Hooping. The hoops adults use to dance and perform tricks are larger and heavier than the children's toy called the Hula Hoop. As hooping becomes more popular, people across the States and across the world are pushing the boundaries of dance and sport with a simple, easily made tool. Hooping for pleasure, exercise, and meditation is becoming a phenomenon. There's even a documentary. [more inside]
posted by fiercecupcake on Jun 16, 2009 - 24 comments

Djuna Barnes (12 June, 1892 – 18 June, 1982) was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and 30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens. Her novel Nightwood became a cult work of modern fiction, helped by an introduction by T. S. Eliot. It stands out today for its portrayal of lesbian themes and its distinctive writing style. - Wikipedia [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Jun 10, 2009 - 18 comments

Kurt Vonnegut's perennial 1961 story "Harrison Bergeron" has been given a new film adaptation. (via)
posted by Joe Beese on May 13, 2009 - 68 comments

Etsy has a YouTube channel where they have all kinds of profiles of their users and how-to guides. My two favorite series are the Process series (e.g. New Books with Old Materials & Tin Toys) and Handmade Portraits (e.g. Armor Guitars & Wood Mosaics). In the description of each video there is a link to the corresponding entry on Etsy's blog, The Storque. The blogposts have more information on the users and sometimes further links and videos. [via Work in Progress]
posted by Kattullus on Apr 20, 2009 - 5 comments

The recession has hit the theatre world (and the arts scene in general) very hard - but some argue that theatre practitioners aren't doing themselves any favours when seeking funding. The main question insufficiently addressed is "who is the funding for?" - hint: it's not about you. Approaching theatre as a product isn't working, not when MFA acting programs don't often allow its graduates to earn enough to earn back their debt. So now the question is: how can the economics of theatre be changed?
posted by divabat on Mar 29, 2009 - 60 comments

Extravagant Crowd - Carl Van Vechten’s Portraits of Women and Photos of African Americans. Previous post by ND¢: Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten 1932-1964. Also, public domain works from Wikimedia Commons. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Mar 22, 2009 - 3 comments

Circuits are flipping on in the nation's attic. A couple of weeks ago, 31 "digerati" -- like Clay Shirky, Chris Anderson, and George Oates -- dropped in to the Smithsonian Institution for the invitation-only conference "Smithsonian 2.0: A Gathering to Re-imagine the Smithsonian in the Digital Age". Dan Cohen of the Center for History and New Media provides a great summary (and continues to pose provocative questions) on his own blog. Those whose invitations were somehow lost in the mail can play fly-on-the-wall by watching the keynotes, paging through the Flickr pool of envymaking glimpses of their behind-the-scenes lab and collections tours, reading the blog (where Bruce Wyman of the Denver Art Museum lays out a succinct road map for museums using social media), and poking around in the SI's website gallery. Want to cheer on the USA's favorite 163-year-old "Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge" without taking the trip to DC? Thanks to their recent efforts, you can now follow the SI on Twitter, listen to its podcasts, watch its YouTube channel, visit the Latino Virtual Museum in Second Life, or use the FaceBook gifts page to send your best friends their very own pair of Dorothy's ruby slippers, Hope diamond, Negro Leagues baseball, or coelocanth.
posted by Miko on Feb 27, 2009 - 13 comments

Former US Senator Claiborne Pell (D-RI) dead at 90. You may be familiar with Pell grants.
posted by brandz on Jan 1, 2009 - 37 comments

The Academy of Achievement brings students face-to-face with the extraordinary leaders, thinkers and pioneers who have shaped our world. Through profiles, biographies, and interviews Achievers in The Arts, Business, Public Service, Science, and Sports teach us how the Academy's core values of passion, vision, preparation, courage, perseverance, and integrity can, and will, lead to success. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jan 1, 2009 - 6 comments

No Bailout for the Arts? Many organizations could use the help.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Dec 30, 2008 - 21 comments

"There is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can't get away from the fact that Europe still is the centre of the literary world... not the United States," he said. "The US is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature... That ignorance is restraining."

