Author: rakemag

There are colleges in cities and colleges in cornfields, but a college on a hill is an especially pleasing thing. Serious students deserve a space that is elevated, that is dedicated to learning for its own sake, free from the corruption of the “real world.” The modern idea that equates a college degree with employability is both cynical and false.

We think it’s deplorable that human resources departments scoff at resumés from liberal-arts graduates, while the captains of capitalism grouse that there aren’t enough applicants with broad minds. But we never believed one should get a diploma in order to get a job. It is an insidious line of marketing designed primarily to separate students from their money.

Schools have taken their cues from government, which for the past twenty-five years has been corrupted by the strange idea that the public good can be measured only on a financial ledger. The people making decisions have somehow persuaded themselves that civil services from mail to mass transit are failures if they do not generate a cash profit. “Return on Investment” is the gospel, and fiscal doubletalk has overwhelmed the civic conversation about what is best for one and all.

Look to the administration of any college or university today, and count the degrees in finance and the certificates in business. There was a time when the deans who ran these institutions were as broadly educated in the humanities and the sciences as they now expect their own graduates to be. Today, most institutions of higher learning are more worried about the bottom line than about educating a new generation. They are investing in real estate, and they are building their endowments. They call it survival. We wonder at what point they stopped using the traditional measurement of their actions: how many students graduated with enlarged hearts and enlightened minds.

Graduates of one Minnesota hilltop college are upset about the sale of their alma mater’s beloved radio station. WCAL is, as they say, the “original listener-supported public radio station” in the nation. St. Olaf College has been the material owner and operator of the station, although the station has not had much to do with St. Olaf, other than to occupy one of its lovely little ivy-bedecked buildings off the quad. (Students tinker with their own low-band FM station, KSTO.) It is a sign that WCAL was doing something extraordinarily right that the buyer is the nation’s best public-radio operation, Minnesota Public Radio.

MPR has been bemused by WCAL’s continuing operations—both the size of its signal and the unorthodox nature of its programming—and one gets the sense that the idea to purchase the precocious little station in Northfield became the best way for the lion to dispatch the fly. It is certainly a relief that the other potential buyer, a lunatic evangelical Christian broadcaster, was apparently not welcome at the table at any price. And it can only be a good thing that MPR will have a new station in its stable. Perhaps it will inspire some refreshing innovation in public radio.

The sale of WCAL is a disappointment, but it is not the end of the world. That colleges and universities are raising tuition at three hundred percent the rate of inflation; that they are increasingly maudlin in their hat-in-hand attempts to pad their endowments; that they are relying on underpaid, overworked, un-benefited adjuncts while building state-of-the-art whirlpools and short-order grills and climbing walls—these things are the end of the world. The one we would prefer to inhabit, anyway.

What graduates find most irritating about the sale is that their alma mater is divesting itself of an eighty-year-old landmark for an instant financial high. St. Olaf hopes to realize $10 million to add to its estimated $235 million nest egg. Alumni, who are well-acquainted with the beggar in the varsity sweater, are now trying to find a way to stop the sale. They know better than anyone that there are greater truths than short-term gain. A college on a hill should command a much better view of the future than that.

Once I had a boyfriend whose purpose in life was to pick a meaningless fight with me daily. Predictably, he would become furious when I was unwilling to participate. He would retaliate by sputtering, “You just want everything to be so easy!” Cue to me looking incredulous, with a silent scream of, “Uhhhh DUH?” We’d reached a point of excruciating futility in which he had clearly run out of bullets and now was just throwing the gun at me.

Yes, yes, I know life isn’t only about the things you love to do.

So what if, for twenty-four hours, you had to do only the things you would most hate to do? How would your day go? This would be my daily planner:

7:00 A.M.: Wake up from the recurring nightmare in which I’m waitressing at a college sports bar on “Dr. Who Trivia Night.”

9:00 A.M.: Head to a voice-over job, where the producer’s sole direction is to tell me: “Think Demi Moore-ish, but not really.”

Noon: Lunch in the bathroom at 7th Street Entry: mayonnaise straight from the jar, washed down with a hot-dog water smoothie.

1:00 P.M.: Go to an audition for extras for a community theater production of The Dirt by Motley Crüe.

3:00 P.M.: Take my second-grade math teacher shopping for a new thong.

3:15 P.M.: Suddenly remember that said math teacher used to bite his hangnails off and then make sucking noises like he had a cough drop in his mouth.

3:30 P.M.:
Vomit in public.

6:00 P.M.:
Listen to the radio.

7:00 P.M.:
Participate in a study on the effects of eating expired paté, to earn extra cash.

11:00 P.M.:
Judge a Creed cover band contest in St. Paul.

