6 Minute English - Spiral museum at fifty | Текст песни

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• Spiral museum at fifty

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Группа Learning English.
Продолжение текста здесь (весь текст не вмещается):
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/6minute/091112_6min_guggenheim.pdf

Dima: Hi, welcome to 6 Minute English from bbclearningenglish.com. I’m Dima
Kostenko
Rebecca: and I’m Rebecca Byrne. Hi.
Dima: Today’s language has to do with visiting places of interest and in particular,
describing architecture, and later we’ll get the chance to test our prediction
skills. But first of all Rebecca I have a question for you.
Rebecca: Fire away!
Dima: When you are visiting a new city, how would you normally choose which
places to see?
Rebecca: Responds (a variety of reasons… heard from other people… read about in
travel guides... some are just unmissable, e.g… - 1-2 examples)
Dima: ‘Unmissable’ – great word!
Rebecca: Comments: actually ‘unmissable’ is a fairly recent word, not every dictionary
has it. But you can use an even simpler phrase: ‘it’s a must to see’, or 'a mustsee'.
Dima: Well Rebecca, today we’re talking about one of the definite ‘unmissables’ for
any visitor to New York City. It’s an arts museum which first opened its doors
to the public 50 years ago almost to date. And from day one the museum’s
building, the creation of Frank Lloyd Wright, stirred quite a bit of controversy
because of its very unusual architecture. And here comes this week’s question
for you Rebecca. Which famous landmark do I have in mind do you reckon? Is
it
a) Rockefeller Center;
b) Guggenheim Museum or
c) Tate Gallery?
What do you think?
Rebecca: Guesses giving reasoning
Dima: We’ll check if you’re right in a second as we’re listening to the BBC’s Laura
Trevelyan reporting from NY, but first do you mind taking us through some of
today’s key vocabulary?
Rebecca: Responds. OK. First of all, the word ‘landmark’. It means a famous place,
often a building or another structure, that’s visited by many tourists. Then the
adjective ‘bulbous’, meaning round, looking like a bulb, or like a sphere. There
will be the phrase ‘a curving wave that never breaks’. Here, it simply refers to
the spiral-like shape of the building, so the key word is ‘spiral’. And finally,
the phrase ‘badly maimed’. Literally, it means ‘seriously injured’, ‘deformed’
or ‘crippled’. In our context it means ‘badly presented’, ‘not showing their
best’.
Dima: So that’s ‘landmark’, ‘bulbous’, ‘a curving wave’ and ‘badly maimed’. Let’s
listen:
Clip 1 0’22”
The bulbous, white Guggenheim Museum with its central rotunda is now one of New York's
landmarks, overlooking Central Park. Frank Lloyd Wright envisaged this creation as a
curving wave that never breaks, yet when it first opened to the public half a century ago, one
critic described it as a war between painting and architecture, in which both came off badly
maimed.
Rebecca: I think I got it right/wrong. The report is about the Guggenheim Museum!
Laura says that when the Museum was opened, one critic used some rather
imaginative language to describe the ‘bulbous’ structure. He called it ‘a war
between painting and architecture, in which both came off badly maimed’!
Dima: Well not many would support this view today. In fact, if you listen to Richard
Armstrong who is the current Director of the Guggenheim, the building is now
seen as the main treasure in the Museum’s collection.
Rebecca: And here are a few more key phrases for you. ‘Reinvented notions’. This
means ‘changed the understanding, created new ideas’. ‘Beaux Arts’, an
artistic style. ‘A train shed’, which is the spacious covered part of a major
railway station. And ‘highly sociable’, meaning encouraging communication,
bringing people together.
...