
My friend Lucy had the very clever idea of making up a Bingo card consisting of works to be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What a treasure hunt it was, taking me to corners of the Met where I’d never ventured.
Continue readingMy friend Lucy had the very clever idea of making up a Bingo card consisting of works to be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What a treasure hunt it was, taking me to corners of the Met where I’d never ventured.
Continue reading“Beyond the Light: Identity and Place in Nineteenth-Century Danish Art” at the Met Museum is entrancing in ways I did not expect. The Met writes of the exhibit:
Continue readingIn the June 10 edition of his Russian Music class, David Nice explored “End of the Thaw and musical life after Khrushchev.” Nice wrote:
“Khrushchev’s sudden rages against jazz and abstract art signalled a closing-down of hard-won freedoms. Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony, setting a range of poems by the young iconoclast Yevgeny Yevtushenko, was a surprise casualty. Meanwhile, dodecaphony was having its impact on a younger generation of composers, but not for long: we see how with Alfred Schnittke and the Estonian Arvo Pärt.”
Continue readingJohn Ashbery turned 90 on July 28, 2017. However belated, it’s an occasion to celebrate. Just Walking Around on the internet, I ran across this quotation:
I don’t quite understand about understanding poetry. I experience poems with pleasure: whether I understand them or not I’m not quite sure. I don’t want to read something I already know or which is going to slide down easily: there has to be some crunch, a certain amount of resilience.—John Ashbery Continue reading