Miles Hoffman asks, "Why is there no Jewish sacred music in the classical canon?"

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Miles Hoffman

TODAY is the first day of Rosh Hashana, the holiday that marks the beginning of the Jewish new year. For the next 10 days, through Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Jews around the world will gather to chant the prayers of the High Holy Days to melodies that have been used for generations. Some of the melodies will be simple and some complex, and some will be particularly beautiful. What almost none of them will be is “classical”: Western classical composition, the dominant feature of Christian sacred music for more than a millennium, remains mostly absent from Jewish liturgical music.

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Transpositions riffs on the question of "What an artist brings to theology, and vice versa"

From the blog (Transpositions) of The Institute of Theology, Imagination, and The Arts at St. Andrews University comes a rumination on "what an artist brings to theology, and vice versa" by a Doctorate student in Theology at St. Andrews.

Full Post Here // Excerpt Below

by Sara

Over the past three days, I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of ITIA’s annual conference. This year, the conference engaged with the work of Professor David Brown, specifically considering his assertion that revelation of God can be found in the experience of the created world.

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A conversation with the father of Modern Architectural Minimalism // Q & A with John Pawson

Full Interview Here // Excerpt Below

by Penelope Green

Green: You have designed two Trappist communities, as well as an abbey, a church and a private chapel in Europe, and I know you had thought to join a Buddhist order when you were in your 20s. I’d like to hear about your night in the monastery.

Pawson: I’d seen a documentary of Zen Buddhist monks practicing martial arts in a temple, so, of course, being 24, I thought, “Oh, I’ll go and be one of those.” I flew to Japan. It was a very pleasant flight. It was Christmas Eve, and snowing. And a friend, my Japanese contact, took me to a monastery in northern Japan at my request. I knocked on the door, they said: “Fine, come in. Here’s a mop. Polish the floor.” At 4 a.m.

I got a bowl of rice or something, and I suddenly woke up and left. Luckily, my friend was waiting for me in a hotel in the town. When he had dropped me off, he’d told me he’d wait. And I said: “Oh no, I’m here for a year. I’m waiting for enlightenment.”

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"The Warmth of Other Suns" // 15 years of writing and research later, Isabel Wilkerson's tracing of the Great Migration is published

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Charles McGrath

ATLANTA — To finish “The Warmth of Other Suns,” her magisterial new history of the black migration in America, which carried millions of Southerners northward or westward, Isabel Wilkerson had to complete a sort of reverse migration. She began writing the book in Chicago, where she was the bureau chief for The New York Times, and finished it more than a decade later in a house in the Virginia Highland neighborhood of Atlanta. Ms. Wilkerson moved here in 2001, for reasons unconnected to the book, and immediately discovered, she said this week, that she “needed to be here, only I didn’t know it.”

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Found in Translation (Part II) // Esther Allen discusses her work

Back on September 1st, New Creation brought you this interview with Charlotte Mandell concerning the life and work of translation. Now comes a second part in this series of discussions with translators (this time with Esther Allen) from Artworks, the blog of The National Endowment for the Arts. Enjoy! -- Leif

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

From Artworks

NEA: How do you balance your own creative voice with the voice of the source text when translating?

ESTHER ALLEN: Here I’ll send you back to my response to the first question: first and foremost, I have to translate work I believe in. Sometimes there is no more effective way of saying what you want to say than through a translation. One excellent example of this can be found in the life of the 19th-century Cuban revolutionary José Martí, whom I’ve translated extensively. He spent a lot of time and money translating Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona into Spanish, publishing it himself, and doing his best to distribute it throughout the Spanish-speaking world in the mid-1880s. He did this because he saw Ramona as a testimony to the threat that Anglo-American expansion posed to Hispanic and indigenous peoples—and since it was written by an Anglo-American, its wake-up call was far more compelling than anything he himself could have written.

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In Jerusalem // Celebrating the re-opening of the Israel Museum with an unusual flourish

Article in Full Here // Excerpt Below

by Ariel David

JERUSALEM — What do Marcel Duchamp’s readymades have to do with a Chinese mandarin’s robe? And what is the link between the crowns of African kings and a synagogue in South America?

These are some of the questions raised by three contemporary artists who were asked by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem to select pieces from its vast collections to create their own special exhibitions. To celebrate the reopening this summer of the museum’s main galleries following a $100 million renewal, the artists were given free rein on about half a million pieces ranging from prehistoric tools to conceptual art.

