From the end of the Second World War through the U.S. Bicentennial, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ford Foundation granted close to $300 million (approximately $2.3 billion in 2017 dollars) in the field of music alone. In deciding what to fund, these three grantmaking institutions decided to "ask the experts," adopting seemingly objective, scientific models of peer review and specialist evaluation. They recruited music composers at elite institutions, professors from prestigious universities, and leaders of performing arts organizations. Among the most influential expert-consultants were Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, and Milton Babbitt. The significance was two-fold: not only were male, Western art composers put in charge of directing large and unprecedented channels of public and private funds, but in doing so they also determined and defined what was meant by artistic excellence. They decided the fate of their peers and shaped the direction of music-making in this country. By asking the experts, the grantmaking institutions produced a concentrated and interconnected field of artists and musicians. Officers and directors utilized ostensibly objective financial tools like matching grants and endowments in an attempt to diversify and stabilize applicants' sources of funding, as well as the number of applicants they funded. Such economics-based strategies, however, relied more on personal connections among the wealthy and elite, rather than local community citizens. Ultimately, this history demonstrates how "expertise" served as an exclusionary form of cultural and social capital that prevented racial minorities and non-dominant groups from fully participating.

20UNDER40: Re-Inventing the Arts and Arts Education for the 21st Century is an anthology of critical discourse that addresses the impending generational shift in arts leadership by publishing twenty essays about the future of the arts and arts education each written by young and emerging arts professionals under the age of forty. In the process of doing so, 20UNDER40 brings the voices of young arts leaders out of the margins and into the forefront of our cultural dialogue.

Written by leaders in a wide range of creative fields and from all corners of the Asian region, this collection of essays presents arts and education programs which reflect traditional and contemporary practices. The volume brings together researchers, practitioners, educators, children and young people with shared interests in the arts and activities that cross disciplinary divisions and aims to encourage the use of the arts in developing international understanding, celebrating cultural diversity, building cultural bridges and creating cross-cultural dialogue throughout the Asian region. This book arose out of the need to promote not only arts and educational practices; but also the research and evaluations being achieved in the field. Writing about their own practical experiences, the authors explore linkages between creativity and discipline; social organisation and individual expression and how inventiveness and economic productivity are inextricably linked.

An abrupt break in the more conventional modes of artistic expression, for many, marks the advent of modernism in the early twentieth century. However, as Jed Rasula's alternative history shows, modernist aesthetics owe a significant debt to techniques and styles pioneered and established throughout the nineteenth century. An ambitious inter-arts exploration of patterns between one generation and another form the through-line of History of a Shiver: the backdrop of Wagner's epic nineteenth-century operas illuminates the music of Arnold Schoenberg and the Viennese School, in addition to literary works by Marcel Proust, Robert Musil, and Ezra Pound; the collodion glass plates deployed by Victorian photographers reveal the debt of Dada and Man Ray's innovative photograms to an era associated with realism; the brass bands conducted by John Philip Sousa in the 1880s and 1890s form a blueprint for instrumentation that gave rise to jazz; and the French symbolist verse of Stephane Mallarme and Paul Verlaine inspire the surrealist artworks of Salvador Dali. In addition to these connections, Rasula's book similarly considers phenomena in theatre, sculpture, and the "visual music" of figures like Thomas Wilfrid and Wassily Kandinsky. Taken together, the chapters of History of a Shiver emphasize the importance of inter-collaboration and influence in an artistic period when artfroms are traditionally isolated from one another and primarily celebrated for severing ties with the past.

This is a concise and accessible introduction into the concept of objectification, one of the most frequently recurring terms in both academic and media debates on the gendered politics of contemporary culture, and core to critiquing the social positions of sex and sexism. Objectification is an issue of media representation and everyday experiences alike. Central to theories of film spectatorship, beauty fashion and sex, objectification is connected to the harassment and discrimination of women, to the sexualization of culture and the pressing presence of body norms within media. This concise guidebook traces the history of the term's emergence and its use in a variety of contexts such as debates about sexualization and the male gaze, and its mobilization in connection with the body, selfies and pornography, as well as in feminist activism. It will be an essential introduction for undergraduate and postgraduate students in Gender Studies, Media Studies, Sociology, Cultural Studies or Visual Arts.

