Tuesday, August 31, 2010

"Dreaming of Architecture" // The Venice Architecture Biennale Report, from T Magazine

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Felix Burrichter

Now that the three-day frenzy of the Venice Architecture Biennale opening weekend is over, and all the journalists and big-name architects have left the lagoon, it’s time to take a closer look at the exhibition and this year’s winners — and to let the general public cast their vote.

Card Catalog Challenge @ DDS Library // September 1 through 25

The new Card Catalog Challenge is a ‘green’ event using twenty library catalog cards to create an art piece with the same cards that are now part of our online public access catalog. Back in the day, these cards were hand written/typed by catalogers and later machine processed to provide a record of what the library held in its collection. Now they are recycled cards whose text can be a part of a created art piece to be displayed in the Divinity Library art gallery during October. Prototypes are on display in the library to help give you ideas. Pick up your cards September 1st from the Circulation Desk. Deadline is Sept 25th. One entry per person, cannot be larger than “12 x 12 x 12″, don’t have to use all 20 but can’t use more, only acceptable text is what’s on the card, origami is okay, sculpture, painting or three dimensional work is fine, everyone gets 20 cards. Good luck!

More info

Developing a full-blown case of 'Franzenfreude' // NPR asks whether the glowing reviews of Jonathan Franzen's new novel are due in part to his gender

Back on August 12, New Creation let you know about Time magazine's placement of Jonathen Franzen on it's cover - the first time in a decade that the esteemed magazine has had a living novelist grace its front. That was on the early end of what is becoming a kind of perfect literary storm surrounding Franzen's new novel Freedom (released today, August 31). Time hailed Franzen a "Great American Writer" and also lauded praise on his new book. On August 19th over at The New York Times, book review editor Sam Tanenhaus declared the book "a masterpiece" and compares Franzen to such transcendent literary luminaries as Leo Tolstoy and Thomas Mann.

But now, NPR reveals another side to this tsunami of critical praise (and soon-to-be-seen commercial success) of Franzen and his new book. In "Feminist Franzenfreude over Raves for 'Freedom'" Lynn Neary of NPR's All Things Considered reports that many high profile female authors feel that Franzen's glowing reviews are due in no small part to his gender. It's a provocative, thoughtful and well-reported piece that deserves attention.
-- Leif

Read or Listen to the Article in Full Here from NPR // Excerpt Below

by Lynn Neary

Jonathan Franzen has a way of making people mad. When his last novel, The Corrections, was picked by Oprah Winfrey for her book club, Franzen made it known that he was not comfortable with the populist honor — so Oprah withdrew the offer. This time around a couple of best-selling female writers, Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner, have tweeted their disdain for what they see as critical fawning over Franzen's new novel, Freedom.

Weiner has even come up with a phrase to describe her feelings: Franzenfreude. "Schadenfreude is taking pleasure in the pain of others," Weiner says. "Franzenfreude is taking pain in the multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen."

But her angst is not just about the book — or even about Franzen himself. It's about the establishment choosing one writer and writing about him again and again and again," Weiner says, "while they are ignoring a lot of other worthy writers and, in the case of The New York Times, entire genres of books."

Free iPhone App Helps You Explore Local Architecture // Buildings, by Despark Ltd.

From GOOD

Buildings, a new free iPhone app by Despark Ltd., the people behind the great Open Buildings site, allows you to find, learn about, and share the architecture in your local area and around the world. Like a Wikipedia for architecture, Buildings has a user-generated database of structures. [...]

You can download the free app and start engaging with your city's buildings here.

Read more

Poet and Painter As Priest // Advanced Spiritual Formation Group @ DDS

CHURCHMIN 5.07 Poet and Painter as Priest

Leader: Enuma Okoro, professional writer, Raleigh, NC

The arts can play a unique and necessary role in our spiritual formation. They remind us that we are made in the image of a creating God who delights in beauty. As a mirror to the divine, the arts also call us to engage God's work in the world with all our senses and to discover new and deepening ways of paying attention. This Spiritual formation class will focus on the poetry of Mary Oliver and the visual art of Marc Chagall as mediums for spiritual growth. Students will be expected to participate in shared reflections and guided literary and visual artistic practices. But don't worry, you do not require any experience with the arts for this! Class meeting on Fridays 10:00 to 11:15 am.

