New York is America’s business center, its temple of capitalism. So what better place to open a Museum of American Finance? “And if our city’s status and the currency that backs it are more contested than they once were, that only makes the enterprise more urgently intriguing.”
Author: sbergman
Writers’ Strike May Soon Be Over
“Hollywood’s striking writers and major studios [have] reached the broad outlines of a new employment contract, resolving key sticking points over how much writers should be paid for work that is distributed over the Internet… A final contract could be presented to the Writers Guild of America’s board as early as Friday.”
Portrait Gallery’s New Chief
“Martin E. Sullivan, the chief executive officer of the Historic St. Mary’s City Commission, has been selected as the new director of the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian Institution announced yesterday… [Sullivan] wants to continue the collaboration with other Smithsonian museums, expand the Portrait Gallery’s Web site and beef up the electronic information in the galleries.”
D.C. Wilson Tribute Losing Its Star Power
“Yesterday Charles S. Dutton dropped out of the Kennedy Center’s August Wilson tribute this spring — the second big name to leave the 10-play retrospective.” Actress Phylicia Rashad had already departed the ambitious project for a Broadway role; Dutton’s jilting apparently came as the result of being offered a part in an undisclosed movie.
Air & Space Museum To Get New Wing
“A surprise $15 million gift will enable the National Air and Space Museum to add a new wing where visitors can watch the delicate process of bringing historic airplanes back to life…”
Retooled Lloyd Webber Show To Debut In Canada
“Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton are collaborating on a rewritten version of their 2000 London success, The Beautiful Game. This time around, the show will be called The Boys in the Photograph.” It will debut in Winnipeg in early 2009, then jump to Toronto in the summer.
Vancouver Olympics Embrace Anti-Olympic Art
Included in the Cultural Olympiad accompanying Vancouver’s hosting of the 2012 Olympic Games is a disturbing photo in which First Nations protesters decry what they see as the decimating of native lands for the Olympics. Olympic organizers see the photo’s inclusion as “proof that their event is artistically sound, not just a cheery diversion.”
Dallas PAC Boosts Funding Goal Just Because It Can
“The board of directors of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts announced this week that the project is being expanded, triggering an increase in its fundraising goal from $275 million to $338 million.” The project’s CEO said that the decision to boost the goal came after the realization that the center would easily meet the lower goal, and could afford to aim higher.
Another Antiquities Dealer Under Fire
California antiquities dealer Robert Olson, 79, is under investigation by federal authorities for illegal importation and tax fraud. Olson is loudly proclaiming his innocence, but the feds, who have been keeping tabs on Olson for five years, say that he has smuggled illegal artifacts into the US, convinced appraisers to drastically overvalue them, and then taken huge tax deductions after donating them to museums.
Know Your Target Market (And Their Moral Code)
“People don’t pay enough attention to how repugnance affects decisions about what can be bought and sold,” according to a Harvard economist. But “ideas about what is repugnant change all the time. Selling oneself into indentured servitude was once thought permissible, while charging interest on loans was not.”