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A Jewish Prayer-Poem that stares our frailty in the face // From Speaking of Faith

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Krista Tippett, host of Speaking of Faith

At the beginning of my conversation with Rabbi Sharon Brous and again at the end, we discuss a seminal prayer-poem of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Unetaneh Tokef. It is a recital of commonplace mortal perils of the year to come:

How many shall pass away and how many shall be born,
Who shall live and who shall die…
Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued,
Who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low…

Our culture — human nature magnified — denies frailty and finitude with a million devices. This religious ritual, more realistically, stares them in the face and asks us to make sense of our lives in and because of them.

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In Iraq // Treasures and ancient art return, but questions of absence remain

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by Steven Lee Myers

BAGHDAD — Iraq announced on Tuesday the return of hundreds of looted antiquities that had ended up in the United States, even as a senior official disclosed that 632 pieces repatriated last year and turned over to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki were now unaccounted for.

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"A Ramadan Drumbeat is Sounded in Queens"

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by Kirk Semple

It was just past 4 the other morning when Mohammad Boota pulled his Lincoln Town Car into a service station on an industrial stretch in Long Island City, Queens, and bounded out — a typhoon of embroidered fabric, good cheer and unusual urgency. Mr. Boota, a limousine driver, has built a sideline as a ceremonial drummer for his fellow Pakistani immigrants. He is also New York City’s foremost — and perhaps only —Ramadan drummer.

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"What is the point of Christian Arts?" // From the blog 'Transpositions'

It turns out that the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts at The University of St. Andrews gave birth to its own blog sometime this summer. The arrival of Transpositions is flat-out awesome news for those of us interested in the interface between theology and the arts (which no doubt includes you, dear reader). Of their many excellent recent posts this one, "What is the point of Christian Arts?"(briefly excerpted below), looks like a must-read. You might also want to check out this mid-July post entitled "All That Jazz" which explores the endurance of the jazz metaphor within ministry and theology. To learn more about Transpositions and its contributors, please follow this link. -- Leif

Full Post Here // Excerpt Below

by Sara

The week of 23 August, the Guardian website ran a series of responses to the question: ‘What is the point of Christian arts?’. Three writers respond to the question posed: Harriet Baber, Roz Kaveney, and Maggi Dawn... What strikes me about the responses is the role given to Christian faith and belief, primarily providing a framework for understanding when approaching works of art.

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"The Happy Paradox of Meditation and Photography" // From SOF Observed

by Monica Biswas

Creating a photograph is like meditation, full of paradoxes that coexist happily. The perfect shot cannot be captured by chasing it into a corner, and yet you must have the persistent drive to do it.

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A Medical Doctor and a Novelist // "A Physician Examines His Novels"

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Steven Erlanger

Dr. Keilson devoted his life to his patients, many of them Jewish children traumatized by the war and separation from their biological parents, some of whom the Nazis had murdered. He wrote a groundbreaking and widely translated study of “sequential trauma.”

But he wrote novels and poetry too, and it was an extraordinary and puzzling surprise for him, he said, when last month in The New York Times Book Review, Francine Prose, reviewing “The Death of the Adversary” and “Comedy in a Minor Key” — two of his novels written more than 50 years ago — called them masterpieces and labeled him a genius.

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At Duke // The Nasher presents "The Record" (September 2, 2010 - February 11, 2011)

Full Exhibit Description Here // Excerpt Below

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University presents a groundbreaking exhibition that explores the culture of vinyl records through 50 years of contemporary art.

The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl features work by 41 artists from around the world, from the 1960s to the present, who use vinyl records as subject or medium. The exhibition includes sound work, sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, video and performance.

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"People Meet in Architecture" // Diversity and Imagination abound at the Venice Architecture Biennale

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Roderick Conway Morris

VENICE — Kazuyo Sejima won the Golden Lion at the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale for her design for the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, and she is back this year to curate the 2010 Biennale, the first Japanese and first female curator of the event, now in its 12th edition. Her choice of nearly 50 architects, engineers and artists, whose presentations fill the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in the Biennale Gardens and the Corderie, or Rope Walk, at the Arsenale, is above all marked by its diversity, unified under the usefully unspecific overarching title of “People meet in architecture.”

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Entering the "Days of Awe" // Radio program delves into the "world and meaning of the Jewish High Holy Days"

Yesterday, the luminous radio program Speaking of Faith released its most recent episode "Days of Awe" which delves into the "world and meaning of the Jewish High Holy Days." Visit the site dedicated to the episode by following this link where you can listen to (or download a podcast version) for free. You can also listen to previous episodes from the award-winning program by following this link to their archives. -- Leif

For a "New World, New Art" // James Elkins predicts what will be the defining idea of the new decade

Over at The Chronicle of Higher Education they are celebrating the 10th anniversary of their magazine The Chronicle Review by asking scholars and illustrators to take a crack at answering this question: "What will be the defining idea of the coming decade, and why?" Of the plethora of responses James Elkins, of the Art Institute of Chicago, offers up the one most relevant to our site's concern with his piece entitled "New World, New Art." Is Elkins' essay prophetic or merely conjecture? Only time will tell... -- Leif

Full Essay Here // Excerpt Below

Within 10 years, art history and art theory will lose their grip on contemporary art. The densely euphoric literature of international art, together with the swarming theories of postcolonial studies and visual culture, will swamp many older concerns. The terms of conversation will change.

