Author Archives: Katarzyna Z.

“Brick Bible: A New Spin on the Old Testament” – Wait, what?

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That is the title of 38-year-old Brendan Powell Smith’s interesting new book, which features passages in the Bible illustrated… in Legos. That’s right, Legos. The Tower of Babel, Noah’s Ark, and the Garden of Eden can all be found in this book – appropriately captioned with quotes taken directly from the “Good Book itself” AND constructed from thousands of different types of the beloved children’s building block toys. It’s definitely a unique take on the ancient text, no?

Unfortunately, as with the original source material, there is now controversy associated with the former web-programmer-turned-author’s work. The “racy scenes” depicted in the book were too much for some shoppers at Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club, which “pulled the book from its shelves last month after only two weeks, despite brisk sales.” In the words of the author, most of the criticism has been voiced by people who are “either mad [he’s] an atheist, or unaware that there’s sex and violence in the Bible, too.”

On Smith’s website, bricktestament.com, the author warns that the Bible “contains material some may consider morally objectionable and/or inappropriate for children.” That’s why he was unhappy to hear that the Lego version he spent the past decade constructing (and editing so it did not include some of the more risque images his publisher did not feel comfortable putting in the final print version) was considered less appropriate for children than the other Bibles on the shelves at Sam’s Club.

In an e-mail to The Daily mail, a Sam’s Club spokesperson admits that they “miscategorized the book” and this is what led to the decision to discontinue sales; however, those who want to check the book out for themselves should not feel disappointed. “The Brick Bible” is still available at other major retailers, such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, as well as at independent booksellers.

The author thought Legos would be an interesting way to tell the biblical tales, and it is hard to argue that the idea isn’t indeed… interesting. But is it really appropriate to handle the religious material in the way Brendan Powell Smith has? Does being raised by a Sunday school teacher and studying religion at Boston University give him a right to do as he pleases? Should we ignore the fact that he is handling religious material and instead focus on the creative and artistic aspects of his work? What do authorities in the religious community have to say about all of this?

Anyone interested in reading more about “The Brick Bible” and the drama surrounding Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club can read this article. Anyone interested in viewing just a few more of the images that can be found in the book can click here.

 

In a spotty state of mind…

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In the everlasting debate about what exactly makes something art and who can be considered a true artist, here is Damien Hirst! In 2008, this British artist persuaded the dealers at Sotheby’s to sell 223 of his newest (at the time) artworks. And did they sell! Despite the world financial crisis that was unfolding at this time, the two-day sale of Hirst’s artwork brought in a total of $200.7 million dollars. What did the lucky buyers purchase? Well… “There were dead animals – sharks, zebras, piglets and even a calf – floating in giant glass tanks of formaldehyde; cabinets filled with diamonds; and cigarette butts. And paintings galore: spin paintings, spot paintings, paintings with butterflies pinned under glass.” There are some pretty interesting things on that list, if I do say so myself.

And now the artist is cooking up something new (well, sort of). Hirst recently started producing spot paintings again, and in want of a space to display them in, he has persuaded the gallery owner Larry Gagosian to let him take over all eleven of his galleries for a spot-painting retrospective. The exhibition is set to run from January 12th through February 18th. It will include approximately 200 works, spanning 20 years, from collections in 20 countries. Less than one-third of the show will be for sale but gallery officials say it is still too early to negotiate prices for those artworks included. The author of this article in the New York Times is already forecasting “a hailstorm of criticism” for the spot show, but the 46-year-old artist is so used to such criticisms that he doesn’t seem to mind.

The retrospective is something that he has always wanted to do, and he cites his father as the inspiration for this particular style of art (or not art?). Interestingly enough, though, of the hundreds of spot canvases that will be on display, Damien Hirst painted only five himself and employed other people to paint the rest for him. Why then, does he get the credit, if he’s not the one who was holding the paintbrush? Is it because he came up with the idea? If this is the case, then shouldn’t his father be getting at least some of the credit, since he was the one who first started painting spots on the doors of their home? Of course, all of this is assuming that these meticulously painted spots can even be considered art (and I’m sure there are those in the class who will not consider them as such).

