“Ms. Hunnewell joined the magazine as an editorial intern in the late-1980s, when it was run out of an 8-by-14-foot office in the Upper East Side brownstone of its co-founder and editor George Plimpton. She remained associated with the magazine for the next 30 years … She was named publisher in 2015, taking over from [Antonio F.] Weiss,” her husband. – The New York Times
Blog
Warner Is Paying Nearly Half A Billion Dollars To Keep J.J. Abrams
“Following a months-long courting process that included multiple suitors, WarnerMedia is in final negotiations for a new partnership with [Abrams’s company,] Bad Robot, sources say. … Abrams, who is currently editing Star Wars: Episode IX for Disney, was among the top producers in Warners’ TV fold at a time when brand-name showrunners are in increasingly high demand.” – The Hollywood Reporter
Sotheby’s Going Private Will Mean Less Transparency About The Art Market
While the financial deals carved out by Christie’s with buyers, sellers and third-party guarantors (one of whom is often thought to be the firm’s owner itself, François Pinault) remain a closely-guarded secret, Sotheby’s obligatory filings were revelatory in many cases. – The Art Newspaper
Why Sotheby’s Was Bought
The purchase, by Mr. Drahi’s BidFair USA, returns the only publicly traded major auction house to private ownership after 31 years on the New York Stock Exchange. – The New York Times
Baltimore Symphony Musicians Are Officially Locked Out
“Sunday’s decision by the orchestra’s board of trustees locking out the players was not unexpected. Despite the picketers carrying signs reading ‘I Make Less Than I Did a Decade Ago,’ the letters to the editor from concerned music lovers and the angry words exchanged by both sides, the nonprofit is all but out of money and has proposed shortening the concert season from 52 weeks a year to 40 and reducing players’ pay by about 20 percent.” – The Baltimore Sun
Again, Sergei Polunin Tries, And Fails, To Explain His Way Out Of The Doghouse
He told Italy’s Corriere della sera, “Men must get up and rediscover the force to assume responsibility, whether they are gay or straight, and not become lazy. If women start to think that they can do without men, then they lose their purpose in life.” (And there’s more.) – Gramilano (Milan)
No More All-Male Comedy-Writing Teams, Declares UK TV Network
“ITV will no longer commission comedy shows with all-male writers’ rooms, the broadcaster’s head of comedy has said. Saskia Schuster said she realised last year that ‘an awful lot of my comedy entertainment shows are made up of all-male writing teams. … Too often the writing room is not sensitively run. It can be aggressive and slightly bullying.'” – BBC
Once Again, An Errant Tweet Is The Last Straw: Director Of Berlin Jewish Museum Resigns
“Pressure had been mounting against the director, Peter Schäfer, over what critics said was an inappropriately political stance for the head of a cultural institution tasked with explaining Jewish traditions, history and art. … But it was a post by the museum’s Twitter account last week that sparked the backlash that Mr. Schäfer could no longer withstand.” – The New York Times
Art Requires Empathy. Machines Don’t Have It. So Can They Make Art We Will Relate To?
“We are able to empathise with nonhuman characters or intelligent machines in human-made fiction because they have been conceived by other human beings from the only subjective perspective accessible to us: ‘What would it be like for a human to behave as x?’ In order to understand machinic art as such – and assuming that we stand a chance of even recognising it in the first place – we would need a way to conceive a first-person experience of what it is like to be that machine. That is something we cannot do even for beings that are much closer to us.” – Aeon
Why Is There Still A Stigma About Males Dancing?
Data compiled by Doug Risner, a professor of dance at Wayne State University in Detroit, shows that only 32 percent of male dancers have fathers who support their desire to dance. Typically, American dads only want their sons to be athletic on the sports field. Adding music and ballet technique—or tap dancing, contemporary movement, ballroom or jazz steps—to physicality somehow makes that pursuit unforgivably girlish. – Dance Magazine