The Gospel According to Superheroes: Religion and Popular Culture offers an intriguing look at superheroes in light of the spiritual and mythological roles they play in our lives. B.J. Oropeza takes you through the adventuresome quest of three comic book eras as you read about the popular narratives of superheroes such as Batman, Superman, Spider-Man, X-Men, Hulk, Wonder Woman, the Fantastic Four, sci-fi film heroes, pulp heroes, antiheroes, and more. This book is a must-read for any-one interested in viewing the superheroes as both sinners and saints instead of mere good guys taking on the forces of evil.

The Birmingham Art Book is a tribute to a unique city whose visionary scientists and inventors made it famous as a manufacturing powerhouse. From heavy metal industry - here is where the first steam trains were built- to heavy metal music - Black Sabbath made their mark here, this is a place with a proud heritage. Its handsome university is the original of the 'Redbrick' universities, founded by a farsighted mayor in 1900 as a civic place of learning, open to all, now with many world famous alumni and staff, 10 of whom have won Nobel prizes. Local artists convey the architectural glory of Victoria Square and the city centre Museum and Art Gallery (which holds a sumptuous collection of Pre-Raphaelite art). In their drawings, they echo the modern vibrancy of buildings such as the iconic Selfridges department store and the REP theatre. Collages and sketches depict a city buzzing with vitality -from the world-renowned Hippodrome theatre, to the shopping centres and legendary nightlife that are national attractions. Quirky nooks like the Jewellery Quarter, the Electric Cinema or the tranquil Botanic gardens hidden so close to the centre are reflected in this lovely book. The green city with 8000 acres of public parks and many miles of canal paths dating from its heyday in the Industrial Revolution is lovingly drawn and painted by its artists. The Birmingham Art Book is where local artists shine a light on the grand and the humdrum with equal affection. Their love for the modern city is evident and their pride in its heritage comes to the fore in this lovely book.

Just over a century after his death, Walter Pater's critical reputation now stands as high as it has ever been. In the English-speaking world, this has involved recovery from the widespread neglect and indifference which attended his work in the first half of the twentieth century. In Europe, however, enthusiastic disciples such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the German-speaking world and Charles Du Bos in France, helped to fuel a growing awareness of his writings as central to the emergence of modernist literature. Translations of works like Imaginary Portraits, established his distinctive voice as an aesthetic critic and his novel, Marius the Epicurean, was enthusiastically received in Paris in the 1920s and published in Turin on the eve of the Second World War. This collection traces the fortunes of Pater's writings in these three major literatures and their reception in Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
Series Editor: Dr Elinor Shaffer: Institute of Germanic Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
Contributors: Stefano Evangelista, University of Bristol Stephen Bann, University of Bristol Benedetta Bini, University of Tuscia Maurizio Ascari, University of Bologna Elisa Bizzotto, University of Venice-Ca'Foscari Emily Eells, University of Paris X-Nanterre Benedicte Coste, Stendhal University, Grenoble Wolfgang Iser Ulrike Stamm, Berlin Martina Lauster, University of Exeter Mihaly Szegedy-Maszak, Eotvos University, Budapest Martin Prochazka, Charles University, Prague Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan Maria Teresa Malafaia, University of Lisbon Jorge Miguel Bastos da Silva, University of Oporto Jacqueline Hurtley, University of Barcelona

The haiku poem, in many ways, is the ancient equivalent of today's digital camera. See, write, capture. Anything at all. Beauty, horror, passion and death. Anything we see or feel or sense or know. In seventeen sounds we can describe virtually all that life can manifest. In this collection of very modern haiku Scott Mulhern has pointed his pen at a vast array of persons, places, conditions and things.

As the cinematic experience becomes subsumed into today's ubiquitous technologies of seeing, contemporary artworks lift the cinematic out of the immateriality of the film screen and separate it into its physical components within the gallery space. How to read these reformulations of the cinematic medium - and their critique of what it is and has been? In Theorizing Cinema Through Contemporary Art: Expanding Cinema, leading film theorists consider artworks that incorporate, restage, and re-present cinema's configuration of the key categories of space, experience, presence/absence, production and consumption, technology, myth, perception, event, and temporality, so interrogating the creation, appraisal, and evolution of film theory as channeled through contemporary art. This book takes film theory as a blueprint for the moving image, and juxtaposes it with artworks that render cinema as a material object. In the process, it unfolds a complex relationship between a theory and a practice that have commonly been seen as virtually incompatible, renewing our understanding of each and, more to the point, their interactions.

