The Los Angeles County Museum of Art opened their Reading Room today.  The site offers ten exhibition catalogues, mostly from the 1960s, that 'definitively placed contemporary art from Southern California on the national map or furthered the dialogue between Los Angeles and New York.' 

Although seeing these amazing works on your computer monitor is not optimal, for someone researching the work of a particular artist, it's a far cry better than ordering back catalogues (if available) or turning to a site like Abe Books to find rare editions that may be available through used book sellers.   read more »

Slate has a very interesting pictorial essay of creative uses of surplus big box stores (from Julia Christensen's book Big Box Reuse) . We often think of "adaptive reuse" as a means of employing heritage buildings.  I suspect the "heritage" of the 80's, 90's and early 2000's is going to include a huge inventory of big boxes.  Imagine what we could do with them...

News from the University of Maryland Medical Centre:

JOYFUL MUSIC MAY PROMOTE HEART HEALTH, ACCORDING TO UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND SCHOOL OF MEDICINE STUDY

Research team concludes the cardiovascular benefits of music are similar to those found in their previous study of laughter

So... while you're out there hugging your Alderman, maybe hand them some tickets to the Beethoven Festival!  Something tells me they're going to need some help with their blood pressure next week.

Somehow the first month of my work term with Calgary Arts Development has flown by without a blog post. Not a single one. As a public relations student at Mount Royal College, I understand the importance of communicating with the public, so I figured it was time for me to jump on the blog train with reckless abandon. And there's no better time to start than now.

The other evening I had the good fortune of attending the dress rehearsal of Alberta Ballet's Dangerous Liaisons. I was pleasantly surprised. Take everything you thought you knew about the ballet and throw it out the window. Dangerous Liaisons pushes the boundaries by having a play and a ballet going on simultaneously. The choreography was visually stunning as dancers held poses that at times were painfully beautiful to watch. This truly is a must see, even if you don't think you like the ballet. Go. I promise you won't be disappointed.  read more »

Like many people, I spend a lot of time browsing blogs to keep up on news, trends and cool stuff. I'm always grateful for the amazing learning journey that comes from reading through my Bloglines feeds (almost!) every day. It was a great discovery to find New PR this week. It's a reader-ranked source of news and resources on all things PR-related. All the work of sorting and filtering to see what's worth reading is done already, so what you get is a really useful collection of great articles that's been ranked and screened by a readership of PR professionals. The concept of quality content rising to the top is one of the guiding principles of Web 2.0** and I really appreciate when it happens in such a useful way.

I'm interested to learn more about resources like this that others find useful in helping them navigate through the world in an interesting and engaged way. What's rising to the top of your list?  read more »

DEMOS, a think tank out of the UK, self titled "the Think Tank for every day democracy" recently published a Green Paper and accompanying Podcast titled " So, What *Do* You Do?" which looks at how the creative industries work and how policy can support these industries.  read more »

Keen observers of this website will have noticed an increase in blogging over the past week. In case you're thinking "maybe they're bored..." I thought I'd provide a little meta-post (blogging about blogging) to shed some light on what's up.

In a previous incarnation I was a business professor (cue dramatic music). I specialized in Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Over the years I became generally fascinated with the ways humans organize to get things done. My studies took me all over the map, into anthropology, economics, psychology, sociology (social network theory mostly), and technology.  read more »

I've been reading the ArtsJournal series "Engaging Art" since last week. What a great conversation about how things happen between art and audiences. A few brief excerpts below, plus great reading on the blog, mp3s, and a future book, so dig in!

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The following article appeared on the blog Urban Scrawl, penned by the Calgary Herald's Paula Arab. It's not everyday that compliments like this are handed out!  read more »