- John Stoehr
Arts Editor
There's more to art than you think. It's not just theater, paintings, books and dance. It's the enterprise of human creativity and it takes vastly different shapes and forms. Here you'll find my thoughts about the arts in Charleston and beyond. Neither of us knows what to expect.
Category Archives: Ideas
We have scientists on the arts, but where are the artists on science?
July 29, 2008 – 1:51 pm
C.P. Snow, the novelist and chemist, once wrote about the two cultures: one being the scientists, the other being intellectuals, those who wrote for a wide audience in general-interest publications like Raritan and The New Criterion. He said there was too much of a divide between them. They didn’t know how to talk to each [...]
New study: Your earnings determine your culture
July 14, 2008 – 8:11 am
So does your mom, according to this study by Statistics Canada, which surveyed how nearly 10,000 Canadians aged 15 and over spend their leisure time. Your mom’s level of education has more impact on you and your siblings than your father’s level of education.
In general, the more money you make and the more education you [...]
The Arts and the Whiner Generation
July 11, 2008 – 8:57 am
Consider this the next time you’re trying to raise money for an arts organization or trying to rally support for the creation of an arts center or just trying to see the world in a fresh, new way.
Baby Boomers — those 76 million born between 1946 and 1964 — are the most pessimistic, disappointed, and [...]
Create many small venues, not one big one
July 9, 2008 – 11:01 am
In “Unscripted,” my arts column today, I ask the Charleston Arts Coalition, a new group of artists and arts supporters making the case for a community arts center, to stop talking about building a facility and start talking instead about how to build a service organization.
Set aside, for now at least, discussion of “a unified [...]
Indy nukes the fridge
July 7, 2008 – 4:15 pm
It’s moving so fast, this Newsweek article has barely hit the magazine stands.
In the new Indiana Jones film, our hero finds himself in a nuclear test site. To save himself, he hops into a lead-lined refrigerator. The bomb blast hurls him across the desert. He opens the door. Not a scratch on Harrison Ford’s rugged [...]
Perhaps changes in the music industry aren’t so bad after all
March 27, 2008 – 8:14 am
The whole structure of the music industry is in flux. Old news, right? Once music went digital and once that digital information starting becoming disseminated exponentially via interconnectivity, that was it. No more control and thus no more profit. The gatekeepers were out of work, though they might not know it. There’s got to be [...]
A curious footnote to the history of the “hotel-hospital”
March 26, 2008 – 7:43 am
When I was doing research for today’s cover story on the use of visual art in solving problems of 21st century hospital design, and in effect making them feel more like hotels in order to put patients at ease, I came across this curiosity from The New York Times.
The headline reads (in pdf format): “Hospitals [...]
More venue news, analysis, and a letter of concern
March 19, 2008 – 9:01 am
This week, I follow up with more news and analysis about Charleston’s ongoing venue problem. Last week, I wrote about issues facing the American Theater, Charleston Ballet Theatre, Redux Contemporary Art, PURE Theatre, the Village Playhouse, Spoleto Festival, and Waterfront Memorial Park. For today’s paper, I discuss Buxton’s East Bay Theatre, the Charleston Music Hall, [...]
The flawed pursuit of happiness
February 19, 2008 – 10:52 am
Here’s an interesting piece on how American culture puts a premium of happiness even though it’s a state of mind that’s nearly impossible maintain all the time from the Spartanburg Herald-Journal —JS
People search for it in self-help books, partners and pills. But happiness can even elude those who seem to have it all. The news [...]
Are Athletes Role Models?: An Interview with Frank Deford
February 16, 2008 – 4:13 pm
This is from our industrious intern, Josh Eboch. —JS
. . . . .
To Be Frank
A moment of clarity in the murky world of professional sports
By Josh Eboch
Is it fair to hold athletes, by simple virtue of the size of their paychecks and their level of visibility, to proportionally high moral standards?
This month, Frank Deford, noted [...]