Personally, while I don’t quite understand how it works that Hirst gets the credit while his assistants do all the actual labor, I do think the spots have some merit. They can definitely evoke some interesting thoughts. The artist actually sums it up perfectly when he says, “They’re quite hard to look at. Superficially they’re happy paintings, but then there is this underlying uneasiness. You lose your boundaries because they are hard to focus on. Do you focus on the grid or the individual spots or the painting as a whole? Once you start really looking, you get lost.” Basically, they can make a person go a little spotty. And if this is the artist’s intention for his artwork, then whose to say that it doesn’t deserve a place in the museum and gallery world?

Thought I’d Share: This Year’s Film Best Take on History’s Film Worst (Morally-Speaking).

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“Villainy is more seductive than virtue.” With this in mind, New York Times Magazine prepares to launch the latest edition of its Hollywood issue. Aptly titled “Touch of Evil,” the magazine features this year’s best performers in film playing “baddies.” The print issue is accompanied by videos, which have already been published online and can be viewed here. I highly recommend watching these short clips because they feature excellent cinematography and the actors do a really good job of getting into their characters (Can you guess which nefarious movie icon each of them portray? If you can’t, you can use this cheat sheet!). Above all, the videos are just plain fun to watch.

These specific thirteen minute-long clips were directed by Alex Prager, who also shot the photographs that will be in the print issue of New York Times magazine. Born in 1979, Prager is “a self-taught photographer who takes her cues from pulp fiction, the cinematic conventions of movie directors such as Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock, and fashion photography.” Her work can be found in the collection of both the MoMA and the Whitney, among many other museums. Anyone interested in seeing more examples of Prager’s fantastic work can browse through this gallery on the MoMA website.

This concise article in the New York Times features some more behind-the-scenes information (with a few pictures) about this year’s project and this article offers some commentary about villains (and their portrayal in movies) in general. This site features the videos that accompanied last year’s Hollywood issue (These were directed by Solve Sundsbo and featured “classic screen types” (Do we want to play the guessing game again?)). I think all twenty-seven videos were fantastically done (Award-worthy, maybe?), and I am absolutely excited to see how the print issue turned out.

The de Kooning retrospective wasn’t as awful as I thought it would be (in fact, it was awesome!)

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To be completely honest, I never fully understood the obsession some people had with abstract expressionism. The style of art never appealed to me. In my mind, smears of paint slapped onto an easel in a seemingly willy-nilly fashion and people drawn so they did not look like people were not aesthetically pleasing or even remotely creative. They were not art (in my mind), and I did not want to look at any more examples of such things from artists who wanted to prove to me otherwise. That is why I was less than thrilled about attending the de Kooning retrospective at the MoMA over the weekend.

Having said all of that, I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised when I actually walked through the exhibition on Sunday. I was always someone who scoffed at abstract art, but I found myself moving from room to room and saying, “I like this one! I really like this one, too. OH, that one’s nice! I don’t really like that one…” and so on. In fact, the further I progressed along de Kooning creative timeline (the more abstract the work became), the more of his works seemed to appeal to me. There were a number of examples I would have gladly purchased (for a greatly reduced price) and hung up on the walls in my room as decorative art.

But what actually makes Willem de Kooning’s work “art”? Does my saying its pretty make it so? Or does someone’s willingness to spend millions and millions of dollars on it matter more? Does the MoMA hanging it up make it art, or did MoMA only hang it up because someone else deemed it such? What makes de Kooning’s artwork so appealing? Why do I, and so many other people (rich and poor), like it so much? What makes one of his paintings more appealing to me than another? Why do I like “Untitled V,” one of the last few paintings in the exhibition, more than “Gansevoort Street” (which I absolutely hated) or “February” (which was… alright, I guess)?