__________



Enuma has a new book out called Reluctant Pilgrim: A Moody, Somewhat Self-Indulgent Introvert's Search for Spiritual Community. Check it out!

Monday, August 30, 2010

Remembering Hurricane Katrina 5 Years Later

OK, I'm biased--part of this news piece was shot in my living room and features my parents and pictures taken by my sister. :) -- Sarah

__________


"Beyond the mountains, more mountains..." // In Haiti, "The Art of Resilience"

View the extended article and video slide-show from Smithsonian Magazine here // Excerpt Below

By Bill Brubaker

Six weeks had passed since a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti, killing 230,000 people and leaving more than 1.5 million others homeless. But the ground was still shaking in the nation’s rubble-strewn capital, Port-au-Prince, and 87-year-old Préfète Duffaut wasn’t taking any chances. One of the most prominent Haitian artists of the past 50 years was sleeping in a crude tent made of plastic sheeting and salvaged wood, fearful his earthquake-damaged house would collapse at any moment. "My future paintings will be inspired by this terrible tragedy,” he told me. “What I have seen on the streets has given me a lot of ideas and added a lot to my imagination.”

There was an unmistakable look of hope in the old master’s eyes. “Deye mon, gen mon,” a Haitian proverb, is Creole for “beyond the mountains, more mountains.”

Keep Reading...

"Ruin and Revival" After Katrina // PBS documents redemptive works of visual art in New Orleans

Explore the Article and Slideshow in full here // Article Excerpt Below

from PBS Arts:

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, creativity thrived and helped to heal a community crushed by disaster. Now, five years later, artistic works across New Orleans grow where structures crumbled and lives were washed away.

Submit Field Ed photos for the 2010 "Images from the Field" exhibit!

"Images from the Field" Field Ed Photo Exhibit

Have a favorite picture from your field ed experience this summer? Submit it to New Creation for inclusion in the 2010 "Images from the Field" Photo Exhibit! You don't have to be a professional photographer to send us an image! Please visit http://www.duke.edu/web/newcreation to download submission guidelines and forms, and send a completed form with each submission to newcreationartsgroup@gmail.com by Friday, September 10. New Creation leaders will print out photos and we'll have a hanging party the following Friday, to which everyone is invited. Can't wait to see your pictures! Feel free to email us at the above address if you have any questions.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

In Minneapolis // Three exhibits explore theological themes through various visual mediums

On a recent trip to Minneapolis I was fortunate to take in three separate exhibits which explore vibrant theological themes through various visual art mediums and which I would like to pass along in the hope that, even if you are not able to visit the museums themselves, that the ideas which inform the respective exhibits may be of use to artists or curators visiting this blog as they conceive of and pursue future projects. Follow the hyperlinked text in red below to learn more about the individual exhibits, the first two of which are housed at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts (MIA) with the third (Guillermo Kuitca) located at the Walker Art Center. -- Leif

This Tuesday a "Crisis on Campus" emerges // Noted Religion scholar offers a "bold plan for reforming our Colleges and Universities"

In April 2009, influential religion scholar Mark C. Taylor (currently chair of the Religion Department at Columbia University) published one of the most widely read and provocative Op/Ed's in recent memory when his End The University As We Know It appeared in The New York Times.


Due to the passionate response (both for and against) and the wide-readership/discussion which it generated, the publisher Knopf approached Taylor about writing a book-length version of the Op/Ed. Now, on August 31st, that book will drop both online and in stores. The publishing of Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities looks to be a significant (perhaps even landmark) moment in the on-going discussion of the future(s) of the university and of academic departments.


An excellent place to learn more about the ideas behind the book as well as Taylor's career as a provocateur in fields as disparate as religion, the arts, and educational/pedagogical theory is this January 2010 article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Provocations of Mark Taylor. Also of note, particularly regarding Taylor's views on teaching religion, is this 2008 Q & A session with Columbia University Press shortly after he became chair of the Religion Department. -- Leif

New Creation on YouTube


New Creation is now on YouTube! Subscribe to our channel and view videos we've favorited that have appeared in the blog or have a connection to theology and the arts.

Five Years After the Hurricane // Five Albums that Celebrate New Orleans and its Indomitable Music

Full article here // Excerpt below

From Paste Magazine

It’s been five years since Hurricane Katrina unleashed her fury on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and while pain and devastation still lingers, one feared side-effect of the disaster—the disintegration of the Crescent City’s unspeakably valuable music community—hasn’t yet come to pass. Instead, over the past several years, New Orleans music has been lifted up time and time again, both by its own luminaries and by artists from around the world, both in celebration of its own history and also as a means to keep the city itself alive.


