“Mr. McConaughey – Oscar winner, Texan, renowned bongo player – has signed a contract … to serve as creative director for Wild Turkey bourbon. The multiyear deal goes far beyond pitching a product, … he will write and direct the spots. He has also involved himself in recording music for the campaign.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Auction Houses Have Found Themselves Becoming Shadow Banks (Making Loans To Shadowy Characters)
“As prices for art skyrocketed, Sotheby’s and other firms have become shadow banks, making millions of dollars of legal loans outside the regulated financial system and raising concerns that such financing could facilitate money laundering.”
This City Lost (Yes, Lost) Three Schieles And A Klimt – Now It Must Pay The Owners $9 Million
“The Austrian Supreme Court has ordered the city of Linz to pay €8.24 million ($8.96 million) plus 4 percent interest to the heirs of a local collector for losing a Gustav Klimt drawing and three pictures by Egon Schiele.”
The Ballet National De Marseille – Dance And Protest In The Wake Of France’s Terror Attacks
Co-artistic directors Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten have two themes to their work at the company: “Le Corps du Ballet” (deliberately not corps de), and “‘Le Corps en Révolte’, the body in revolt, where ‘the ballet is used almost for protest’, says Greco. The aim is to create a space for demonstration, ‘like Taksim Square’.”
Oops! Kids Destroy 5,000-Year-Old Rock Carving They Were Trying To Touch Up
“They thought the etching had become too faded, so they decided to scratch over it to make it easier to see. … The carving on the northern island of Tro is one of the country’s most famous historic sites and an important clue as to when people began skiing.” (This may not end as well as “Beast Jesus” did.)
Is Donald Trump’s Favorite Opera Aria Maybe A Little Bit … Fascist?
The GOP presidential nominee used to use Pavarotti’s famous recording of “Nessun dorma” from Turandot at rallies (until the tenor’s heirs told him to stop). It’s unclear how much Trump really knows about Turandot, but there certainly are scholars convinced that the work has Fascist overtones, and Puccini himself was an admirer of Mussolini (to whom Trump is sometimes compared).
One Enlightenment Philosopher Anticipated Donald Trump 250 Years Ago
“No Enlightenment thinker observing our current predicament from the afterlife would be able to say ‘I told you so’ as confidently as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an awkward and prickly autodidact from Geneva, who was memorably described by Isaiah Berlin as the ‘greatest militant lowbrow in history.'”
Egypt’s Oldest Written Papyri Revealed – And They’re About Building The Pyramids
“Roughly 4,500 years old, they describe the daily routines of workers during the Fourth Dynasty reign of King Khufu as they worked on national projects, highlighting in particular the physical labor of constructing the pharaoh’s Great Pyramid of Giza.”
Long-Lost Dürer Engraving Turns Up At Flea Market
The graphic work dating from 1520 was thought to have been lost during the Second World War … [It] shows a majestic view of the Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus, protected by an angel, and belongs to a 15-part series of [Madonna-and-Child] depictions the artist created at different stages of his career.”
Stephen Sondheim Says His New Musical Will Be Ready Next Year
“The performance date may be news, but the subject is well known. Written with the playwright David Ives (Venus in Fur), the piece is based on two films by Luis Buñuel, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel. The first, in Sondheim’s précis, is about a group of people trying to have dinner together, and the second is about people having dinner together who for some reason can’t leave.” (The hope is for the musical to run in New York at the same time as Thomas Adès’s new opera version of The Exterminating Angel.)