I can’t say what the right answer is to that first question (nor do I think anyone will ever be able to definitively end the debate about what makes something art). I’m not so sure I can explain my own preferences for certain de Kooning paintings either. In the case of “Untitled V,” maybe it was the color scheme that appealed to me so much, or maybe it was the style of brushstrokes he used (both of which made it so that my first impression upon seeing the painting was that I was looking at a very discombobulated portrait of Donald Duck). Maybe my association of the painting with a beloved cartoon character evoked a feeling of happiness in me, and this is why I liked the painting so much.

In the same way, maybe the violent color scheme (IT’S RED!) and jarring contours of “Gansevoort Street” evoke feelings of anger in me and this is what pushes me away from this specific work and toward one that is more pleasant. There is no question that “February” is aptly named—the painting is evocative of the murky, wintry month—and this association of the painting with a month that sometimes makes me sad (frigid temperatures and no one to cuddle with on Valentine’s Day) could be exactly why moments after I declared liking the painting, I quickly recanted my statement.

Maybe it is this ability of an artist to evoke such emotions within his audience that makes his work worthy of being considered art… Or maybe I’m wrong again. Either way, I’m really glad that I did go to the MoMA and that I got to experience Willem de Kooning’s work in person. The weekend excursion has really changed my perspective on abstract expressionism and has made me even keener to explore this and other non-traditional art forms, as well as to explore the elements that make these things “art.” There were quite a few interesting things I managed to spy as the elevator doors opened on each floor during the ride back down to the lobby, and so I’m sure I’ll be paying the MoMA another visit sometime soon—to take another look at de Kooning and to discover what else this museum has in store.

Of Politics and Graphic Novels.

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It was not too long ago that the world heard Frank Miller, the graphic novel writer responsible for Sin City and 300 (and mostly notably, the grittier incarnation of Batman), speak out against the Occupy Wall Street movement. In his little tirade against OWS, which anyone is free to read through at frankmillerink.com, he called the movement “a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness” and warned them “Wake up, pond scum, America is at war against a ruthless enemy” (by which he means al-Qaeda and Islamicism). Fans of Miller were—unsurprisingly—shocked by the attack.

Rick Moody, the author of this article in the Guardian, claimed they shouldn’t have been because Miller “was just voicing Hollywood’s unspoken values;” and after all, these are the people he has made the most money out of. In this same article, Moody continued by attacking not only Miller but Hollywood as well. He called the notable filmmaking factory’s output a “mindless, propagandistic storytelling medium,” and listed several movies to support his argument (among them, the adaptation of Miller’s 300, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, and James Cameron’s Avatar). Though the argument suffered from being pretentiously hyperbolic, it’s hard to argue with some of the points he made.

The author of this response in the Irish Times, Laurence Mackin, believes Moody’s argument de-railed when he claimed, “comic books themselves are so politically dim-witted, so pie-in-the-sky idealistic as to be hard to take seriously.” The author gives Moody the benefit of the doubt by suggesting that he may draw a distinction between comic books and graphic novels (“as straightforward as arguing about what is a worthwhile, and what is merely a piece of Hollywood cryptofascist propaganda”), but it is clear that this is pure mockery. Mackin’s own belief (and mine) is summed up perfectly in the paragraph that follows:

“Graphic novels are every bit as powerful and engaging as their wordier, pictureless colleagues. They bring a cinematic edge to literature, create an accessibility that it would be foolish to dismiss as puerile, and open up good writing to a much wider readership who might otherwise not engage with a straightforward novel. They also allow a writer a whole other level of creative freedom and offer a collaborative process where writers, illustrators, inkers and letterers are working in tandem to create something complete, satisfying and deeply meaningful.”

Graphic novels are not, as Moody suggested, without political influence or relevance. In fact, one of the most prominent features of the Occupy Wall Street movement is a mask, which many commentators have linked to Guy Fawkes but which also happens to be “a key piece of symbolism from one of the most vital comic books of the last few decades, one that drew on the ideas in books such as George Orwell’s singular Nineteen Eighty-Four and took them a step further.” By donning this mask, the protestors reveal exactly how they feel about their government (authoritarian, overly reliant on surveillance, etc.) and exactly what they intend to do about it (dissent, upheaval, etc.).

