“In 1935, American publisher George Macey offered the great Henri Matisse $5,000 to create as many etchings as this budget would afford for a special illustrated edition of Ulysses. … [It’s] a glorious leather-bound tome with 22-karat gold accents, gilt edges, moire fabric endsheets … The Matisse drawings inside it, of course, are the most priceless of its offerings – the best thing since Salvador Dalí’s little-known Alice in Wonderland illustrations.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
The Man Who Deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphs
“On Sept. 14, 1822, as legend tells the tale, Jean-François Champollion burst into his brother’s Paris office at the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, flung a bundle of drawings upon the desk and cried, ‘Je tiens mon affaire!’ (‘I’ve done it!’).”
Help Me Sort 200,000 Books Or I’ll Burn Them All!
“Shauna Raycraft set out seven years ago to rescue over 300,000 books from being burned by her neighbour … [but] she was only able to sort through one-third of the books. Now the end has come. If Raycraft doesn’t get help sorting through the 200,000 remaining titles by the end of the month, she is calling in the fire department and burning the rest.”
Why Do Nigerian E-Mail Scammers Write Such Obviously Bogus Messages?
“The question many people have asked themselves after receiving an email like this is: Who would fall for this crap? … Why, given the scam is relatively well known these days, would a scammer still purport from Nigeria or from another West African nation given the association of advance free fraud with the region? In retrospect the answer to this question is obvious.”
The Singularly Singular Voice Of George Plimpton
Taylor Plimpton: “My father’s voice was like one of those supposedly extinct deep-sea creatures that wash up on the shores of Argentina every now and then. It came from a different era, shouldn’t have still existed, but nevertheless, there it was … You heard it and it could only be him.”
Great Moments In Authorial Self-Promotion
“[H]istory shows us that many authors have been willing to go to the extreme in order to get noticed. Here’s a look at some of the more fabled attempts made over the years …”
Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center Lays Off 10% Of Staff
“Seven employees in the arts center’s marketing, development, programming, education, and facilities operations departments were told Tuesday that they were being let go; another position will go unfilled.”
Preserving Kalahari Bushmen’s Traditional Knowledge Using Tablet PCs
A team of researchers from Denmark and Namibia is working with the elders of a Kalahari Desert village “to develop a 3D visualisation of the village on a tablet computer. Their knowledge will be embedded in this virtual village to be stored for future generations. Rodil is also developing a drawing app for the tablet which mimics the way the elders draw diagrams in the sand to explain what they mean.”
The Stokowski Mystique Endures (And Leopold Wouldn’t Have It Any Other Way)
“Leopold Stokowski could only have been invented – by Leopold Stokowski. Magnetic, innovative, and the exception to most rules, starting a century ago Stokowski made the Philadelphia Orchestra what it is today, with a glamour and showmanship that reached listeners well beyond the core classical audience.”
Deborah Voigt, Needing Urgent Surgery, Cancels Australian Debut
“The American soprano was in recital at the Utzon Room [at the Sydney Opera House] and in concert with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra next week, but a hip operation has forced her to withdraw.”