“No one has ever backed out of a winning bid to make a political statement before, art experts say. … Christie’s, like all auction houses, screens potential bidders and checks their financial credentials. [Collector Cai Mingchao], though, may not have set off red flags because he has purchased at international auction before. He paid Sotheby’s $15 million for a Buddha sculpture from the Ming dynasty two years ago, and owns a smaller auction house in China.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
150 Years On, Reconsidering The ‘Jewish Mark Twain’
“When Ukrainian-born writer Sholem Rabinovich died in New York City in 1916, throngs gathered in three boroughs to greet his funeral cortege. Rabinovich, who went by the pen name Sholem Aleichem (‘peace be with you’), was a humorist and a champion of the Yiddish language — in the words of his New York Times obituary, a ‘Jewish Mark Twain.'” People today are more familiar with his work than they might realize.
David Foster Wallace’s Too-Finite Quest
“‘The Pale King,’ the name Wallace gave to the novel that, had he finished it, would have been his third … continues Wallace’s preoccupation with mindfulness. It is about being in the moment and paying attention to the things that matter, and centers on a group of several dozen I.R.S. agents working in the Midwest.” An excerpt from it accompanies D.T. Max’s lengthy piece on the author, who killed himself last September.
In Online Excerpting, What Constitutes Fair Use?
Generally, websites’ excerpts of other organizations’ original content “have been considered legal, and for years they have been welcomed by major media companies, which were happy to receive links and pass-along traffic from the swarm of Web sites that regurgitate their news and information. But some media executives are growing concerned that the increasingly popular curators of the Web that are taking large pieces of the original work … are shaving away potential readers and profiting from the content.”
AMA Group Is Just Not That Into All Those Cigarette Shots
“Angry at Warner Brothers over images of cigarettes in the comedy ‘He’s Just Not That Into You,’ an arm of the American Medical Association is demanding that the studio step up its policing of tobacco images on screen. The American Medical Association Alliance said it intends to lodge an official complaint on Thursday with Warner Brothers and its corporate parent, Time Warner, over ‘disturbing images of specific cigarette brands in this youth-rated movie’….”
High Museum Of Art Decreases Staff And Salaries
“The High Museum of Art will cut salaries, enforce furloughs and trim 7 percent of its workforce,” a move that, combined with previous reductions, “will bring $1.4 million in savings and shrink its operating budget for fiscal year 2009 to $23.7 million, the museum said. … Director Michael Shapiro will take a 7 percent pay cut and other director-level employees will take a 6 percent pay cut. All other employees will take a 5 percent pay cut. “
Small Publisher Of Translations Finds Niche, Turns Profit
“It does not sound like a recipe for publishing success: a roster of translated literary novels written mainly by Europeans, relying heavily on independent-bookstore sales, without an e-book or vampire in sight. But that is the formula that has fueled Europa Editions, a small publisher founded by a husband-and-wife team from Italy five years ago.”
For Kimmel Center’s Acoustic Challenges, Help Is Coming
“The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts has chosen a sound doctor to fix what ails Verizon Hall” — the consensus being that the home of the Philadelphia Orchestra is rather badly afflicted. “[V]arious critics, instrumentalists, administrators, and even [hall designer] Artec have said that the 2,500-seat Verizon falls short of its potential. Sound presence greatly varies from seat to seat, and with the size of the ensemble on stage.”
Walters Art Museum Lays Off Staffers, Cancels Exhibition
“Faced with a 27 percent drop in the value of its endowment funds and expected cuts in state and local government grants, the Walters Art Museum announced yesterday a restructuring plan that includes laying off seven of its 150 employees, imposing a salary and limited hiring freeze and staff furloughs, and canceling an exhibition that was to have had the museum collaborating with the Musee d’Orsay in Paris and the Getty in Los Angeles.”
If NYC Limits Auto Traffic, What’s The Fallout For B’way?
“The city plans to close several blocks of Broadway to vehicle traffic through Times Square and Herald Square, an experiment that would turn swaths of the Great White Way into pedestrian malls” — and do what, exactly, to Broadway theatres? “A theater industry executive who was briefed on the plan this week said the reaction among Times Square business leaders was largely favorable” but noted that “one worry was whether taxis and other vehicles would have difficulty leaving people in front of theaters.”