Photograph courtesy of the blog Whoa, This is Heavy! Confessions of a Movie Geek.

Most recently, the comic book/graphic novel medium has also become a vehicle for capturing the story of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Occupy Comics is a book that is collaboratively being worked on by a number of writers, artists, and business executives (among which are Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls; the painter Guy Denning; and Alan Moore). According to this FAQ on kickstarter.com it “is intended to be a time capsule of the passions and emotions driving the movement.” The book and graphic novel artists and writers “have been inspired by the movement and hope to tell the stories of the people who are out there putting themselves at risk for an idea.” Occupy Comics is about direct action.

Clearly, comic books are not as “politically dim-witted” as Rick Moody claimed them to be. Frank Miller’s tirade against the Occupy Wall Street movement may have been a little immature, but the work of his colleagues is anything but. Maus. Sandman. V for Vendetta. Watchmen. These are not for “pre- and just post-pubescent boys.” These are for intellectuals like us. They are a lens on the world we live in. And just as they offer inspiration for movements such as OWS to do something about the injustices that exist in our society, the Occupy Comics project may prove to do the same for generations in decades to come.

Occupy Wall Street: You have people’s attention. Now what?

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Occupy Wall Street is a series of on-going demonstrations that began on September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park—renamed Liberty Square by the protestors—in Manhattan’s Financial District. It is a movement created by and for the so-called 99%. The on-going mission of Occupy Wall Street is “to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future,” or basically to bring awareness to the great disparity of wealth and power between the richest 1% of the population and the other 99% [Source].

The sentiment of the Occupy Wall Street movement is one that few—that is, the wealthy few who fall into the “richest 1%” category—cannot share. There is a lot of greed on Wall Street (and elsewhere), and the Occupy Wall Street movement has managed to open the eyes of those who chose to live in denial of the truth up to this point. The movement has accomplished what it initially set out to accomplish… But now what? This is a question that Philip DeFranco—some who has been a big supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement up to this point—raises in a recent episode of his popular “Philip DeFranco Show” on YouTube. (I’m referring to the brief clip between 1:20 and 2:00 in the video below.)

As DeFranco says, it has been two months since the start of the demonstrations and numbers have been growing, but the Occupy Wall Street movement has failed to provide any list of demands or even any list of ideas about how we can solve the problem of the disparity of wealth. The Occupy Wall Street movement does not even have a leader who can mobilize the people to take further action. What they do have is a list of ten “visions… for humanity”—outlined in the wiki-style “Liberty Square Blueprint”—among which are the desires to “create an economy in harmony with nature, end all war, and eliminate all discrimination and prejudice” [Source].

Again, such grand sentiments are ones that we can all share, but ones that will become little else unless the Occupy Wall Street movement decides what exactly they want to do about them. After all, wanting to “make NYC the most progressive city for the chronically homeless” will not help the homeless community. Making it so will. The Occupy Wall Street movement needs to elect a responsible individual to represent OWS in a conversation between them and an organization such as Picture the Homeless. They need to hear out the demands of the homeless community and work with them to draft a bill that they can then propose to a local lawmaker get passed into law. They need to mobilize the other protestors to back such bills and petitions and to actually help put such bills into practice once they are passed into law.

Among the bills that Picture the Homeless is already trying to push—and that could really use the support of such a massive group as Occupy Wall Street—is Intro 48. This bill is vital in the process of finding housing for the homeless—the war veterans, the government employees, and the teachers who were forced into the shelter system by the greedy member of the 1%–and finding housing for the homeless is in turn very vital for maintaining an appreciation of art and culture within the youths of New York City [Source].