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Information as Architecture // Lincoln Center in New York continues to kick aside formulas as dazzling renovations are further unveiled

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Robin Pogrebin

Elizabeth Diller would seem to have her hands full. Even as work winds down on its redesign of Lincoln Center, the architecture firm in which she is a partner, Diller Scofidio & Renfro, has just won two major commissions — a new museum in downtown Los Angeles for the financier Eli Broad and a new Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive for the University of California.

Yet the other day Ms. Diller was scrutinizing L.E.D. modules in a sign at Lincoln Center. Such small details are commanding Ms. Diller’s attention because what she refers to as Lincoln Center’s electronic infoscape — the final elements of which are being installed this week — amounts to a great deal more than just signs. As Ms. Diller and her partners see it, the media elements are not just finishing touches: they are an extension, and in many ways the ultimate expression, of a wholesale reimagining of the complex as more porous, inviting and immediate.

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Portraits of Survival in Pakistan // From The Virginia Quarterly Review & SOF Observed

Just up this morning over at the blog of Speaking of Faith (soon to be renamed Being by mid-September) is a link to a set of overwhelmingly powerful black/white portraits of steadfast survivors in Gaza which was recently published in The Virginia Quarterly Review. The photographs are taken by Asim Rafiqui, a rising star in photography who bases his work out of Stockholm, Sweden and who has focused his photography upon the people, landscape and stories of Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2003. Follow this link to The Virginia Quarterly to begin viewing the photos in the "Portraits of Survival" portfolio from Pakistan and to read Rafiqui's personal account of the back-story behind the images. -- Leif

Today! -- September 1st // Top Museums around the world simultaneously participate in "Ask a Curator" via Twitter

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

From The L.A. Times' Culture Monster

Engaged in their scholarly pursuits, museum curators aren't usually accessible to the general art-loving public, never mind the unwashed masses on the Internet.

But on Wednesday, a handful of curators from some of the top museums around the world will be answering questions via Twitter as part of "Ask a Curator" -- an online program involving institutions from 23 different countries.

Anyone with a Twitter account can post a question by appending the #askacurator tag to the end of their tweets. A curator from any of the participating museums will respond to the question via the institution's Twitter account.

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Michelle Obama launches White House Dance Series // From the WSJ's SpeakEasy

Full article Here // Excerpt Below

by Pia Catton

Today, the First Lady’s office announced plans for the White House Dance Series: A Tribute to Judith Jamison. The September 7 event will honor Jamison, the former dancer and outgoing artistic director (after 20 years) of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

It will also feature a program directed by Damian Woetzel, formerly of New York City ballet and currently on the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

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Life, Death, Art // An interview with visual artist Kathy Hettinga

Interview in Full Here // Excerpt Below

by/from: the journal Image

Image: What do you think is the most important thing student artists have to learn?

KTA: The most important things are to care deeply, to work hard, to live a life of integrity, and to risk real content in visual form. I have enjoyed being a mentor to many of my students, walking beside them in the classroom and into their professional lives. My passion in teaching is design as service. I’m involved in Design Studio, a service program that links students to area nonprofits and on-campus design needs.

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Found in Translation // An Interview with Literary Translator Charlotte Mandell

Full Interview Here // Excerpt Below

by/from: ArtWorks, the blog of the National Endowment for the Arts

NEA: How do you balance your own creative voice with the voice of the source text when translating?

MANDELL: That’s a very good question, one I’m not sure I know how to answer. I think a translator is a lot like a medium: you have to sort of empty yourself out before you begin translating a text. I try to get in the way of the text as little as possible, and I try to ‘listen’ to the narrative as I’m translating, so that the narrator’s own voice is conveyed in the words. I don’t always agree with the way something is worded or with the choice of certain imagery, but I try not to let my own opinions get in the way of the writing. In essence, as translator I try not to have any creative voice, and instead let the text speak through me. Some writers think writing is a kind of listening to an inner voice. For a translator, the “inner voice” is out there—it’s the text itself.

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"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.

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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!

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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."

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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.

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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.

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

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

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"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.”

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"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.

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