The artist came from new york; the helicopter, from houston. The pilot arrived from new jersey and, at the artist’s direction, positioned his craft outside the two-story window wall at midway’s massive new gallery. For a couple of hours it hovered there, its searchlight trained on the crowd gathered for opening night. Some availed themselves of cheap sunglasses, hanging on a sculpture—a totem-like, enameled version of the displays at gas stations—at the center of the gallery. Aggressively artsy, beautiful yet foreboding, and also just a tad absurd, it was a happening tailor-made for the age of terrorism and the patriot act. This exhibit includes videos and photos from that event, titled inside out (tender buttons), along with other pieces from young, who in previous works has collaborated with tattoo artists, day laborers, and a football team. 3338 university ave. S.e., minneapolis; 612-605-4504; www.midwayart.org

A couple years back—this was before everyone started talking about exhibition designers—it seemed like curators were eclipsing artists as the hot thing in the art world. (That is, when architects weren’t hogging the spotlight with their museum designs, but we digress …) How did this happen? One likely factor was the rise in demand for curatorial services as biennial exhibitions—sprawling shows whose themes are all-encompassing, ambitiously esoteric, or both—began sprouting around the globe. The Venice Biennial is one of the granddaddies, but now there are dozens, enough that curators spend lots of time jetting around the world just to keep up with them all. Douglas Fogle is one of those globe-trotters (his home base is here at Walker Art Center), and courtesy of mnartists.org, he’ll give an insider’s scoop on how the biennial craze is affecting the art world. 2640 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-375-7622; www.walkerart.org

MCP’s latest exhibit is something of a tearjerker in a blue state like Minnesota. Terry Gydesen documents the glory that was the Democratic presidential campaigns, proving that black and white is just the medium to highlight crisp lines in the Johns’ expensive suits. Diana Walker, Time’s White House photographer for twenty years, captures candid moments with chief executives, from a Bush grandchild being dragged from Poppy’s office to Clinton popping French fries (oh, the days before heart surgery). Then there’s Gydesen’s shot of the Dean Scream, in all its delicious darkness. After all the hard work and heartache, let’s look back and laugh—even if it still hurts. 165 13th Ave. N.E., Minneapolis; 612-824-5500

Pondering presidents past may help some of us to blot out the current administration. The Smithsonian, that repository of weird keepsakes and relevant ephemera, has sent us this traveling exhibit of presidential history, comprising some 350 doodads and artifacts. Some are breathtaking (Jackie O.’s ball gown), some impressive (Lincoln’s inkwell, used to write the Emancipation Proclamation), and some intimate (Warren G. Harding’s red silk jammies); collectively, they add up to a fascinating, voyeuristic look into the personal behind the political. 345 W. Kellogg Blvd., St. Paul; 651-296-6126; www.mnhs.org

If you’ve got some religion in you, but find the standard holiday depictions just a tad predictable (Mary in the blue robe, Mary taking orders from angels, Mary in the bathtub), check out Chinese painter He Qi’s cubist visions. China’s most popular Christian artist has a wild and playful style that is more hedonistic than holy. His off-balance, raw, emotive characters are straight out of Picasso, channeled through traditional Chinese folk art techniques, and infused with gorgeous, saturated color. It’s glorious stuff, even to non-Christian eyes—not least the idea of an Asian Christ. Cool! 141 S. Seventh St., Minneapolis; 612-338-4541; www.premiergallery.com

How does it happen that one of the major creative forces of the twentieth century has gone mostly unnoticed by the art world? Painter and personality Beauford Delaney inspired artists like Georgia O’Keefe, Louis Armstrong, and James Baldwin, and his own expressive and distinctive modernist works capture the blues aesthetic of his time. Though Delaney’s story ends sadly, he left behind gorgeously wild street scenes, piercing portraits, and joyous concert scenes that show why the Jazz Age was such a crackling moment in American art and history. 2400 Third Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-870-3131; www.artsmia.org

In advance of a new novel from Eco (The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, due next summer), we are treated to a compilation of essays in which the renowned novelist and heavyweight scholar wrestles with the universe of language and writing. At once scholarly and sardonic, On Literature collects eighteen essays on everything from syntax and symbolism to fantasy and fairytale. In each, Eco comes at his subject with a different head. Writing as an Italian, he considers history’s place for fellow countrymen like Dante and Calvino. In other pieces he flexes his considerable critical muscles, as when grappling with the works of Jorge Luis Borges and James Joyce. The bulk of this material was derived from myriad symposia, conferences, lectures, and such, so it tends toward formality. But in the final essay, “How I Write,” Eco gives us a silvery glimpse of his addiction to writing.