Keep reading...

Saturday, August 28, 2010

New Creation Asks: Is our plugged-in, digital fixation making us less creative? And what does that mean for today's churches?


Is our plugged-in, digital fixation making us less creative? That's the conclusion that scientists across the country and around the world are coming to in the wake of recent publishings on the subject (see the below excerpt from the recent NY Times article,
"Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime").

Tangential questions to consider include what these disclosures mean not only for the future of creativity at large but especially as it relates to faith, ministry, and theology. Are today's churches destined to be implicit enablers of our culture's digital addiction? Or can they help us to un-plug and, in the process, discover a more faithful relation to today's whiz-bang technological gadgetry? -- Leif

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Matt Richtel

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s 1 p.m. on a Thursday and Dianne Bates, 40, juggles three screens. She listens to a few songs on her iPod, then taps out a quick e-mail on her iPhone and turns her attention to the high-definition television.

Just another day at the gym.

As Ms. Bates multitasks, she is also churning her legs in fast loops on an elliptical machine in a downtown fitness center. She is in good company. In gyms and elsewhere, people use phones and other electronic devices to get work done — and as a reliable antidote to boredom.

Cellphones, which in the last few years have become full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner conversation.

The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

Keep Reading...

Where Paint and Poetry Meet // From WSJ's "Masterpiece" Column


Full Essay Here // Excerpt Below

Even children are drawn, viscerally, to "The Figure 5 in Gold," one of the most recognizable works in American Modernism. Painted in 1928, its vibrant red, black and gold fire-engine motif barrels at the viewer, delivering a "Pow!" that Pop artists strived to achieve a few decades later. Somehow, the bold image manages to transmit not only the speed but also the screams of a fire truck weaving its way through a crowded New York street.

On its own, this visual impact might have made Charles Demuth's most famous work into an icon of American art. But "The Figure 5 in Gold" has much more going for it. It's the best work in a genre Demuth created, the "poster portrait." It's a witty homage to his close friend, the poet William Carlos Williams, and a transliteration into paint of his poem, "The Great Figure." It's a decidedly American work made at a time when U.S. artists were just moving beyond European influences. It's a reference to the intertwined relationships among the arts in the 1920s, a moment of cross-pollination that led to American Modernism. And it anticipates Pop art.


"The Last Exorcism" // NYT Film Review


Full Review Here // Excerpt Below

by Jeannette Catsoulis

The Devil is in the entrails in “The Last Exorcism,” an unusually restrained and genuinely eerie little movie perched at the intersection of faith, folklore and female puberty.

Disclosures of Being, Without Words // From SOF Observed

by Trent Gilliss, senior editor

For this Friday afternoon, a throwback video snack from 1968. Artistic renderings of being through ambulatory expression. The film as described by the National Film Board of Canada’s website:

Animator Ryan Larkin uses an artist’s sensibility to illustrate the way people walk. He employs a variety of techniques—line drawing, colour wash, etc.—to catch and reproduce the motion of people afoot. The springing gait of youth, the mincing step of the high-heeled female, the doddering amble of the elderly—all are registered with humour and individuality, to the accompaniment of special sound. Without words.


NASA & U2 create video to celebrate year-long collaboration


Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

From U2.com:

NASA and U2 have released a 14-minute commemorative video clip - highlighting a year’s worth of collaboration both in space and the U2 360 Tour. 



U2 approached NASA with an idea to include a dialogue between themselves and the crew of the International Space Station in the U2 360 show. NASA astronauts spoke with U2 several times before recording a video segment that U2 incorporated into their concert.




'Working with U2 is atypical for NASA,' said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations. 'By combining their world tour with the space station's out-of-this-world mission, more people - and different people than our normal target audiences - learned about the International Space Station and the important work we are doing in orbit.'

Looking for the "Black Mamba Boy" // Debut Novel by Nadifa Mohamed chronicles a Somali orphan's odyssey


Article in Full Here // Excerpt Below

by Lorraine Adams

Nadifa Mohamed’s ambitious first novel tells the story of a Somali orphan’s odyssey from Yemen to Djibouti, onward to Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Palestine, Marseille, Hamburg and Wales — and ultimately to an epiphany in London. Toward the end of this trek, the hero meets up with an old friend, with whom he competes “over who had walked the farthest, starved the longest, felt the most hopeless; they were athletes in the hard-luck Olympics.”

