“Unlike other institutions—hospitals, universities, libraries—whose origins can boast roots dating back centuries, the museum is a “new” invention. Its growth and development, through the course of the nineteenth century, was conditioned by a mixture of local traditions, expediency, and idealism. Restoration remained a craft practiced by independent, secretive private entrepreneurs who were able to maintain a delicate balance between their private and public clientele.”
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Lingua Franca Trustee Demands Writers Return Paychecks
Lingua Franca magazine folded a couple of years ago. But freelance writers for the magazine still got paid for the last stories they turned in. Now a bankruptcy trustee says he wants freelancers to return the money or he’ll sue to get it back. It seems the writers were “unsecured” creditors, and the money “should” have gone to secured creditors. “It certainly seems unfair. These freelancers did the work and were paid the fees that they bargained for. They delivered what was asked of them.”
Poetry Popularity – It’s A More “Personal” Art
Poetry seems to be getting more and more popular around America. “An incredible immediacy takes place between the poet and the audience, or even in reading a book of poetry, that doesn’t exist in other parts of our culture. In other places, we’re numbers, not individuals. This group of people will like this movie. They’re aiming this radio station at that demographic. I think there’s a great hunger in this country for a more personal art.”
Faberge Riches
Nine Faberge eggs from the Forbes collection are to be auctioned. “The last Imperial Easter Egg sold at auction – the 1913 Winter Egg -went for more than $9.5 million to an anonymous buyer in 2002. In 1994, the same egg sold at auction for just over $5.5 million. The czar had paid Fabergé the equivalent of $250,000 in 1994 dollars, back in 1913. Our analysis of 16 Fabergé eggs, which have appeared on the auction market since 1934, shows an annual appreciation of 7% to 22.5% in the investment. These prices are a combination of buyers’ desire for the very best, of rarity of product, and of limited accessibility: The eggs infrequently come on the open market.”
Secrets Of The Dashing Danes
“Denmark is a very small country compared to Russia, France, England, and America, yet, like those dance superpowers, it boasts a world-class ballet company with a venerable academy attached to it.” What, wonders Tobi Tobias, “could be the secret of a ballet academy that has consistently produced dancers of this caliber with such a modest number of candidates to choose from?”
The RSC – Homeless On The Brink
The Royal Shakespeare Company still doesn’t have a London home. “The Arts Council has been too polite to issue any precise threats. Nicola Thorold, director of theatre, defers steadily to Michael Boyd and reports that the Arts Council is ‘extremely encouraged’ by the company’s success in cutting its deficit by a million pounds this year. But the implication is understood by all: the RSC’s annual grant from the Arts Council of £13m must, this year, extend to include the capital. For from London’s point of view, a whole year – described as ‘transitional’ and ‘cost-saving’ – has been written off with the Arts Council’s blessing. A period of grace on the brink of disgrace.”
Natural Law Party
Each year, John Broackman posts a big-idea question to important thinkers. This year he wonders what law of nature is waiting to be declared. “There is some bit of wisdom, some rule of nature, some lawlike pattern, either grand or small, that you’ve noticed in the universe that might as well be named after you.” What, he asks, is your law, one that’s ready to take a place near Kepler’s and Faraday’s and Murphy’s. More than 150 responses totaling more than 20,000 words have been posted so far…
Professor: Literary Theory Needs Reform
Literary theory, argues one scholar, has got it all wrong. “Literary study, he argues, has been a random, unsystematic affair. For any given period, scholars focus on a select group of a mere few hundred texts: the canon. As a result, they have allowed a narrow, distorting slice of literary history to pass for the total picture. A canon of 200 novels, for instance, sounds very large for 19th-century Britain (and is much larger than the current one), but is still less than 1 per cent of the novels that were actually published: 20,000, 30, more, no one really knows — and close reading won’t help here, a novel a day every day of the year would take a century or so.” So what should replace it?
Iraq’s Street Of Ideas
“As Iraq considers its future after Saddam Hussein, Mutanabi Street in Baghdad is resuming its role as one of the capital’s main marketplaces of ideas. If the daily violence in much of Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit and other areas illustrates ways in which the U.S. occupation is failing to improve Iraqis’ lives, Mutanabi Street’s Friday morning book market is an exhibit of the political and intellectual revival under American rule.”
Minority Report – Theatre, Film More Viable For UK’s Minority Writers
Are drama and film more inclusive and more liberating art forms for the non-western writer than straight-up literature? Helon Habila and Courttia Newland chew over the idea.