“The city-owned 10,000-square-foot site was the former home of Mart 125 on 125th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and Frederick Douglass boulevards, across the street from the Apollo Theater. The RFP is the next step in the city’s long-running plans to redevelop the site.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Who Goes To BookExpo America, Anyway?
“Once, the conference had provided an opportunity for agents to make deals, but that is largely a thing of the past (and other book conferences, notably London and Frankfurt). Lately, publishers focus on previewing their upcoming books to members of the media and, more importantly, to booksellers.”
In Palladio’s Own Hand
Ada Louise Huxtable: “Seeing the original ink-and-wash drawings made almost 500 years ago, with Palladio’s handwritten notes, often done on the site, erases the centuries; they create a miraculous fusion of the distant past and immediate present, a kind of aesthetic time warp that brings the man and his moment wonderfully alive.”
Can Saatchi Reprise His Success With A New Generation?
“This is not the first time that [Charles] Saatchi has tried to repeat his trick.” But unlike the Young British Artists the collector propelled to fame with “Sensation” 13 years ago, the artists he now embraces are not “a brandable group of the sort that can easily be pushed — ready packaged — on to the public.”
To Raise £5.5 Million, RSC Actors Get The Buckets Out
Well on its way to building “a new open stage auditorium for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, better facilities for performers and audiences, a rooftop restaurant and a riverside café and walkway,” the Royal Shakespeare Company finds itself a little short of cash. So cast members are hitting up audiences.
Exhaustion To Keep Claudio Abbado From La Scala Return
“Mr. Abbado, 76, suffered from stomach cancer a decade ago, but La Scala’s spokesman, Carlo Maria Cella, said that tests showed no return of the illness. He said that the conductor had checked into the hospital suffering from extreme fatigue and weight loss after conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in three concerts this month.”
Anna Deavere Smith’s Border Conversations
“Two years ago, before the last presidential election, I interviewed people living and working in Phoenix and at the Arizona-Mexico border, and much of what I heard then echoes strongly in the debate over the Arizona law. Even then, as I sat at office desks, or in living rooms, or outside at picnic tables, the words were dramatic.”
After Years Of Shrinking, Indie Booksellers Grow (Barely)
“The rise [in American Booksellers Association membership] is tiny, from 1,401 a year ago to 1,410, but a deluge in comparison to the past two decades, when membership dropped from more than 3,000 to last year’s low.” The ABA’s chief executive “credits last year’s turnaround mostly to the smarts of the independent community and a willingness to experiment.”
Ghostwriters & Pols: A Reasonable Marriage
“It makes sense that, when confronted with the complex systems that produce, promote and sell books, we need to isolate one element: whether to idolize (The Author) or condemn (ghostwriting). But this impulse causes us to miss the more pressing problems in our political book culture.”
One Trouble With Chinese Art Criticism
Peter Plagens: “China does not have a system–if it can be called that–like Western Europe and America do of writers not in the direct pay of artists and galleries passing more or less independent judgments upon the contemporary stuff.”