After all, besides our parents, it is our teachers—the same teachers being forced out of their homes by tremendous rent increases (from the standard 30% of their income to as high as 70% of their income)—that first introduce us to different forms of art. They are the ones who assign the books that pique our love for reading. They are the ones who take us on field trips to museums and musicals and plays on Broadway. They plant the seed for our love of art. They cultivate it and under their guidance, it flourishes. That is, as long as they can afford to live in their own homes. When they are forced to move into shelters and to give up their teaching positions—when they suffer—the children they could be nurturing suffer as well.

Occupy Wall Street is doing a great job of expressing its frustration with the wealth disparity through art and song and dance; however, the movement has to do more to preserve the appreciation—and the existence—of these forms of expression. It needs to join CUNY in requesting more funding to provide affordable educations. It needs to demand better music and art programs in school throughout New York City. It also needs to make sure the teachers our love of art is so dependent on keep their jobs. After all, without people who love art, the art has no purpose. What, then, is the point of singing about your problems if no one cares enough to listen?

 

To take the plunge or not?

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A new production called “Queen of the Mist” opened on Sunday night at the Gym at Judson. This musical tells the unique story of Anna Edson Taylor, who more than a century ago made her name known to the world by going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. In two acts, it documents her escapades leading up to the big plunge and the “years of anticlimax” following. This is one of many biographical plays that have appeared over the years—most recently, there was “The Mountaintop,” which depicted Dr. Martin Luther King’s last night on Earth and which Carlsky was kind enough to blog about back in early October. From what this article in the arts section of the New York Times says about “Queen of the Mist,” though, I don’t think it’ll be winning as many awards as “The Mountaintop” (if any); however, I’m sure anyone who really, really wants to know more about the woman “obsessed with taking the plunge” (and the plunge itself) and can’t be bothered with reading the short Wikipedia page will enjoy listening to Mary Testa (who plays Taylor) singing about it… or not. Biographical musicals aren’t really my cup of tea, especially if they don’t offer any new insights into the lives of the people they are meant to depict, but I’m open to hearing what other people think.

Gotye is somebody that I’m just starting to get to know.

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I encourage any fans of Sting’s music, or any music featuring “reedy tenor, modal melody,” and a “hint of reggae” to check out Belgian-Australian songwriter Gotye’s song “Somebody That I Used To Know.” This song is featured on his current album, “Making Mirrors,” which has not yet been released in the United States. It is a major Australian hit, and the video that corresponds to it has over 12 million views on YouTube, which is where American audiences discovered the song in the first place. Most importantly, though, it is so damn catchy. I can’t stop listening to it. Anyone who wants to read the article that turned me onto the song can click here. In the meantime, anyone who wants to listen to the song I’ve been listening to for the greater part of the day, can watch this video here:

I think it has a very interesting artistic concept, and fits the song very well. Any opinions? On the song? On the video? On YouTube as a tool for introducing American listeners to foreign music?

Dutch Master Meets Sixteen-Armed Goddess

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I must be the only student in the entire Macaulay Honors College who has a Friday class that goes into the late afternoon. Because of it, I missed going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the class when they went on that Friday-schedule Tuesday; however, I did eventually go to the museum on my own. I saw the Frans Hals exhibit and thanks to a handy audio guide (which was probably not as engaging as the tour guide who showed the rest of the class around) I even learned a little bit more about the artist, his techniques, and his bourgeoisie subjects. While touring the exhibit, I was completely struck by how realistic Hals’ depiction of his subjects was. I felt like I was looking at photographs. The depictions were so precise and so lifelike that I felt as if the subjects could climb out of their picture frames and blend right into the crowds of New York City (after they changed their clothes, of course).

After I finished touring the Frans Hals exhibit, I was in the mood to visit another exhibit—something I had never had the opportunity to see on previous visits to the museum. I checked the museum map and was very pleased to discover that there was a small exhibit of art from Nepal just above my head. I had just finished reading an ethnography about the people of Nepal for my cultural anthropology course, and I thought this would be the perfect way to gain an even better understanding of their culture. The artwork I found on the third floor of the museum was completely different from anything Frans Hals had created during his time. I would be truly frightened if I happened upon any of the subjects of the Nepalese art while walking down the street.

