“Tributes continued to pour in yesterday for Jack McClelland, who died Monday after a long illness. For many of his friends, the past few years had been a sad time, watching the decline of a vibrant, engaging man who put Canadian letters on the literary map, not only at home but around the world.”
Blog
Happy Bloomsday, But Not In Ireland
It’s June 16, Bloomsday, and that means that James Joyce fanatics all over the world will be holding public readings from Ulysses and enjoying a drop of Irish whiskey in memory of the novel’s protagonist. But in Ireland, where the novel is set and where Joyce grew up, old wounds have yet to fully heal, and while the country has moved on from the days when it denounced its native son as anti-Catholic, pornographic, and “spiritually offensive,” but the Joyce family has never quite gotten over Ireland’s direct snub of one of the great authors of the 20th century.
Library Gets A Chunk Of Broadway History
“The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has received a gift of thousands of pages of scripts, songs and other pieces of stage memorabilia from two of Broadway’s best-known musical teams: Kander and Ebb, and Bock and Harnick. The donation, ranging from scraps of pure inspiration to less successful discards, gives a glimpse of the sometimes delightful, sometimes devilish backstage grind that went into making classic musicals like Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof.“
Adelman Turns Down Foreign Affairs
When Kenneth Maxwell resigned as book editor at Foreign Affairs in mid-May, accusations flew that his departure was the direct result of a strong-arm move by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who had objected to Maxwell’s review of a book about the rise of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Now, Maxwell’s chosen successor, Princeton professor Jeremy Adelman, has announced that he will not accept the post, having been disgusted with the treatment of Maxwell by the Council on Foreign Relations, which publishes Foreign Affairs.
Whitney Chooses An Architect
The Whitney Museum in New York has chosen Italian architect Renzo Piano to design its upcoming expansion, replacing Rem Koolhaas, whose $200 million design was rejected by the Whitney board last year as too extravagant. Board members say they aren’t looking to create a “destination building,” merely a functional museum, and they applauded Piano’s willingness to work within their parameters.
Well, You Get What You Pay For
“Blogging pioneer Dave Winer unexpectedly closed Weblogs.com, his free blog-hosting service, on Sunday, leaving thousands of bloggers without access to their blogs. Blogs affected by the shutdown now redirect to a generic message posted by Winer.” The Weblogs.com service was a free one, and Winer says that he simply could not afford the time and money necessary to keep it going. But many of his virtual tenants are furious at having been given no warning of the shutdown, especially since the content of their blogs is now inaccessible to them.
BBC Prepares For A Copyright-Free Future
“The British Broadcasting Corporation’s Creative Archive, one of the most ambitious free digital content projects to date, is set to launch this fall with thousands of three-minute clips of nature programming. The effort could goad other organizations to share their professionally produced content with Web users. The project, announced last year, will make thousands of audio and video clips available to the public for noncommercial viewing, sharing and editing.” And it may herald a new global era of more liberal licensing and less restrictive copyright enforcement.
Relâche Makes Big Changes
“In a significant change in artistic authority, Philadelphia’s cutting-edge Relâche Ensemble will now be guided by two of its longtime musicians, easing out artistic and executive director Thaddeus Squire. In an announcement yesterday, flutist Michele Kelly and oboist/English hornist Lloyd Shorter were named co-artistic directors.” Squire, who has been credited with rescuing the eminent contemporary ensemble from near-collapse four years ago, had recently proposed expanding his authority, a change with which the musicians weren’t comfortable. Still, the split appears to have been an amicable one.
250 Concerts Highlighting Violas and Bassoons? Must We?
An unprecedented series of 250 concerts will be held by orchestras across the UK this fall, with the aim of promoting the orchestra as a still-relevant cultural force, as well as to promote certain instruments within the orchestra which have fallen out of favor with young British musicians. Among the much-maligned-or-ignored instruments to be highlighted are the tuba, the bassoon, the double bass, and of course, the butt of all orchestra jokes, the viola.
Keeping Art In The Family
Donald and Mera Rubell have been collecting art for four decades, with their two children assisting them for much of that time, and the family has 5,000 works, 27,000 art books, and a 40,000-square-foot museum to show for their efforts. And the Rubells don’t plan to abandon the all-in-the-family approach anytime soon: according to the family patriarch, “we’re training our two grandkids, too. The 3-year-old, Samuel, can already recognize a Jeff Koons or a Maurizio Cattelan. Ella, who is a year-and-a-half, isn’t independent yet. She tends to follow and look at what he looks at. You have to train them.”