While the financial deals carved out by Christie’s with buyers, sellers and third-party guarantors (one of whom is often thought to be the firm’s owner itself, François Pinault) remain a closely-guarded secret, Sotheby’s obligatory filings were revelatory in many cases. – The Art Newspaper
Author: Douglas McLennan
Why Sotheby’s Was Bought
The purchase, by Mr. Drahi’s BidFair USA, returns the only publicly traded major auction house to private ownership after 31 years on the New York Stock Exchange. – The New York Times
Art Requires Empathy. Machines Don’t Have It. So Can They Make Art We Will Relate To?
“We are able to empathise with nonhuman characters or intelligent machines in human-made fiction because they have been conceived by other human beings from the only subjective perspective accessible to us: ‘What would it be like for a human to behave as x?’ In order to understand machinic art as such – and assuming that we stand a chance of even recognising it in the first place – we would need a way to conceive a first-person experience of what it is like to be that machine. That is something we cannot do even for beings that are much closer to us.” – Aeon
Why Is There Still A Stigma About Males Dancing?
Data compiled by Doug Risner, a professor of dance at Wayne State University in Detroit, shows that only 32 percent of male dancers have fathers who support their desire to dance. Typically, American dads only want their sons to be athletic on the sports field. Adding music and ballet technique—or tap dancing, contemporary movement, ballroom or jazz steps—to physicality somehow makes that pursuit unforgivably girlish. – Dance Magazine
A Mysterious And Shadowy Literary Fellowship That Existed In Secret And Then Was Abruptly Canceled
“I remember more experienced writers telling me that I should say yes to every opportunity until I had earned the privilege to say no. But hope is both a strength and a weakness; it takes time to learn the difference between those who feed it and those who feed off of it. I wish someone had told me that early-career writers are the cheap gas on which much of the writing business runs.” – The New Yorker
Edinburgh International Festival Faces Big Cuts
The proposal would mean the EIF has taken a 19.4% cut in its funding since 2015/16. EIF director Fergus Linehan questioned the lack of a strategic plan for the festival, which took £3.8 million in ticket sales in 2018. Linehan told The Stage: “There has been 10 years of decline and now this is accelerated decline. So what is the plan?” – The Stage
Leonard Cohen Letters Sell For Five Times Estimates At Auction
The top letter, in which Cohen wrote in December 1960 about being “alone with the vast dictionaries of language,” fetched almost $75,000 compared to an original high estimate of $13,000. – CBC
Study: Busting Stereotypes Of What Millennials Are (And Aren’t)
Today’s young adults are just as likely to endorse traditional racial and gender stereotypes as members of previous generations. And by age 30, those who have earned college degrees enjoy incomes comparable to those of their predecessors. – Pacific Standard
Marin Alsop On Being A Pioneering Woman Conductor
Despite the progress made in recent years, she said, female conductors were still judged differently from their male counterparts while on the podium. “The thing about conducting is it’s all body language,” she said, and “our society interprets gesture very differently from men or from women.” – The New York Times
How Independent Bookstores Are Becoming Hip Again
Across Britain and Ireland indies are doing what they do best: hosting readings and signings, cooking up literary lunches and generally feeding curiosity. Bookshop crawls are quite the thing now and you can join one locally or engage in literary tourism farther afield. – The Observer