: Arts Funding in AmericaDavid A. Smith's Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy recounts the history of federal funding of the arts...
Posted June 5, 2009
Money for Art, Pt 1: Arts Funding in America It's dead certain that our culture wars will rage again. David A. Smith, a senior lecturer in history at Baylor University, does not actually make that prediction in his book, Money for Art: The Tangled Web of Art and Politics...
Posted May 30, 2009
Reasons to be cheerful, Part 7 Although Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness is getting shelved in the "self-help" sections -- and more power to that label if it means the book will sell better than the usual essay collection -- Willard Spiegelman's new volume...
Posted May 16, 2009
Horton Foote: An Appreciation Obituaries described Horton Foote, who died Wednesday, as a great storyteller, a writer of ordinary Americans. To me, these sound just a little condescending. For them, Foote is not a great dramatist on par with an Albee or Mamet. He's...
Posted March 5, 2009
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas, trash-culture ephemera
Coming Soon in DSM-V My column today includes a reference to something that in the rough draft I called Social Networking Aversion Syndrome. When time came for revision, "Aversion" seemed not quite right, so I changed it to "Fatigue."A quick search of Google just...
Posted July 1, 2009
Life Imitates "The Onion" Coverage of Michael Jackson's death leads me to wonder if somebody has hacked the Times website:In Paris, fans planned a memorial moonwalk at the Eiffel Tower for Sunday, and a ceremony in his honor is to be held at the...
Posted June 26, 2009
My Back Pages Recent news reminds me of a couple of items that are now topical again.One is a piece on Michael Jackson from early 2006. The other, from December, is a column on a book called The Art of the Public Grovel,...
Posted June 26, 2009
Do the Math! People are sending me email to point out that the title of my column this week, "Fifty Years After Stonewall," must be the work of the numerically challenged, because four decades have passed, not five.Sometimes it proves necessary to read...
Posted June 24, 2009
The New "New Politics" Website There are some bugs in the design, but check out the redesigned website for New Politics. Wrote my first piece for the journal in 1989 and seem to be publishing there at a rate of once per decade, so far....
Posted June 23, 2009
THEATRE
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: drama, onstage and off
Feels Like the First Time: Spring Awakening I've been asked by about 10 people to weigh in on Spring Awakening, whose national tour is currently writhing through Philly's Academy of Music. However, rather than write a review, which my colleague Toby Zinman has already done very nicely...
Posted June 24, 2009
Pig Iron Forges Ahead Right now, Philadelphia's greatest cultural export appears to be the loosely collected members of Pig Iron Theatre Company, whose newest work, Welcome to Yuba City, will premiere at September's Philadelphia Live Arts/Fringe Festival. According to them, the troupe officially consists of...
Posted June 18, 2009
Scaling TCG's Press Summit So here's the thing about Theatre Communications Group's Press Summit: how do you present the entire press/theater dynamic, framed by the implosion of the newspaper industry and giftwrapped in our current economic crisis, open it up at a conference table,...
Posted June 5, 2009
Mission Accomplished Sorry folks, looks like you're gonna hafta wait until tomorrow for your TCG scoop......
Posted June 5, 2009
Us and Them On Thursday I'm heading down to Baltimore for Theatre Communications Group's National conference. However, I'm not attending just to have cocktails with opening speaker John Waters (though that would be nice), or to spy on the show folk (though...
Posted June 2, 2009
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
Explain Peter? Albee Damned. Edward Albee's At Home At the Zoo consists of two one-act plays. The first, "Homelife", was written in 2004 when Albee was 76 years old. The second, "Zoo Story", was composed when the author was just 30. Though the two...
Posted July 3, 2009
On Being Suckered Into Joining Facebook Until a few days ago, I was one of those people who turned their nose up at the social networking site, Facebook. With three blogs and a website to maintain myself, I was very much against the idea of being...
Posted July 2, 2009
Confessions of a Newbie Classical Announcer Marty Ronish, the co-creator of the excellent classical music radio blog, Scanning the Dial, asked me to contribute some thoughts about what it's like to be a rookie radio host. I recently launched my first radio series, VoiceBox, through NPR-affiliate...
