By Bob Hicks
When we talk about culture here at Art Scatter, we like to think it’s almost as wide as life. It could be historical, or political, or social, or personal, or purely aesthetic. It might be Madame Butterfly, Puccini’s opera about a fatal clash of moral sensibilities, which returns to the Portland Opera stage [...]
By Bob Hicks
John Buchanan, the flamboyant former director of the Portland Art Museum, died on Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, after a struggle with cancer. He was 58.
Buchanan left the Portland museum in 2005 to become director of the much larger Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which encompasses the de Young Museum in Golden Gate [...]
By Bob Hicks
Keep Portland Pickled. Or maybe, in honor of a certain shape of preserved cucumber, Keep Portland Speared.
Imagine a city where something called the Portland Fermentation Festival is such a mind-boggling hit that you can’t get in the doors. It’s like reporting that the Iowa City Haggis Festival or the Twin Falls Ukelele and [...]
By Bob Hicks
You out there, you poor wayfaring strangers stranded at the offramp of the Information Superhighway with a flat tire or a blown gasket or a speeding ticket from a Washington State Trooper who had his radar gun pointed the wrong way but also had a quota to fill and liked the looks of [...]
The days go langorously here in the Old Country. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter relax in the Vondepark before wandering off to find pannekoeken and beer:
Avert your gaze. Mr. and Mrs. Scatter have jettisoned the Large Smelly Boys and are having a romantic interlude abroad. In the meantime, they have temporarily outsourced the blog to their chief travel correspondent, who makes friends wherever he goes — this time to Bruges, Belgium.
By JoJo
The royal whatzis
The Cherry Orchard at Artists Repertory Theatre
Noble Viola on Opus at Portland Center Stage
Brian Libby on the failed Columbia River Crossing
Portland Taiko tells a tale
James E. McWilliams on eating locally and globally
Portland Taiko. Rich Iwasaki/2009
By Bob Hicks
We’re given to understand some sort of white-tie wedding is taking place [...]
Two significant figures in Portland arts and culture have died, and we express our appreciation to them and our condolences to their friends and families.
Harold Schnitzer, the prominent businessman who was a major supporter of the Portland Art Museum and many other organizations, died early this morning at age 87. In the past several years [...]
By Bob Hicks
It’s not often we call attention to a front-page newspaper story — after all, it’s right there on the front page; how could you miss it? — but today we’re doing just that. If you haven’t looked at it yet, please read Still Stuck in the Past, D.K. Row’s front-page story in today’s [...]
By Bob Hicks
The big cultural flap out of Washington, now that people have mostly moved on from the Smithsonian chief’s craven caving-in to reactionary blowhards over David Wojnarowicz’s ant-crawling video at the National Portrait Gallery, comes from the flip side of the channel: Rocco Landesman, boss of the National Endowment for the Arts, has been [...]