Nobel literature prize judge Horace Engdahl comes down hard against Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, and other crazy American shit that just can't cross the waters.
posted by plexi on Oct 6, 2008 - 124 comments

Culture en péril - In these Canadian election times and in response to the recent Culture cuts from Conservatives - three of the best Quebec talents in music, theater and humor join forces and hit back hard (lol) with a highly satirical imagining of the replacement program (captioned).
posted by zenzizi on Sep 20, 2008 - 18 comments

Are nuns keeping up with the times and are they having fun? From blogs to running, to the arts and union disputes, nuns are busy. Even a beauty contest is being planned. But, the old ways persist. [more inside]
posted by Xurando on Aug 25, 2008 - 42 comments

Lets play the Album Cover Game! [Flash]
posted by KevinSkomsvold on Jun 17, 2008 - 27 comments

Until 400 years ago, the Ainu controlled Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands. Today they are a small minority group of Japan. They are a hunting and fishing people whose origins remain in dispute. Long before the people who would come to be known as "the Japanese" completed their migrations from the Asia mainland, the islands of Japan were already inhabited by a race of people known as the Ainu ("human"). On this northernmost island, (Hokkaido), in the "snow country," there still may be found remnants of this once proud and vigorous people who roamed the Japan islands long before the Japanese themselves arrived.

More links inside [more inside]
posted by dawson on Jun 6, 2008 - 35 comments

Brilliant Women: The Blue Stocking Circle was a group of intellectuals with a strong desire to discuss, analyze, and examine the social, political, and educational problems of the day Mostly female intellectuals, but they included many prominent men as well. They assembled in the London homes of literary hostesses such as Elizabeth Montagu, Frances Boscawen and Elizabeth Vesey in the 1750s form the nucleus of the exhibition. .... At first, all the party-goers were nicknamed blues, but from the 1770s, the "bluestocking" tag was applied to the women members in particular. By the time of Montagu's death in 1800, any female intellectual might be labelled a bluestocking, whether or not she could claim a link to the original circle.
posted by caddis on Mar 21, 2008 - 10 comments

Gus Giordano, founder of the renowned dance company and school, died on Sunday.
posted by nax on Mar 12, 2008 - 2 comments

Netsuke of the Meiji Period is an online exhibit from the Los Angeles County Museum, noted for the depth of its collection. (more). The György Ráth Museum and the Ferenc Hopp Museum also house a fine classic collection. (more). Today, netsuke carving is alive and well - see the Kiho Collection for one young master. If you would like to explore more sculpture for the hand, the International Netsuke Society has a good link list to many excellent contemporary netsuke artists.
posted by madamjujujive on Jan 6, 2008 - 14 comments

The Bible According to Google Earth A new artwork imagines four scenes from the Bible as if captured by Google Earth
posted by alexanderj on Dec 11, 2007 - 35 comments

I pledge to buy handmade this holiday season, and request that others do the same for me. Why? Better gifting experience, better ethics, better for the environment.
posted by divabat on Nov 23, 2007 - 95 comments

The South Bank Show is the longest running arts show on television. Melvyn Bragg has presented an eclectic mix of televisual joy since 1978. SBS has presented in-depth portraits of many different types of artists during this time, covering a huge range of topics. From high art to low art, classical music to pop music, canonical literature to airport blockbusters it has offered some of the most insightful and enjoyable arts programming around. Much youtubery awaits inside [more inside]
posted by ClanvidHorse on Sep 27, 2007 - 16 comments

The Pardoner's Tale - adapted to rap by Baba Brinkman, who has been rapping Chaucer tales for a few years now. He's also released The Rap Canterbury Tales, a book that presents raps side by side with Chaucer's original Middle English. Both video and book are illustrated graffiti-style by his brother Erik. Discussed in a previous post by fatllama on hip hop classics.
posted by madamjujujive on Aug 12, 2007 - 18 comments

The new age of ignorance. A panel of well known (UK) scientists and artists are asked some basic questions about science. Except the questions weren't that basic (since when is the Second Law of Thermodynamics considered basic knowledge?) so the results weren't surprising... although some of the answers were amusing ("The sky is blue because the sea reflects on it."). The worrying thing is that the questions could have been much simpler ("How many planets are there in the Solar System?") and I suspect the results would have been much the same. Meanwhile, ignorance marches on.
posted by bobbyelliott on Jul 1, 2007 - 127 comments

Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

The prepared text of the speech delivered by Dana Gioia at Stanford University Commencement on June 17, 2007.
posted by cgc373 on Jun 26, 2007 - 153 comments