While the Dutch master’s artwork was realistic to the point of banality, the Nepalese artwork was anything but. As I walked through the small exhibit, bizarre creatures stared down at me from the carved ceiling above my head. Many-armed goddesses wielded bows and swords and maces against fanged and clawed demons repeatedly within glass cases and on hanging tapestries. Meditating buddhas filled the stifling air with their ancient prayers while at the same time supporting tabletops and cabinets on their heads. The art was beautiful to look at, especially the statues and statuettes that depicted the mythological goddesses with such precision; however, the subject matter was otherworldly. I can only begin to imagine what Hals’ reaction would have been had Shiva the Destroyer approached the artist and asked for his portrait to be painted.

City Center Receives a Makeover

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Given that we are going to see the Bald Soprano at City Center this evening, I thought this information might be of interest to us:

City Center, which was not originally meant to be a theater, is currently ongoing an extensive renovation and restoration process meant to address the imperfections of the building, as well as 88 years worth of wear and tear. $57 million of a $75 million capital campaign has been spent in the hope that people will now notice the building that they may have strolled past time and time again. A new glass marquee has been installed and shines lights on the exterior as well as one the sidewalk. Protruding signs are now visible from both Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue. New glass doors allow passers-by to look into the building at six large high-definition plasma screens. And these are just the changes made to the exterior. Inside, the architects have increased the slope of seating platforms and removed six rows of less desirable seats to improve sight lines. The new seats are about two inches wider, and the formerly threadbare red upholstery of the seats has been replaced by blue-green velour. The auditorium has also received an extensive paint job. The official reopening of the center is on October 25th, and the gala that will take place on that night features Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg as a guest conductor of the New York Philharmonic—an evocation of the first opening on December 11, 1943, when Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia conducted the New York Philharmonic in the national anthem.

For more information about the reopening, you can read this article from the arts section of the New York Times.

 

Will Barnet on Display at National Academy Museum

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The works of painter and printmaker Will Barnet are now on view in the exhibition “Will Barnet at 100” at the National Academy Museum through December 31. The exhibitions includes evidence of all the periods in Mr. Barnet’s working life, from the abstract compositions during both the earliest and the most recent points in his career to the highly stylized figurative paintings of his family and artist friends in between. The show is his first-ever retrospective in his adopted hometown, much to the surprise of the senior curator at the National Academy, who said she was stunned to learn that there hadn’t been one before. To read more about the exhibition and to learn more about Mr. Barnet’s life (and his 80 years of making art), you can read this article, which I found in the arts section of the Sunday New York Times. Among other things, it highlights information about how he got started as an artist, how his marriage (and divorce) and the accident that he suffered influenced his themes and styles through the years, and how he in turn has taught and influenced other artists–such as Cy Twombly and Eva Hesse.

Here are just a few examples of the artwork that will be on display:

Richard Serra returns to the Gagosian

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According to this article in the New York Times, Richard Serra’s 12th sculpture exhibition is making an appearance at the Gagosian Gallery. The exhibition, which continues through November 26th, is titled “Junction/Cycle” after its two main components. The two sculptures—made completely of giant, snaking swaths of steel—almost fill the rooms that house them. “Cycle” measures 57 feet at its longest point. “Junction” measures 75 feet. They are 14 and 13 feet high respectively and together weigh 441 tons. The works are essentially mazes with many ways through them, all paths equally valid but some more circuitous than others. The two sculptures complement each other, either with “Cycle” as a contracted version of “Junction” or with “Junction” as the extrovert to “Cycle’s” introvert. Either way, when experiencing the exhibition, it becomes easier to understand what Mr. Serra means when he says, “I consider space to be my primary material.”