Posted July 1, 2009
The Nature Of The Beast In his excellent article about Merce Cunningham's decision to disband his dance company following his death ("Why Dances Disappear") Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout does a brilliant job of explaining how dances are taught by choreographers to dancers and...
Posted June 30, 2009
Joe Jennings On The Podium The people that know Joe Jennings well say that he isn't given to voluminous outward displays of emotion. The few times I've spent in the company of the great American chorus conductor, interviewing him for articles about Chanticleer, the world-famous...
Posted June 29, 2009
VISUAL
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
How to Think about Public Art How to think about public art? Do you just keep doing the same thing? Big art? Architectural intimacy? Site-specific narrative? Locally responsive? Internationally, public art has been institutionalized as the founder's dreamed in the 1960 and 1970s. Big -...
Posted September 7, 2008
Public Art as Science Project MOMA and PS1 prepare the public for the "Watersfalls" later this month in NYC. The the scaffolding has been constructed under the Brooklyn bridge. Photo taken on May 26. From the Bay Area and Boston emerge artworks that are mainly science projects overlaid with...
Posted June 1, 2008
Starting Over Again Returning to New York City after a 20-year journey in Seattle and South Florida. New York taught me how to think art. Psychologically, NYC has changed dramatically. Signs in the subway remind parents to keep baby carriages off the escalator. Street territory has been reapportioned for...
Posted May 17, 2008
Public Buyers of Public Art On April 11 in North Carolina, Glenn Harper, Editor of Sculpture Magazine and Bill Thompson, Editor of Landscape Architecture, and I meet to kick off the "Public Art 360" Conference. Click Here to Attend. In the next few weeks,...
Posted March 16, 2008
Knitters beat MGM Mirage in Public Art Media Blitz At the end of last week, two public art projects competed for media attention in the USA. In the small town of Yellow Springs, Ohio, a few local women knitted a sweater for ONE tree during a winter day....
Posted March 11, 2008
Another Bouncing Ball
Regina Hackett takes her Art to Go
Boom threat: Mount St. Helens broods over the bent world St Helens super-volcano news here and here. Mark Morford explains it all in Your imminent apocalyptic death. It's just around the corner. Any minute now. No really, including: Did you hear? It's quite possible. Right there, under Mount St. Helens...
Posted July 3, 2009
Sleeping alone Shaun Kardinal at Vermillion to July 5. (Group photo exhibit with Katherine Dyke, Jesse Delira, Aaron Morris and Joey Velazquez.)...
Posted July 3, 2009
All the econmic news that's fit to print (in a painting) Anne Karsten, Sink...
Posted July 3, 2009
Come into my parlor, said Obama to the fly Bothering President Obama is not a good idea if you're a fly. (Much-watched video encounter here.) There's something about the president's calm focus followed by quick action that reminded me of this:Catherine ChalmersThere are always more flies.The history of the...
Posted July 3, 2009
Art Baloney - that's easy for you to say It had to happen. The (new) Art Baloney Blog describes itself as a collection of the "most egregious and pretentious art speak or outright bullshit we manage to unearth." (Via C-Monster)Writing deserving such notice certainly exists. Reading it is like...
Posted July 2, 2009
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
Kusamarama: Art and Anxiety (Part II) Samuel Johnson Had It (And So Did Howard Hughes) Samuel Johnson suffered from the need to engage in threshold rituals, was prone to repetitive step-counting and continual praying. ...
Posted June 7, 2009
Francis Bacon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Francis Bacon, Painting, 1946 Bacon Fat When it comes to Francis Bacon (1909-1992), less is more. The current "Centenary Retrospective" at the Metropolitan, on view through Aug. 16, is ample proof. One picture...
Posted May 31, 2009
Strike Will Cripple Art Industry in 2010 Received: Art Strike 2010-13! The refusal to labor is the chief weapon of workers fighting the system; artists can use the same weapon. To bring down the art system it is necessary to call for years...
