“Complaining that the Golden Globes are bought and paid for is a bit like being upset that a billboard for a movie is bought and paid for. They’re both just ads. But next year around this time, you can bet you’ll be hearing tawdry tales of the Golden Globes all over again. Why?” Might it be the legitimate journalists’ jealousy of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association?
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Justin Davidson’s Rx For Saving New York City Opera
“The new boss ought to dismantle City Opera’s current apparatus and reorganize it into a flexible roving troupe. … Forging a migrant opera company would force changes that a ruthless economy may demand anyway: simple but ingenious sets, a repertoire of intimate pieces, and an orchestra that can shrink and grow as the music, rather than the union, demands.”
Mislaid Calder Banners, Feared Ruined, Go On Display
“For more than two decades, they’ve been out of public view, feared lost, feared destroyed, feared – at the least – grotesquely faded or damaged. But from a cluster of nondescript plastic tubs stuck in an out-of-the-way storage room in the bowels of a Center City office tower, they were ferreted out at last, still bright and essentially unmarred.”
Experts Weigh In: What Price Might Obama Memoirs Fetch?
“There were two things we learned from Bill and Hillary’s ginormous book advances: The couple was enormously popular worldwide, and publishers liked to throw around a lot of money. So, on the heels of Laura Bush’s considerably more modest windfall (a reported $1.5 million), we had some book honchos take a wild stab at what President Obama will be looking at — presuming reelection — for his memoirs in eight years.”
Is This The Demise Of DRM? Don’t Hold Your Breath.
Last week’s Apple announcement aside, it looks like digital rights management isn’t going anywhere. “The computer and consumer electronics industry–not least of all, Apple–continues to build restrictive copy-protection into hardware and software. … But there is an obvious downside to DRM as it’s been implemented–by inconveniencing law-abiding users, copy protection increases the allure of illegal trading.”
Grand Jury Considers Charges Against Dealer Salander
“Fourteen months after Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau began investigating art dealer Lawrence Salander, a New York state grand jury is considering criminal charges. … Hundreds of creditors have filed claims in U.S. bankruptcy court, including Lawrence Salander’s ex-wife, artists and their relatives who did business with him, gallery employees, business partners, lenders such as Bank of America and clients.”
After North Korea Visit, NY Phil Pays Penance In Vietnam
“In Alan Gilbert’s first season, just announced, New York Philharmonic will pay a reparatory visit to Vietnam, a gesture infinitely more meaningful and productive than Lorin Maazel’s attention-grabbing swoop last year on North Korea.”
New York Skyline, On Pause, Is Better For The Boom
“Last year’s crash may have halted a mighty transformation of the New York skyline, though [the renovated Alice Tully Hall] is among the welcome fruits of the boom that New York will enjoy in 2009 and beyond.” What to do for the present? “New York has a storied history of erecting great public works when times were hard — from the Triboro Bridge to Riverside Park. Now we should prove we can still do it.”
Getty Team Discovers New Way To Date Photos
“Scientist Dusan Stulik, researcher Art Kaplan and photographic conservator Tram Vo have developed a new way to authenticate historic photographs. Instead of relying on human eyes and microscopes to date photographic images, as in the past, the Getty specialists devised a scientific method that can determine the age of many photographs made in the 20th century.”
Senator: Correction, Please, On That Bush Portrait Label
“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has written to the Smithsonian raising questions about the caption that sits beneath its new portrait of George W. Bush. The current wording of the caption states that Bush’s term was marked by ‘the attacks on September 11, 2001, that led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.’ Sanders, bless his heart, points out that the 9/11 attacks — all together, now — had nothing to do with the Iraq war.”