Jane Austen and other Musical Adaptations

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The New York Musical Theater Festival is currently in full swing and running through October 16th at various Manhattan locations. The purpose of this festival is “to test-drive works in progress with an audience and assess their viability.” Essentially, it is test screening that is meant to work out the kinks of possible upcoming musicals and reveal which of these have the most promise; however, according to this article in today’s edition of the New York Times things are not looking up so far. During week one of the festival, several musicals that had potential were showcased, but due to decisions made by the respective creative teams, failed to be up to par. Among these were “Ghostlight,” “The Kid Who Would Be Pope,” and “This One Girl’s Story.” In comparison to these, David Rooney suggests the campy “Madame X” showed more promise.

According to the author, however, the adaptation that shows the most potential—despite the problems it must still work out—is “Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a Musical.” The adaptation is apparently “remarkably true to its source material” (if not vaguely reminiscent of the un-produced Gatsby) and shows a tremendous grasp “of character and narrative drive” that is missing in many of the other entries. It features the English novelist herself, acting as both a “puppet mistress and a captivated onlooker” as the story progresses. In the musical, she revisits “the manuscript she wrote 10 years earlier” and examines “the choices she made as a young woman writing about love without ever having experienced it.” Her mantra, and the lesson that she imparts upon the theatergoers and those individuals with aspiring new musicals being shown at the festival, becomes “Review. Examine. Consider.”

This three-step process is, in the eyes of the author, essentially the festival’s mission—as mentioned, to test-drive the works in progress—and proves the musical to be the epitome of what the festival is about. As someone who is not necessarily a die-hard austenite but who occasionally reads and enjoys Jane Austen’s books, I would definitely find an opportunity to see this musical adaptation if it did manage to work out its kinks and survive beyond the test-drive phase. I’m very curious to see how this musical, and the musicals that are yet to be showcased, will hold up.

New Hope for Folk Museum

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In an earlier blog post I mentioned that the American Folk Art Museum was experiencing financial difficulties and seriously considering dissolving and transferring its collections to another institution because of them. According to this article in today’s New York Times, however, the museum decided on Wednesday evening that it would continue to operate at its current location at Lincoln Square in Manhattan with the help of financial infusions from trustees and the Ford Foundation. At the board meeting on Wednesday, the trustees of the museum created a strategy to increase the museum’s visibility–the lack of which was cited as one of the reasons for the museum’s troubles–and to extend its brand. Additionally, the museum will try to expand the loans of its collections to other New York City museums and to mount traveling exhibitions of the collections. Other museums, which are mentioned in the article, have expressed interest in working with the Folk Art Museum to identify potential collaborations to this nature. The new museum president, Edward Blanchard, says he is still uncertain of the budgetary implications involved in keeping the museum open but that the trustees are using the crisis the museum has just been through “to stimulate them to do things in creative and innovative ways.”

The Eloquence of Being Tongue-Tied

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There are many small instances when words fail us. Sometimes a public event so momentous and so horrifying occurs that it leaves everyone tong-tied. For an entire decade playwrights have been trying to capture the feelings inspired by the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. According to this article in the New York Times, there are two individuals who have managed to finally pull it off. The first is Richard Nelson, whose play “Sweet and Sad” is running at the Public Theater through Sunday. The second is Jonas Hassen Khemiri, whose work has the slightly more jarring title “Invasion!” and is running at the Flea Theater through October 1st. The two plays are very different—one is described by the author of the article as “courtly, humble and almost shy” while the other is defined as “less like match-light than fireworks”—but both “embrace the problems and perils of trying to find words to name the unnamable” and succeed where playwrights have been failing for the last ten years. Mr. Nelson and Mr. Khemiri are said to “celebrate language even as [they] consider its limitation.” Their plays are proof that even when events like those of September 11th happen and words fail us, the words remain “valiant, elastic, unstoppable.” The two plays are testaments to the use of spoken words in theater and an inspiration to all of us who still cannot find quite the right words to describe the tragedy that occurred on that fateful day ten years ago.