Investigating the Dim Mak Death Touch - "The old Kung Fu master touched his assailant, with no apparent effect. Days later, the assailant died a sudden and mysterious death. He was a victim of the legendary dim mak, the touch of death." [previously]
posted by Burhanistan on Jun 11, 2007 - 71 comments

The Cagliari Contemporary Arts Centre is a work in progress: "The vital metaphor governing the museum becomes clear within the phasing plans: as with living organisms, the growth of the museum will be self-regulated. It will happen naturally when the conditions of a mature balance between the economic atmosphere and philanthropic and cultural environment are reached." More from architect Zaha Hadid.
posted by Burhanistan on Jun 9, 2007 - 10 comments

Compelling (if somewhat brief) videoblog featuring an artist describing his job, crafting & painting glass eyes for folks in need of prosthetics.
posted by jonson on Jun 4, 2007 - 15 comments

Business POV It is a forum for state-of-the-art business journalism using an innovative format: online video. Viewers can watch new, completely original, locally produced video profiles of companies, people and products that fall into our three main interest areas: innovation, entrepreneurship and the creative culture (advertising, graphic design, architecture, the arts). New content is posted Monday-Friday. Check out the archives section (Jason Fried, from 37 Signals is interviewed). Enjoy!
posted by zerobyproxy on May 22, 2007 - 11 comments

pa-kua was developed during the late 18th century and disseminated heavily during the Boxer rebellion; XingYi and Bagua are known for fluidity and ferocity. Some great sites, forums and some compulsory youtube links (2nd old man does bagua form) of masters and teachers of the art.
posted by sarcasman on Dec 19, 2006 - 83 comments

The Great War: "People at the time experienced it differently. We may think they were misinformed and deluded, and perhaps they were, or maybe we have become incredibly cynical and mistrusting. What were once considered to be civic virtues are now thought to be quaint anachronisms at best or grand delusions at worst. Things change." The site proffers an incredible variety of popular-press articles and imagery concerning the unfortunate European events of 1914 to 1918.
posted by mwhybark on Sep 1, 2006 - 40 comments

The Edinburgh festival is the largest arts festival in the world. Some 1,867 shows will be perfomed during the month of August, ranging from well known names and faces that many of us Brits will know from the telly, through to puppet shows and people reading the phone book live on stage. Hundreds of other lesser-known shows are on in the smaller and weirder venues. Some performers are blogging, and of course there are other bloggers telling us what's what.
posted by handee on Aug 8, 2006 - 21 comments

Between 1912 and 1948, one could win an Olympic medal by excelling in creativity rather than athletics. Works contending in this "Pentathlon of the Muses" had to be sport-related, though: see for example this gold-winning drawing by Jean Jacoby. Perhaps the most famous Olympic artist is Oliver St. John Gogarty (Google cache), after whom Joyce's character of Buck Milligan was modelled. In later years, the tradition was incorporated into the concept of a Cultural Olympiad held alongside the main event.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 1, 2006 - 5 comments

One hundred and thirty years ago today, George Armstrong Custer divided his forces in the face of a superior enemy and rode to his death at the Little Big Horn. The actual battle lasted about 15 minutes, but the fight over Custer's legacy is going into its second century. Visit the battle memorial (webcam view) explore the archeology of the site, or read an Indian account of the battle. The battle has attracted artists as varied as Charlie Russell (this poster of his painting was distributed by Anheiser Busch and hung in bars across the United States), Thomas Hart Benton, and Kicking Bear (Mato Wanartaka). Little Big Horn is a lonely place today.
posted by LarryC on Jun 25, 2006 - 33 comments

Dinner? No, a show. "For most of her adult life, Erika Sunnegardh was the epitome of a frustrated performer in New York City. Her artistic vocation was singing, but to make ends meet she endured the usual drudgery - waiting on tables in the Bronx where she lives and working as a tour guide...If Ms Sunnegardh, who is 40, awoke yesterday wondering if she was in the middle of a wonderful dream, who could blame her? On Saturday, the unimaginable had happened: she had sung the starring role in Beethoven's Fidelio at the Metropolitan Opera." (via Waiter Rant)
posted by melissa may on Apr 12, 2006 - 15 comments

Shocknife!
posted by Smedleyman on Apr 12, 2006 - 50 comments

You can keep your Simon, Randy and Paula, I'll take Barbara Cook any day. Here is the Broadway legend's two hour master class (it's a REALTIME video from The New York Public Library) and it'll teach you more about singing, phrasing and music than every moment of American Idol combined. At least watch the first 20 minutes, you'll be amazed.
posted by adrober on Apr 10, 2006 - 7 comments

