“Halfway through the castings of broadcast drama pilots this season, the top-billed actors on four pilots are non-Caucasian. What’s more, the four projects are among the highest-profile drama pilots this year.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Appreciation: Poet Lucille Clifton
National Book Award-winning poet Lucille Clifton died Saturday at 73. “Clifton had six children and made poems not in ‘a room of one’s own’ but, rather, at the proverbial kitchen table, with family life proceeding around her. ‘Why do you think my poems are so short?’ she would often say, with a laugh….”
Huck Finn, Victim Of His Own Sales Power?
Ever since he bought a trio of Huck Finn Cabbage Patch dolls in the 1980s, a UCLA English professor has been amassing a collection of “knickknacks, toys and Huck-themed gadgets” — not because he likes them but in order “to show students how commercialism sold one of American literature’s most enduring characters down the river.”
MoMA’s Exhibition Design Guy, Making Vision Reality
Jerome Neuner’s “job — one that often goes unsung in the museum world and … unnoticed by the public — is to serve as a kind of mediator between the visionary (the grand dreams of curators and artists about how a show could look) and the practical (how the show will fit within walls, some of them load bearing).”
Apple E-Books Might Not Be So Costly
“[A]ccording to at least three people with knowledge of the discussions, … Apple inserted provisions requiring publishers to discount e-book prices on best sellers — so that $12.99-to-$14.99 range was merely a ceiling; prices for some titles could be lower, even as low as Amazon’s $9.99.”
Look Left To Pause The Music, Roll Eyes To Up The Volume
New headphones that respond to eye movements “look much like regular earbuds, connected by a cable to a phone. They sense the movements of the eyeballs by measuring tiny changes in electric charge.”
Faber & Faber’s Writing School To Open Toronto Outpost
“The Faber Academy Toronto, slated to open in October, will offer a selection of long and short fiction and poetry courses and employ notable Canadian writers as instructors. … [A] successful offshoot of Faber’s core publishing business, [the school] was launched 18 months ago in Paris” and has since expanded to other European cities.
Ex-RISD Director To Head Palm Beach’s Norton Museum
Hope Alswang, “who is widely credited with reviving the RISD Museum after several years of lackluster programming and sagging public interest” before resigning abruptly last summer, will be the new director of the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, Fla.
AG Asked To Probe Fresno Museum’s Sale Of Its Collection
The “action comes as the [nonprofit Fresno Metropolitan Museum] is scheduled to auction its non-art property today, with proceeds going toward the $4 million in debt that led in part to the museum’s demise last month. … Museum officials have said they are negotiating over an auctioneer and a sale date” for the art in the collection.
Parsing The NY Phil And LA Phil’s Upcoming Seasons
“[B]oth orchestras are moving on parallel tracks in what appears to be an attempt to put their money where their mouths are in terms of bringing each organization into a more active role in the life of its city — and into the 20th century. It’s fair to say that the New York Philharmonic has farther to travel to attain this goal.”