Showing papers on "Tipping point (climatology) published in 2003"

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Difference.

Abstract: The Tipping Point , first published as articles in the New Yorker and then in book form in 2000, offers a fascinating look at a concept well known to public health professionals—the epidemic The book takes the concept a step further to examine social epidemics In the age of AIDS and SARS, Malcolm Gladwell offers insights that might be of use in examining new epidemics, as we observe the social and health impact of epidemics on individuals, institutions, and economies The book is never less than engaging and erudite, if occasionally a bit redundant Gladwell, a former science writer, has a …

The Tipping Point: "Museum Collecting and the Canon"

Abstract: Bruce Robertson In the summer of 1953, the American Federation of Arts organized and sent to Germany the first systematic survey exhibition of nineteenth-century American art.1 The checklist, catalogue illustrations and essay by John I. H. Baur provide a snapshot of the state of our understanding of American art fifty years ago and offer numerous vantage points for approaching the question of how artworks entered the canon constructed in the twentieth century. In this essay, I will consider the role that museum permanent collections-and the curators who build them-have played in canon formation. Baur's curatorial eye is an important part of the story. Art historians have often treated museum permanent collections as storehouses to be raided for illustrations. They seem to be inert, accumulated by mysterious and chancy processes, and waiting to be activated by scholarship. The fruitful adventures of dealers and collectors usually generate the large-scale changes in taste that precede developments in public collections; museum acquisitions tend to record change rather than generate it. Moreover, artworks generally become known to public audiences and scholars through loan exhibitions, which can include both privately and publicly held works. These shows produce publicity and leave a record in catalogues and illustrations, thus scholars write about them in their historiographies. But I would argue that canonization-the moment when the art-historical community accepts a work as essential to its understanding of American art-occurs when an art object enters a public museum collection-or soon after. Once the artwork takes its place in the museum gallery, it becomes an established entity, regularly accessible for reproduction and viewing. By and large, these qualities of stability and availability are the precondition, the tipping point, for canonization. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's acquisition of genre painter George Caleb Bingham's Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845) is a good example. After the museum purchased the picture for $1,500 in 1933, Fur Traders quickly became the single most reproduced work by the artist. Because of the museum's proximity to New York publishers and art historians and its well-organized photographic services department, almost any work in the Metropolitan has a hands-down advantage in the race to canonization.2 In this instance, the museum announced its purchase with some public fanfare, and Bingham, whose work had seldom been reproduced in the twentieth century, suddenly became a player in the narrative of American art history. To my knowledge, he had not been discussed at length (if mentioned at all) in any previous survey of American art: Rilla Jackman, one of the first textbook authors to consider genre painting, did not mention him in 1928, nor did Frederic

Has quality reached a tipping point

Abstract: In his famous book, The Tipping Point: how little things can make a big diierence, Malcolm Gladwell describes the phenomenon of the ‘tipping point’.1 This well-known American phrase outlines the moment when an idea, trend or argument crosses a threshold (‘tips’) to become accepted and spreads. Many small things often combine and conspire to produce a big change. In this editorial I want to use this marketing and change management theory to explore where quality is going in the NHS