Friday, August 27, 2010

Welcome to "The Memory Show" // Re-imagining the musical to encompass the elusive


Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Ben Brantley

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — “The Memory Show,” which recently opened at Barrington Stage Company here, is a musical in search of a melody. That is what it intends to be. In shaping a portrait of a mother with Alzheimer’s disease and the angry, impotent daughter who cares for her, the young composer Zach Redler has written a score that follows the patterns of minds grasping, often in vain, for clarity, conviction and lost time.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Traditioned Innovation in Roots Music // From Faith & Leadership

Full article here // Excerpt below

by Ken Carter

Over the past fifteen years there has been a growing appreciation for what has been termed “Americana” or “roots music.” It includes some elements of country and jazz, bluegrass and rock, blues and gospel. [...] The geography of roots music stretches from New Orleans, through the Delta, to Memphis and Nashville and into Appalachia. It is not accidental that these areas are the most poverty-stricken and the most religious in the United States.

Keep reading...

__________


Also see this post about Patty Griffin's album Downtown Church, which is the focus of much of Carter's article.

Mao's Last Dancer // A Q. and A. With Li Cunxin

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Julie Bloom

When Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from the Soviet Union in 1974, it was a major news event, drawing world attention to both the ballet dancer and ballet. But he was hardly the only dancer to defect from a Communist country and take up residence in the West in that era. Li Cunxin (pronounced Lee TZWUN-sheen) left his home in rural China and his way of life to pursue ballet in the United States, a journey chronicled in “Mao’s Last Dancer,” a new movie by Bruce Beresford.

Keep reading...

Preview Bob Dylan's Major New Art Show // Exhibit in Denmark Features Paintings of Brazil


Full article here // Excerpt below

By Daniel Kreps

Bob Dylan, who has been painting since the 1960s (he created the cover of the Band's Music From Big Pink) will have new paintings and drawings on display at Denmark's Statens Museum for Kunst September 4th through January 30th.

Keep reading...

After Mozart’s Death, an Endless Coda // Speculation on Composer's Cause of Death

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Daniel J. Wakin

Direct medical evidence? None. Autopsy? Not performed. Medical records? Nowhere to be found. Corpse? Disappeared.

Yet according to a recent article in an academic journal, researchers have posited at least 118 causes of death for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

A modest industry of medical speculation has grown up around the subject, evidence of our fascination with what cut down great creative artists in history.

Keep reading...

Scholars Test Web Alternative to Peer Review // More Open Approach to Scholarly Review

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Patricia Cohen

For professors, publishing in elite journals is an unavoidable part of university life. The grueling process of subjecting work to the up-or-down judgment of credentialed scholarly peers has been a cornerstone of academic culture since at least the mid-20th century.

Now some humanities scholars have begun to challenge the monopoly that peer review has on admission to career-making journals and, as a consequence, to the charmed circle of tenured academe.

Keep reading...

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Tai Chi Informs an Understanding of Religion through Form // From SOF Observed

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Trent Gilliss

Over at The Walrus Blog, David Rusack writes a smart and creative reflection on how his training in a specific martial art form of tai chi (Chen-style chuan) has provided a structure that allows him to see with better-informed eyes the parallels with religious traditions and that “the point of the practice is in its form, not its content.”

Keep reading...

It’s Actual Life. No, It’s Drama. No, It’s Both. // Miguel Gomes and Others Mix Drama and Reality

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Dennis Lim

“Our Beloved Month of August,” by the director Miguel Gomes, is at once a musical, a travelogue, a quasi-incestuous family melodrama, an ethnographic portrait of Portuguese folk traditions and an account of its own chaotic production. As he tells it, Mr. Gomes ventured into rural central Portugal a few years ago to make a fictional film against the backdrop of the region’s summer music festivals.

Keep reading...

Putting New Tools in Students' Hands // Experimental Design Classes at Poor, Rural NC Schools

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Alice Rawsthorn

Why would you study design if you weren’t planning to become a designer? Especially if you were a high school student in a depressed rural area of the United States, like Bertie County, one of the poorest counties in North Carolina, where 80 percent of students live in poverty, and your best chance of employment will be a low-skilled job in agriculture or biotechnology.

