“At present, there is no common standard used by producers and manufacturers. As a result, customers can’t read a Palm e-book on a Microsoft Reader, noted Nick Bogaty, executive director of the IDPF. If companies adopt the new standards, not only will customers be able to read e-books on different devices, but e-books will be cheaper and easier to produce, which should lead to more titles being available.”
Blog
Driving Daniel Barenboim
“Barenboim may have taken his leave of America’s finest orchestra – and what a farewell it was, the towering ninth symphonies of Mahler, Bruckner and Beethoven on successive evenings – but the future offers endless possibilities. An important chapter in his life has now closed, and yet, at 64, no great age for a conductor, one senses that his race has some way to run.”
Damien Hirst – The YBA (Young British Artist) Grows Up
“It is 18 years since he attracted attention as the Goldsmith’s student who curated Freeze – a show of work by his mates that demonstrated the entrepreneurial spirit of a bunch of artists who refused to hang around waiting to be discovered. These days he employs 65 people, including a full-time business manager, Frank Dunphy, who has become famous in his own right. When Hirst speaks, in his curlicued, erratic, scuttling sentences, he nearly always says ‘we’, not ‘I’.”
MoMA Names An Architecture Curator
“The Modern’s director, Glenn D. Lowry, said that Bsrry Bergdoll’s appointment underlined the museum’s “commitment to having an interesting program in architecture and design that can deal with the historic sweep of Modernism as well as the present.”
The Dealer As Looter?
Robert Hecht is on trial in Italy for antiquities looting. “In some ways Mr. Hecht’s recent four-day Roman sojourn reflected the yin and yang of his persona. There is the refined connoisseur of antiquities, fond of good living, the occasional game of backgammon and traveling throughout Europe; and there is the wily dealer, whom the Italians accuse of conspiring to plunder the nation’s buried treasures at huge personal profit.”
How Ron Lauder Decided To Buy A $135 Million Painting
“When did you become fascinated by Klimt? Lauder: I took a trip to Vienna as a teenager and saw Klimt’s ‘The Kiss’ and ‘Bloch-Bauer.’ I found them absolutely stunning. Whenever I went back to Vienna, I visited them. How long did it take you to decide to buy the Klimt? Lauder: Thirty seconds.”
Dance At DC Hotel
A new Washington DC hotel sends its staff on training – with ballet dancers. “At the Hotel Palomar, book the “ballet suite” with its barre and wall of mirrors and you’ll become a patron of the arts: An (undisclosed) portion of the room fee will be donated to the Washington Ballet.”
SF Gets First New Public Library In 40 Years
The city of San Francisco is opening its first completely new branch to open in 40 years. “For residents and workers in Mission Bay, it will be not only a place to borrow books but also a place to gather — the kind of public center that established neighborhoods take for granted.”
Chirac Opens Tribal Art Museum
The museum, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, is French president Jacques Chirac’s legacy to France. “The museum displays indigenous art from Africa, Asia and Australasia. But the project has been controversial. It opens as France debates how to heal the scars of its colonial past and accept a multi-ethnic nation.”
LA Culture Chief Steps Down
Margie Reese “tried to hold the grant program steady as dollars dwindled from $13.3 million during her first full year running the department to the current $9.6 million — a 28% decrease. She also tried to maintain after-school arts classes in city-run neighborhood arts centers, feeling they were especially important for kids in poorer neighborhoods who could latch onto the arts to develop their talents and stay out of trouble. A defining moment for Reese came in 2004, when the budget office of then Mayor James K. Hahn proposed disbanding the Cultural Affairs Department as a cost-saving measure. Using her megaphone quietly, she rallied enough support to persuade City Hall to reconsider.”