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Taubmans Loosen Grip On Sotheby’s

The Taubman family, which has owned controlling interest in Sotheby’s auction house, is reducing its investment to minority shareholder status. “The deal, which ends years of speculation about the Taubmans’ intentions for their holding, ends a dual share structure that had allowed the family’s 22% stake to carry 62% of the votes. The family will continue to hold 7.1 million shares, which will give them the same power as other investors in the company.”

Renoir Kin Implicated in Potential Billion-Dollar Art Fraud

“According to documents filed in an Arizona court, Jean-Emmanuel Renoir, great-grandson of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, has lent his name to what one lawyer claims could be the ‘biggest art fraud in history’, a plan to market hundreds of thousands of works inspired by Renoir-Guino sculptures to which the artist’s descendant does not hold copyright. Projected revenues are over $1 billion.”

Do We Want “Appropriate” Art For WTC Projects?

Cultural buildings at the site of the World Trade Center are mired in debates about what is “appropriate.” ” ‘The challenge for the curators is going to be: given the context of where these cultural institutions are, what’s appropriate here?’ Whatever else this particular controversy has illustrated, it is just the latest trouble to visit the four cultural structures of the new World Trade Center site. One way or another, the future of all four of them — the memorial, the memorial museum, the performing arts center, and the cultural building — is unclear.

Imagining The New New Orleans

Benjamin Forgey says that, given the cost and time sure to be involved, it is not unreasonable for some to be questioning whether New Orleans ought to be rebuilt. But he also says that there are several very clear reasons that it must be. “New Orleans… is a national issue because it is a national treasure. Simple as that. Actually — because of its history, its unique blending of cultures, especially in architecture and music, and its unending sociability — the city is an international treasure… The big question, then, is how to do the job. Getting the money and repairing the infrastructure are the easy parts, at least in theory. But who will do the thinking, the conceptualizing of a rebuilt New Orleans? And what, precisely, will be rebuilt? Who will live there, who will visit and what will be its economic engine?”

Toronto On Top

Everyone’s been predicting it for years, of course, but it now seems to be a fact that the Toronto International Film Festival, which kicks off this week, has established itself as the most important event of its kind in North America. Mark Caro says that TIFF has achieved that perfect blend of celebrity glitter and outsider ambition, functioning simultaneously as Hollywood’s sneak preview clearinghouse and as the most promising location for unknown filmmakers to display their wares.

Think Of It As A Tip For The Bricklayers

Tickets to Toronto International Film Festival screenings have a little something extra built in this year: a surcharge of $1 to $5, with the money earmarked for TIFF’s building fund, which already has $175 million of the $211 million needed to construct a new home for the festival. “By tacking on an involuntary contribution towards bricks and mortar, the festival is taking a less familiar path among arts organizations where capital cost fundraising is a separate matter from the continuing relationship they cultivate with their audience.”

Tilting At The Advertising Windmill

Everyone knows by now that today’s children are subjected to more advertising than any previous generation in human history, and furthermore, that a disturbing percentage of that advertising is aimed squarely at them. But despite frequent warnings by experts about the effect such a barrage of commercialism can have on kids, there has been little public effort to stop, or even scale back, the volume of ads dumped on the average child. Enter the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a “Boston-based coalition of parents, educators, health-care specialists, and advocacy groups” dedicated to wiping out youth-targeted advertising. A bit Quixotic? Maybe. But as the CCFC’s leader puts it: “Who won David vs. Goliath?”

California Film Subsidy Bill Tabled

A bill backed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, which would have provided $50 million in tax breaks to film companies that keep their productions in California, is apparently dead for the year after state legislators objected. “Hollywood lobbyists have argued that the state’s dominance in entertainment production is in danger because of pressure from Louisiana, New Mexico, Illinois and other states with generous tax-incentive packages, as well as from countries like Canada and Romania with favorable currency and labor rates.” The devastation of Hurricane Katrina, of course, took Louisiana out of the mix for the time being, and many in Mr. Schwarzenegger’s own party questioned such a large subsidy being given to a single industry.

Can A Scene Survive Without Its Backdrop?

New Orleans is, of course, an important place in the history of American music. But what many Americans don’t know is that there is far more to the Big Easy than jazz funerals and Dixieland. “New Orleans is a jazz town, but also a funk town, a brass-band town, a hip-hop town and a jam-band town. It has international jazz musicians and hip-hop superstars, but also a true, subsistence-level street culture. Much of its music is tied to geography and neighborhoods, and crowds.” Because of that reliance on neighborhood identity, many are asking whether the New Orleans scene can ever be rebuilt. After all, if the Lower Ninth Ward has ceased to exist, what happens to the sound cultivated by its residents for so many decades?