Outreach and engagement initiatives are crucial in promoting community development. This can be achieved through a number of methods, including avenues in the fine arts. The Handbook of Research on the Facilitation of Civic Engagement through Community Art is a comprehensive reference source for emerging perspectives on the incorporation of artistic works to facilitate improved civic engagement and social justice. Featuring innovative coverage across relevant topics, such as art education, service learning, and student engagement, this handbook is ideally designed for practitioners, artists, professionals, academics, and students interested in active citizen participation via artistic channels.

Philosophical Perspectives on Art presents a series of essays devoted to two of the most fundamental topics in the philosophy of art: the distinctive character of artworks and what is involved in understanding them as art. In Part I, Stephen Davies considers a wide range of questions about the nature and definition of art. Can art be defined, and if so, which definitions are the most plausible? Do we make and consume art because there are evolutionary advantages to doing so? Has art completed the mission that guided its earlier historical development, and if so, what is to become of it now? Should architecture be classified as an art form?
Part II turns to the interpretation and appreciation of art. What is the target and purpose of the critic's interpretation? Is interpretation primarily directed at uncovering artists' intended meanings? Can apparently contradictory interpretations of a given piece both be true? Are interpretative evaluations entailed by descriptions of a work's aesthetic and artistic characteristics? In addition to providing fresh answers to these and other central questions in aesthetics, Davies considers the nature and content of metaphor, and the relation between the expressive qualities of a work of art and the emotions of its creator.

Rug Art-RESCUED FROM OBLIVION is a delightful tale of discovery, but a sad reflection on the lack of preservation of North America's most endangered art form that has literally and figuratively been "tramped on" for much too long. Abandoned for more than half a century in the basement of a damp and mould filled former New Glasgow, Nova Scotia rug pattern factory, a determined research team found amazing pen and ink rug art created by an artist who is said to have studied in the same New York art class with noted folk artist Norman Rockwell. Under a leaking sewage pipe in that same factory they unearthed amazing hand cut Mystery stencils that are now rewriting the arts heritage . Their discovery heralds the oldest known commercial designs recovered in Canada, and possibly in North America and a unique pattern printing system hitherto unknown. The searchers found, and rescued from imminent oblivion some 550 pieces of original pen and ink art created by the 1892 factory founder John Garrett and his son Frank. In acquiring remnants of the oldest known rug pattern factory in the world (1892) they also unearthed three unique hand-carved full size rug pattern blocks and a mass of records of early pattern designs from across North America. An intriguing bonus was the salvaging of some 300 hand cut stencils created by a talented unknown artist. Measuring only 3x5" in size-each contained two rug pattern designs. Designated the MYSTERY PATTERNS preliminary research indicates they are the oldest Canadian rug designs ever discovered and possibly the oldest in the world.

"Scruton's Aesthetics" is a comprehensive critical evaluation of one of the major aestheticians of our age. The lead essay by Scruton is followed by fourteen essays by international commentators plus Scruton's reply. All discuss matters of enduring importance.

A collection of paintings and poetry by illustrator Vikki Yeates. Vikki has painted many hares over the years; they have become a happy obsession! This book brings most of them together in one volume, together with the poetry which often features in her paintings. She uses the Automatic Writing technique to scratch stories and poems into the artwork. It is not always possible to read the poems in their entirety, as the writing often continues off of the page, or certain areas are obscured by the paint. So this book is also a record of four of her poems/prose: 'Mad March Hares', 'Spirit', 'Moonlight Hares' and 'The Crow and the Moon'. The latter is the first poem Vikki wrote using this method - and does not feature any hares!

This book is a compilation of scholarly articles on a wide variety of subjects pertaining to the cultures of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. "Nordic Experiences" discusses music, art, literature, folkore, and the social fabric of past and present to offer the reader a many-faceted image of what the term Scandinavia stands for today.

There are now some 12-13 million people of Nordic descent living in the United States, and their culture has played a part in shaping the American experience. The cultural contacts and exchanges between the United States and the Nordic countries, thanks in large part to immigration, remains strong and varied, adding a significant dimension to the close ties that have existed for many years. This book is a celebration of Nordic culture and its harmonious and enduring relationship with the United States. As such, it will be of considerable interest to scholars and students alike of Scandinavian or European civilization.