Ex-Getty curator Marion True got a loan from two collectors only days after the Getty bought their collection. “True was a driving force behind the Getty’s 1996 acquisition of Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman’s 300-piece collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan artifacts, considered one of the finest private antiquities holdings in the world. The Getty paid $20 million for 32 pieces in the collection, and received the rest as a donation. Three days after the deal was closed, records show, Lawrence Fleischman agreed to lend True $400,000 with an interest rate of 8.25 %, market rate at the time.”
Blog
In Praise Of Librarians
“Librarians have to care, and thus suffer a slippage whereby caring for books becomes being perceived by the public as guarding them. Thereby, a mean-spirited, censorious figure is born, figured forth as a crone. (In the popular imagination, librarians are always women.) Her hair is in a bun, and a scowl is on her face. We have done something wrong merely by entering the library. How dare we? And, once inside, how dare we proceed to talk? Another slippage: the library into a shrine, wherein the god of Knowledge is to be venerated by all who enter, while Vestal Virgins preside.”
Art And The Hollywood Collector
Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz has amassed a major art collection. “To date, no one has gone behind his collection to describe what he did to amass it early on. It’s a tale of ambition, greed and ego not only on his part but also on the part of those who did business with him. In the process, Ovitz helped change the art world for the worse by bringing the same ruthless tactics to SoHo and 57th Street that he’d used to rule Hollywood.”
Self-Publish… But Then What?
It costs as little as $500 to have a book self-published. But what to do with the books after they’re printed? “Publicity is almost nonexistent. The publishers don’t run advertising campaigns or have marketing teams devoted to new titles, and they have little luck getting their books reviewed in newspapers and magazines. And forget major booksellers. When they get their titles from traditional publishing houses, they can return those that don’t sell and pay for only those that do. Most print-on-demand publishers don’t allow returns. As a result, stores refuse to take their books.”
Rebuilding New Orleans In Music
New Orleans is still laid flat, but musicians are returning. “New Orleans has a uniqueness that no other city has, and that’s part of all us. We need to get back, and when we do, in terms of its musical atmosphere, New Orleans will start to return to what it was. But it’ll take a while, because the poor were such a big part of that city. They were the ones who made so much of that great music. You had your white collars and your blue collars – but you also had your dirty collars. And that’s where soul and groove and all that came from.”
Mailer: Almost Comic Obtuseness
Norman Mailer was honored for lifetime achievement at the National Book Awards this week, and he was feisty as ever. “The passion readers used to feel for venturing into the serious novel has withered,” he said. Mailer, whose other books include such award-winning nonfiction as ‘The Armies of the Night,’ disparaged commercial fiction and likened himself to a carriage maker watching the ‘disappearance of his trade before the onrush of the automobile’.”
R U Reading Yet? (Shakespeare-As-Text-Message)
Dot mobile, a British mobile-phone service aimed at students, says it plans to condense classic works of literature into SMS text messages. The company claims the service will be a valuable resource for studying for exams. Academic purists will be horrified. Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” becomes “2b? Nt2b? ???”
Recognition A Long Time Coming
This year’s winners of Canada’s two biggest literary awards belong to a similar demographic: middle-aged writers who have toiled in relative obscurity throughout their careers, “producing novels that are tight, spare in length and written in a distinctive style” without ever capturing more than a cult following. All that has changed now for Giller winner David Bergen and Governor-General’s Award winner David Gilmour, and both authors admit to a certain feeling of redemption after years of disappointment. “The real enemy for a writer, it’s not booze. It’s vanity that will kill you deader than anything else.”
Music As Brain Food
“Stanford University research has found for the first time that musical training improves how the brain processes the spoken word, a finding that researchers say could lead to improving the reading ability of children who have dyslexia and other reading problems. The study, made public Wednesday, is the first to show that musical experience can help the brain improve its ability to distinguish between rapidly changing sounds that are key to understanding and using language.”
Teen Poetry Recitation Contest Announced
“The Chicago-based Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts are to announce Thursday the national rollout of their verse-recitation contest for high schoolers… Some $50,000 in scholarships and school stipends are to be awarded at the national finals, including a $20,000 scholarship for the grand winner… The organizers hope to tap into the popularity of poetry slams among teens. But this contest will emphasize memorization and performance skills, not creative writing. Contestants will select poems from a special anthology to be distributed to schools or from a Web site being set up for the event.”