“The new generation of e-books will, in essence, merge the laptop and the book. Now if my narrative starts to drag, or I digress, readers can click onto their favorite news site to see what’s up with health care, or click onto TMZ to see what’s up with Brangelina. How do I compete with that?”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Miramax Is No More
As Disney prepared to shutter its art-house company Thursday, people in the movie business mourned. “When we think of the movies that defined the latter part of the 20th century – the movies that mattered, … that hit pop culture like a hammer and left a dent – more often than not they came from Miramax.”
How Top Museums Came Out Of 2009
For example: “The Art Institute of Chicago is looking forward to a rise in its endowment of 12% from last year, when it suffered a loss of nearly 24%,” while “[t]he Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is estimating a budget decrease of $2m, despite a 13% boost to its endowment.”
Survey: Museum Cuts Continue, But Recovery Is Beginning
After a year of cratering endowments and slashed budgets, “a mood of cautious optimism prevails among those at the helm of America’s leading art museums.”
There’s No Right To Dance At The Jefferson Memorial
“A federal judge has ruled against a woman who was arrested for dancing with a group of 17 others at the memorial dedicated to President Jefferson.”
Northern Ireland Creates A National Opera Company
“The Arts Council has allocated £374,000 to fund the first year of the new company, whose brief will be to ‘provide new ways for local people to engage with opera, raising the standards of local performances as well as providing a platform to showcase the very best international artists’.”
What Will The iPad Mean For Book Culture?
“The traditional book, judging by [Apple CEO Steve] Jobs’s announcement, and a recent eulogy of sorts by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is headed for [the] cultural compost pile…. This raises two issues: what the loss of book stores does to communities, and what the brave new publishing world will mean to authors and readers.”
After 57 Years On Met Stage, Tenor To Take His Final Bow
“Now, at 80, [Charles] Anthony has become a Methuselah of the Met. It is tempting to say that he has appeared too many times to count, but the Met counts things. It says he has appeared in 2,927 performances, the most of any solo artist in its history.”
Making Drama Out Of Suicide Chat Rooms
“This is not group suicide, or mass death via cult. Instead, these are discussion groups where people in despair come to ask questions about ending it all, where they talk about their intentions. … Those who linger become experts in the workings of the group, and a social hierarchy emerges.”
Christie’s Sales Slumped 24 Percent In 2009
“‘These figures were much better than we expected,’ Edward Dolman, Christie’s chief executive, said in a telephone interview. ‘The art market is vulnerable and we thought we’d be down 50 percent, as we were in the last recession in 1991.'”