Miami's captivating cultural chorus leads by example. Bravo for museums and galleries! They belong to exciting initiatives raising high the baton for the culturally curious. A symphony of sights, sounds, and ideas overtakes the city. As I live and breathe, Miami this fall is now a stimulating place for ideas to ferment in the outrageously varied cultural feast we find from South Beach to the streets of Little Havana to the city's western reaches near Florida International University.
It's like another education--even for those of us who have been there, done that with writing papers for college. These lively learning opportunities are free or cost just pennies compared to the cost of a college education. How can you resist?
Begin your fall with a bang by sprinting to see "Speed Limits" at the Wolfsonian-FIU. It's an astounding exhibit with so much to see and talk about that you'll want to plan a return trip. I'm already planning mine with my terrific ArtTable pals. This remarkably-designed show will make you actually feel the consequences of our ever-accelerating need for speed when drivers navigate extra-expressways constructed around the world. And it does more than that by helping us contemplate the currently contradictory desire to slow things down, to give our bodies a rest from fast food, life in the fast lane, and texting till we drop. No wonder "The Wolf" calls itself the museum of "thinkism." See www.wolfsonian.org
And while I'm thinking about it, I want to give a shout-out for the catalog "Speed Limits" for this exhibit. It's an impressive publication. It is edited by Jeffrey T. Schnapp, co-founder of the Stanford Humanities Lab and professor of French, Italian, and Comparative Literature at Stanford University. I've been diving into this catalog for about a week now. There's so much to discover, and I can't wait till I can find the time to spend more time reading it!
As a former scholar in comparative literature who adores the writing of Marcel Proust, I was delighted to encounter his essay "Motoring Days" on page 243. I'd love for readers of this blog to tell me about other essays I should be sure not to miss.
In the best spirt of comparative literature scholarship that I recall from my coffee-blasted grad school days, Schnapp has done an outstanding job of evoking the "zeitgeist"--or spirit of the time--for our currently time-obsessed moment.
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