Gentleman's Fight Club.
posted by the cuban on Mar 29, 2006 - 39 comments

Jerry Lewis at 80 (more inside)
posted by matteo on Mar 13, 2006 - 46 comments

Hippocamp Ruins Sgt Pepper's A group of electronic artists have worked on a "ruined" version of the Beatles Sgt Pepper's classic. Designed to accompany and contrast with the ".... Ruins Pet Sounds" release from earlier in the year .... this ruined release exists to be compared and contrasted to the original album and its artistic competitor Pet Sounds. The original classic is recontextualised through the humour and vision of these artists whose approaches to the tracks aims to re-examine Pepper's through a filter of 2005 technology.
posted by room on Dec 10, 2005 - 31 comments

Denver knows what it's doing. Old local artists have made a scene that young blood has a lot to learn from. Cheers to the next First Friday.
posted by Viomeda on Nov 2, 2005 - 11 comments

Of all the humorous stuffed rodents in the "novelties" section of customcreaturetaxidermy.com, I can't decide whether my favorite is the squirrel full o'whiskey (with the removable head for decanting) or the "mouse trap gag" (see, the gag is, it looks like a disgusting dead mouse in a trap, when in reality... oh, wait...).
posted by jonson on Oct 13, 2005 - 23 comments

Still going: jazz pianist Oscar Peterson celebrated his 80th birthday on Monday, with a rare treat. The veteran jazz musician is the first living Canadian to be honored with a commemorative postage stamp.
posted by Smart Dalek on Aug 17, 2005 - 12 comments

“To speak in a flat voice / Is all that I can do. / . . . I speak of flat defeat / In a flat voice.”
James Wright's letters chronicle many of the major innovations in American poetry in the middle of the twentieth century. They also provide a compelling personal narrative of his life. Here, the American Poetry Review publishes a selection taken from the new volume "A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright". More inside.
posted by matteo on Aug 16, 2005 - 8 comments

Found in translation: Much more than / Hip hop Chaucer, and it don't stop / Hip hop Aeschylus, and it don't stop / Hip hop Shakespeare, and it don't stop / Yeah [3.4MB .wmv], and it don't stop, and it don't quit.
posted by fatllama on Aug 5, 2005 - 15 comments

Glasgow School of Arts Degree Show 2005, Gets into the ring with the Edinburgh Art College Degree Show 2005. Is this Tyson versus Bruno all over again ?
posted by sgt.serenity on Jun 18, 2005 - 15 comments

A lecutre musical (QT video) by Columbia University spontaneous performance artists PRANGSTGRÜP (warning: flash site). Lots of great stuff in their videos section.
posted by panoptican on Mar 31, 2005 - 15 comments

What Can Art Do for You? We’ve all heard that Art enriches our communities, makes our children smarter, and brings in money and jobs. In response to the recently released RAND study (PDF) which critiqued the arguments made by arts organizations for the funding of the arts, Doug McLennan of ArtsJournal.com invited “11 prominent arts people” to discuss if there is a better way to advocate for the arts. Why do we need to market the arts? Shouldn’t Art advocate for itself? Are there different ways to sell the benefits of the arts in this day and age?
posted by geryon on Mar 14, 2005 - 6 comments

Mona Kuhn: (NSFW) Photographs. An interview with the artist is here, other images are here. Kuhn is among the photographers whose work is on display now at the Photo L.A. art exposition (Santa Monica Civic Auditorium). Again, her images (nudes, non-graphic) and most of this post's links are generally not safe for work. This one, instead, is SFW
posted by matteo on Jan 21, 2005 - 8 comments

Ten Reasons --from going to McDonald's (Did you know that Happy Meals are a loss leader?) to becoming a miser (It's a weightloss plan that really works) and more. From AK13, a great little brit web mag.
posted by amberglow on Jan 17, 2005 - 23 comments

Canada's "Brain Drain" has been a growing concern among Canadians for a number of years. There are a number of reports (PDF) indicating that an increasing number of "highly skilled graduates in fields such as health, engineering and natural and applied sciences" have been heading south for work. There are guides to assist, first hand accounts, and even profiles of people who have left.
posted by purephase on Dec 10, 2004 - 29 comments