Keep reading...

Lines Telling Stories // Illustrating the Moxie of Broadway

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Erik Piepenburg

ACTORS covet them. Producers dream of them. Marvin Hamlisch even composed a musical about one. On Broadway, the word “lines” means different things to different people.

[...]

Hirschfeld, whose artwork was synonymous with theater coverage in The New York Times for decades, was an exhaustive chronicler of almost every Broadway show and personality of the 20th century. Gish, Gielgud, Minnelli, Streisand — he drew everyone, and everyone wanted to be drawn by him.

Keep reading...

Brian Wilson to Complete Unfinished Gershwin Songs // Beach Boy to Pursue Completing Compositions

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Joseph Brannigan Lynch

Acclaimed early-20th-century composer George Gershwin’s estate has asked onetime Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson to try his hand at finishing some rare, unfinished Gershwin compositions. The completed songs—along with covers of Gershwin classics—will appear on the scruffy pop genius’s next solo album, to be released through a Walt Disney Records imprint.

Keep reading...

Sunday, August 22, 2010

For Pianist, Software Is Replacing Sonatas // Robert Taub's MuseAmi Creates Music Software, Even for iPad

Full article here // Excerpt below

By James Barron

The pianist Robert Taub was puttering around the house one afternoon in 2004 while his teen-age daughter was practicing for a violin lesson — a Schubert sonatina in A minor. His assessment of her playing was diplomatic: “She needed to be reminded about notes and rhythms.”

What followed was a brainstorm that explains why Mr. Taub — who made his reputation playing two distinctly different B’s, Beethoven and Milton Babbitt — has put his performing on hold, and why “software entrepreneur” now tops his résumé.

Keep reading...

__________


Improvox is Taub's new iPad application, which he developed when trying to teach his children music. (Source)

Art Talk with Holly Bass // Video and Interview

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Art Works

Poet, dancer, trapezist—Holly Bass is a bonafide Washington, DC multihyphenate. In this audio blog, Bass shares her take on living the artist’s life in the nation’s capital (and recites “Black Broadway,” her ode to the District’s famous U Street neighborhood).

Keep reading...

Science, Religion, and Splitting Infinity // From SOF Observed


Full article here // Excerpt below

By Eric Nelson

Serving as a spokesperson for Christian Science, much of my time is spent correcting inaccuracies and misconceptions about my faith that appear in the daily press and, rarely but occasionally, the entertainment media.
In one particular instance, however, I was pleased to find that few such corrections were necessary thanks, in no small measure, to the performance of one woman in Jamie Pachino’s stage play, “Splitting Infinity.”

Keep reading...

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Music as a Sacrament for U2 // Bono Interview with Rolling Stone

Full article here // Excerpt below

By David Fricke

Rolling Stone: The setlist in Turin was interesting in that two of the new songs you played, "Return of the Sting Ray Guitar" and "Glastonbury," were total blinders: profane rock & roll kicks in between the spiritual-ambition parts of the show. Then there was "North Star," an unfinished acoustic ballad.

Bono: Music is a sacrament for us. In that song ["North Star"], I thought, "It's okay to write a love song for the universe." "Glastonbury" was very funny that night-- we did a version of that we knew we nailed, and then something happened at the end, I got lost a little bit [grins]. Edge had been hanging out with Jimmy Page [the two guitarists co-starred in the documentary It Might Get Loud], and you can't help but have that rub off. So now it's Willie Dixon, all those blues guys. Edge had this big riff. But I hear "Glastonbury" like the Chemical Brothers, the Prodigy.

The song is about going to this music festival. [U2 were scheduled to headline at the British festival -- Bono's surgery forced them to cancel.] It's a pilgrimage. It also turns out there's a white flower that twice yearly blooms at Glastonbury. And the mythology of Glastonbury goes back to Joesph of Arimathea -- he's the guy who helped take the body of Jesus down from the cross. He is also said to have gone to Britain, to Glastonbury, where he put his staff in the ground. This big tree at Glastonbury, with this white flower, is supposed to come from that. [Bono recites part of the lyrics to U2's song: "Came to find a flowering rose/The flowering rose of Glastonbury".] And he's supposed to have brought the cup from the Last Supper, the Holy Grail.

Keep reading...


