“Many universities have eliminated such marquee projects because of the recession. But U. of C. officials said the recession, as well as Chicago’s failure to land the 2016 Summer Olympics, had aided them by driving down demand for construction work, thus leading contractors to offer lower prices.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
How Doomsday Lost Its Scare Power
“The arts, through sheer ubiquity, are making doomsday way too familiar. And frankly, there was a time when large-scale disaster unsettled — when each time a movie or book or TV movie gave it serious thought, the moment could be unnerving.” Not any longer.
Oxford University Puts Siegfried Sassoon’s Papers Online
The collection “focuses on his war poetry with manuscripts of poems such as ‘The General’ and ‘Died of Wounds’ as well as photographs and letters.”
Australia Rejects Changes To Book-Import Restrictions
“The Federal Government’s decision to keep import restrictions on books will ‘kill bookshops’ as online retailers such as Amazon gain the upper hand, the former chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Allan Fels, has warned.” Brick-and-mortar booksellers say 3,000 jobs are at risk.
When Fine Art Objects Live In Federal Agencies
“This is the essential difference between curating a collection at a museum and one at a federal agency: These are working buildings where staff and visitors … use the furniture, walk on the rugs, sleep in the four-poster beds, drink from the tea cups, write at the desk and, sometimes, break the chair when they lean back too far.”
Judge OKs High School Productions Of Laramie, Rent
“Some parents who object to the plays’ ‘mature content’ had sought a preliminary injunction to stop both productions. But lawyers for the Clark County School District said the parents’ lawyer failed to prove one of the basic criteria for a preliminary injunction, that it would cause ‘irreparable harm’ to the plaintiffs.”
Refunds Aren’t Priority For Honolulu Symphony Patrons
The Honolulu Symphony announced last week “that it will file for Chapter 11 reorganization and must cut its payroll by as much as half,” but patrons aren’t clamoring to get their money back for canceled November and December concerts, or for the uncertain remainder of the 2009-10 season.
Kindle Unfriendly To Visually Impaired, Universities Say
“The National Federation of the Blind planned to announce Wednesday that the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University won’t consider big rollouts of the electronic reading device unless Amazon makes it more accessible to visually impaired students.”
Venice Architecture Biennale Names First Female Director
Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima “has won acclaim for recent projects including the new Bowery home for the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, and this summer’s Serpentine Gallery pavilion in London.”
Report: British Museum To Loan Cyrus Cylinder To Iran
The three-month loan of the 2,500-year-old cylinder, reported by Iranian TV but unconfirmed by the museum, follows last month’s threat by Iran to “sever all ties with the British Museum unless a promise to send the Cylinder to the National Museum of Iran was honored.”