Posted May 25, 2009
'The Pictures Generation' at the Met Not Every Picture Tells a Story "The Pictures Generation (1974-1984)," now at New York's Metropolitan Museum through...
Posted May 21, 2009
Oldenburg at the Whitney Ice Bag Restored Centered around the artist's newly restored Ice Bag - Scale C (1971) -- it inflates! it slumps! it rotates! -- Claes Oldenburg: Early Sculpture, Drawings, and Happenings Films (through Sept. 8) ...
Posted May 20, 2009
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Golden "Afghanistan" Now at the Met: A Blockbuster for Love, Not Money Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S., at Metropolitan Museum's press preview for his country's antiquitiesI recently wrote about the wrong kind of blockbuster---extravaganzas organized under commercial auspices that are big on evocative atmospherics, low on scholarly seriousness, and...
Posted July 3, 2009
Richard Koch, MoMA’s Urbane Former Deputy Director, Dies UPDATED Talking to me when I'm in full investigative-reporter mode is a bit like going to the dentist---lots of abrasive drilling. Not much fun for the person sitting in the interviewee's chair.That's why I was so appreciative and admiring of Richard...
Posted July 2, 2009
Kozinn-Tommasini Smackdown: NY Times Critics Clash over Tully Hall Makeover Anthony Tommasini, NY Times' chief classical music critic, at the press conference for the new Alice Tully HallAt the time of the reopening of Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, when I was sharply critical of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's makeover,...
Posted July 1, 2009
Timothy Rub: In Philly for Keeps? Timothy Rub, posing in front of the new Rafael Viñoly-designed wing of the Cleveland Museum, which he's about to leaveMaybe it was a good thing that I couldn't teleport myself to the Philadelphia Museum in time for Monday morning's press...
Posted July 1, 2009
Busting the Embargo-Busters: NY Times’ Sam Sifton Explains What Happened UPDATED Peter Dobrin, Philadelphia Inquirer's culture writerI was steamed when Robin Pogrebin's NY Times story broke the news embargo I'd agreed to (regarding the Brodsky Bill), and now Peter Dobrin of the Philadelphia Inquirer is steamed about a similar run-in with...
Posted June 30, 2009
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern and contemporary art blog
Happy Fourth (updated) Enjoy the long weekend. See you Monday.Fresh from the morning papers: The Fishers abandon their plans for a Main Post-based contemporary art museum in the Presidio. Preservationists rejoice....
Posted July 2, 2009
Still-life Wednesday: Toledo's new Thiebaud Continuing, sort of, from here and here...The Toledo Museum of Art has acquired Wayne Thiebaud's 1963 Roast Beef Dinner (Trucker's Supper), at left.Roast Beef Dinner is a quintessentially mid-20th-century American still-life. It's a square meal of the sort one would...
Posted July 1, 2009
Still-life Wednesday, part two Continuing from this morning...Luis Melendez, the greatest Spanish still-life painter of the 18th-century, elevated simple, rustic objects into palace decorations for royals. A survey of his still-life paintings is on view at the National Gallery of Art until Aug. 23....
Posted July 1, 2009
Still-life Wednesday, part one Throughout the day I'll be featuring some food-centric still-lifes on view now at American museums. Today's last post will feature a new museum acquisition.This is Job Berckheyde's The Baker (~1681), on view at the Worcester Art Museum. Berckheyde was a...
Posted July 1, 2009
Five things from the Worcester Art Museum 1.) The Worcester Art Museum is the best American art museum you probably haven't been to. The European collection is deep and full of good paintings and the American collection (and installations) are top-notch.2.) Worcester's Jacob van Ruisdael might be...
Posted June 30, 2009
MOST RECENT POSTS
AJBlogCentral | rss
visual
AJBlogCentral | rss
visual
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Another Bouncing Ball | 07/02/09@01:47PM
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lies like truth | 07/02/09@07:55AM
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ideasAlmanac Today's entry: Henri Matisse on influence....
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