"Was being born black, gay and poor a 'burden'?" // Book review: 'The Cross of Redemption' by James Baldwin


Full article here // Excerpt below

By Lynell George

Not infrequently, James Baldwin found himself quite publicly fielding a deeply presuming question. Though versions varied over time, the rough paraphrase was this: "Was being born black, gay and poor a 'burden'?" Did he ever wonder, "Why
me?"

A dynamic, trailblazing presence on erudite TV chat shows as well as a de facto talking head booked to parse the complex territory of the Negro Problem, Baldwin was always ready with the not-so-inscrutable smile, then the ice-water answer: "No. I thought I'd hit the jackpot."

Keep reading...

__________


The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, edited by Randall Kenan, will be released on August 24, 2010.

Frank Kermode // NYT Editorial: Appreciations

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Verlyn Klinkenborg

I met Frank Kermode, who died Tuesday at age 90, more than 20 years ago over coffee at Columbia University, where he was teaching. I had come to propose writing a profile about him, a project that went nowhere mainly because the magazine I had hoped to write for didn’t write about literary critics in those days. Kermode didn’t dismiss the idea, and so I heard, that afternoon, about the Isle of Man, where he was born in “a herringless winter,” as he later wrote.

Keep reading...

Thursday, August 19, 2010

The Sea and the English Who Tried to Master It // Exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Edward Rothstein

We know well the hazards latent in the sea. For months, we have watched millions of barrels of oil erupting from the ocean floor, just after its explosive force claimed the lives of 11 workers who toiled on precarious platforms perched above the waves. We have also, in recent years, watched waters engulf the shores and dwellings of New Orleans, wreaking havoc as in ancient tales.

But it is doubtful that we take the ocean really seriously — as seriously, that is, as the people who wrote the books and pamphlets, drew the maps and learned the ropes and knots on display in an exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library here did.

Keep reading...

Arnold Odermatt // Photographing the Calm After the Crash

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Jonathan Schultz

The shot, one of dozens on display at New York’s Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte gallery, was taken in 1972 by Arnold Odermatt, the official police photographer of Nidwalden, Switzerland. From 1948 until his 1990 retirement, Mr. Odermatt documented with a master lensman’s eye the aftermath of vehicular accidents within his canton — that is, his state within the federal state of Switzerland. His talent was later recognized by a Swiss curator, Harald Szeemann, who secured Mr. Odermatt’s oeuvre a showing at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001.

Keep reading...

Bob Dylan in America // Forthcoming Book by Sean Wilentz

Sean Wilentz's new book will be published in September by Doubleday. Click here to read an excerpt.

Sheet Music Piracy // You Can Get Everything For Free On The Internet

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Jeff Lunden

Digital technology has made it possible for users to share perfect copies of audio and video files over the Internet, skirting copyright laws. And, as Tony Award-winning songwriter Jason Robert Brown discovered recently, even sheet music isn't immune. When he published correspondence about the issue between a teenage fan and himself on his blog, he unleashed what he has called a "firestorm" of responses.

Keep reading...

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Where Muslims and Christians Drew Lines in the Sand // The Tenth Parallel

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Mark Oppenheimer

Traveling the latitude that describes the borderland of Islam and Christianity in much of Asia and Africa, where warlords, missionaries, aid workers and profiteers battle for oil as well as for souls, Ms. Griswold dodges attack dogs in Nigeria, leaves an office building in Somalia hours before it is hit by a suicide bomber and departs the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta, on the island of Java, the morning before an earthquake that killed 5,000 people.

[...]

Everywhere Ms. Griswold travels, Christianity and Islam are debased by their own practitioners. In Khartoum she sees the evangelist Franklin Graham (Billy Graham’s son) visit a 4-month-old girl in the hospital who is dying of a congenital heart defect; he gives her mother a gift box that contains a pamphlet encouraging her to repent and come to Jesus. In Malaysia the government pays isolated villagers who cling to their indigenous beliefs the equivalent of several dollars to convert to Islam.

Keep reading...

Image and Text Collide at Amsterdam Show // The Art of Charlotte Salomon


Full article here // Excerpt below

By Joel Weickgenant

In Charlotte Salomon’s art, text and image meet in an exuberant burst of joy and anguish. Brooding, fluid figures are drawn with a line that seems ready to disappear into the vortex of color on the page. Tight columns of text are piled one atop the other like hieroglyphs in an Egyptian relic. An exhibition at the Jewish Historical Museum of early gouaches by the artist, who was killed at Auschwitz during World War II, examines this mix of text and image, and the explicitly lyrical nature of her work.

