“While no price was disclosed, the collection has been insured for more than $100 million” and includes about 185,000 prints. MSD Capital LP, Dell’s investment firm, “will lend the photos for five years to the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Politicians Like CultureLabel’s One-Stop Museum Shopping
“Dubbed an ‘Amazon for the arts’ by its creators, the Web aggregator is satisfying consumer appetite for art-related gifts, and boosting museum revenue at a time when subsidies are heading lower.”
British Theatre’s Oxbridge Fetish Is Obstructing Diversity
“Plenty of professions including law and journalism have an Oxbridge bias, and theatre criticism in particular has been, and continues to be, dominated by people who attended those universities. But why should the same be true of directors – particularly when you’d assume that it is creativity, not academic prowess, that counts on stage?”
Scuffle With Macmillan Was A Public Loss For Amazon
“Amazon, which pulled Macmillan’s titles from its site, came out of the fight with egg on its face. The publisher, meanwhile, won new fans. … Amazon also lost the public relations battle with literary agents, a group that the giant retailer has been trying to woo in recent months.”
Why Does It Feel Like Time Moves Faster As We Get Older?
“This seems to be true across cultures, across time, all over the world. No one is sure where this feeling comes from. Scientists have theories, of course, and one of them is that when you experience something for the very first time, more details, more information gets stored in your memory.”
Irony Alert: Summit Of Documentarians Bars The Media
“RealScreen said that press would be confined to a press room, and any attempt to take cameras or recording equipment outside of it ‘will be monitored and any instances of transgression will be met with expulsion from the event.’ Further, reporters ‘will not be permitted to chase potential subjects down in the halls — that too will lead to expulsion.'”
In Obama Budget, Arts Funding Holds Steady
“Should the Obama administration get its way, funding for the nation’s major arts and cultural institutions will stay largely flat, although a few organizations … will see increases over what the president requested last year. In general, arts organizations seemed grateful that things didn’t turn out worse.”
Va. School System Won’t Ban Anne Frank’s Diary After All
A parent’s very specific request that her eighth grader not be required to read aloud from “The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition” sparked a swift, blanket decision to ban the book from the school system. After intense criticism, it’s reversing course.
Obama Budget May Be Bad News For Philanthropy
Under the plan, “tax deductions for charitable donations will be capped at 28% starting in 2011 for individuals earning more than $200,000 and joint-filers whose income tops $250,000. … So an arts philanthropist donating a $1-million gift to a museum or performance group would get a $350,000 tax break this year, but only $280,000 in 2011.”
Lang Lang Signs $3M Deal With Sony Classical
“The Chinese musician Lang Lang, 27, has signed for Sony Classical for $3 million, an executive familiar with the move at his old label Deutsche Grammophon told me. A Sony spokeswoman in London said that the company wouldn’t comment,” but it’s an advantageous move for the label.