Can the art of teaching art actually be exhibited? A new exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston about the one-time Asheville, NC institution Black Mountain College asks just such questions. Black Mountain College was a controversial, short-lived bastion of free-thought and artistic expression which hosted such figures asosef Albers, John Cage, and Robert Creeley from 1933 to 1957.
Leap Before You Look
B Is for Bigotry
“I mostly find it sad. I understand that super religious people would not be there supporting it, but to go the extra mile to fight it when you could just not come kinda shocked me!” The Huffington Post reports on Brandon James, a drag performer whose plans to read to kids about acceptance at a North Carolina public library were scuttled after some of its patrons complained. We suppose the march of progress is never neat (via Book Riot).
Tuesday New Release Day: Eggers, Dubus, Freeman, Boyd, Zoller-Seitz
New this week: The Circle by Dave Eggers; Dirty Love by Andre Dubus III; How to Read a Novelist by former Granta editor John Freeman; Solo, a new James Bond novel by William Boyd; and “the first in-depth overview of Wes Anderson’s filmography” by the New York Magazine TV critic Matt Zoller-Seitz.
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Tonight’s Guest is a Poet
There was a time, believe it or not, when poets made appearances on widely-seen American talk shows. That time was the fifties and sixties, when Carl Sandburg appeared on The Today Show, The Ed Sullivan Show and Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now. (He also gave a speech before Congress and competed on What’s My Line?)
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Antebellum YA
Move over Bella and Edward; Scarlett and Rhett were the original young adult power couple. At The New York Times, Claire Needell argues that Gone with the Wind is the epitome of the young adult novel. “The choice between two starkly different lovers (one gentlemanly, one roguish) appears, for the very young, to be a choice between two utterly distinct potential identities, two possible roads through life.”
Slave Driver
Recommended Reading: Katherine Sunderland on Michael Bundock’s The Fortunes of Francis Barber.
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Read, Watch, Binge
As a part of their Read, Watch, Binge! summer series, NPR recommends TV series, movies, books, and more based on 60 of their readers favorite books. If you’re looking for more books, check out our Great Second-Half Fiction Preview.
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Following the Writer
Over at The Toast, see what Year in Reading Alumnus Alexander Chee has to say about The Queen of the Night, his writing process, and publishing. Our own Sonya Chung’s review of his latest novel pairs nicely.
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Brow Raised
Not highbrow, not lowbrow, not even middlebrow – is American culture now dominated by the upper middle brow?