Keep reading...

A Hit Record, and an Indie-Rock Identity Crisis // The Arcade Fire

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Ben Sisario

IN January 1992, Nirvana’s “Nevermind” replaced Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous” as No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, and the S-word began to fly, from critics, old fans and anyone else whose favorite underground band had been scrubbed and neutered on its way to the top: “sellout.”

Keep reading...

Friday in Durham // One of a Kind Artists' Books Exhibit


Off the Wall: One of a Kind Artists' Books by John Davis and Susan Leeb

This collection is what results when two people who usually work in two-dimensional, wall-mounted media, (printmaking and photography) take their work off the wall and turn it into three-dimensional books (loosely defined). These objects fold, move, pop-up and do other things that books are not typically expected to do. The successful integration of content and structure is one of their principal objectives.

The show will remain up through the end of August.

Foyer gallery hours are Weds 4-6pm and by appt. 949 4847.

BCAC members will have work for show and sale in their studios.

Venue: Bull City Arts Collaborative
Date: 08/20/2010
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl @ the Nasher // Exhibition Opening and DJ Party

Wednesday
August 25, 2010
8:30 - 10:30 PM
Opening Event and DJ Party


Be the first to see "The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl," the groundbreaking exhibition that explores the culture of vinyl records through 50 years of contemporary art. Celebrate with artists William Cordova, Harrison Haynes, Taiyo Kimura, Tim Lee, David McConnell, Mingering Mike, 9th Wonder, Fatimah Tuggar and Lyota Yagi. Listen to records with New York-based DJs Piotr Orlov and Dave Tompkins, who contributed essays to the exhibition catalogue. See work by 41 artists, including a 16-foot canoe made of red 45s by Satch Hoyt, colorful buttons made of melted down Billie Holiday records by Dario Robleto and Mark Soo's 3D recreation of Sun Records studio in 1954 Memphis.

More information here.

Museum Acquires Storied Trove of Performances by Jazz Greats // National Jazz Museum


Full article here // Excerpt below

By Larry Rohter

For decades jazz cognoscenti have talked reverently of “the Savory Collection.” Recorded from radio broadcasts in the late 1930s by an audio engineer named William Savory, it was known to include extended live performances by some of the most honored names in jazz — but only a handful of people had ever heard even the smallest fraction of that music, adding to its mystique.

Keep reading...

Surreal Glories of a Salt Flat // From NYT's Green Blog

Full article here // Excerpt below

By John Collins Rudolf


Watch the full episode. See more POV.


For the past six years the Australian photographer Murray Fredericks has journeyed across the lake bed (it fills completely only about once every 100 years), camping alone on the salt flats for as much as five weeks at a time. He collected the photographs from these expeditions for display in “Salt,” a stunning 2006 gallery show in London, Sydney, Paris and Shanghai.

Keep reading...

Krista on Being // Speaking of Faith's Name Change

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Kate Moos

Krista Tippett on name change from Speaking of Faith on Vimeo.

Our pal, Future Tense host John Moe, agreed to interview Krista and get at the basic questions: Why the change? Why Being? What does it all mean? In this video, our inimitable host takes on these questions with passion, intelligence, and grace.

Keep reading...

WWJD? Not Burn the Quran // From Richard B. Hays

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Richard B. Hays

A small church in Gainesville, Fla., (ironically called Dove World Outreach Center) has announced plans to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, in vengeful commemoration of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington nine years ago. This news item happened to reach me while I was attending a conference in Berlin, Germany - and for that reason it struck me with special force.

Keep reading...

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Story Ballets, Still Romantically Inclined // For Ballet, Plots Thicken, or Just Stick?

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Alastair Macauley

“DEAR friends,” the retired ballerina Gelsey Kirkland wrote in an open letter on the Web site for the new Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet (gelseykirklandballet.org), “I have come to believe over the years that the future of ballet lies in the art of dramatic storytelling, drawing on the wellsprings of classical tradition.” The school’s mission statement underscores this belief: “To encourage a renaissance of dramatic storytelling in ballet by providing specialized training for gifted students and by establishing a classically oriented studio company capable of creating new dramatic works.”

Keep reading...