Following the report that, at the time Halls was fired from the OBF artistic directorship, he was being investigated over claims that he discriminated against women, he wrote in a statement, “I am reading about these complaints for the first time now. At no stage did anybody from the University of Oregon or the Oregon Bach Festival leadership present me – or my attorney – with these documents.”
Blog
Comcast In Talks To Buy 21st Century Fox: Report
“Comcast is interested in the same set of assets that Disney approached Fox about earlier this year, sources said. Also of interest to Comcast is acquiring the international assets of Fox, given that the Philadelphia-based company is heavily concentrated in the U.S.” (includes video)
‘How To Survive A Plague’ Wins UK’s Top Prize For Nonfiction
“Opening with a quote from Paul Monet, ‘Grief is a sword, or it is nothing’, [David] France’s book chronicles how the activist community fought to develop the drugs that would turn HIV into a largely treatable condition. … [The book] beat titles including Simon Schama’s Belonging and Christopher de Bellaigue’s The Islamic Enlightenment to win the £30,000 award,” the Baillie Gifford Prize.
Gaudí’s First Masterpiece, Casa Vicens, Opens To Public In Barcelona
“The Moorish-influenced Casa Vicens, commissioned by the stockbroker Manuel Vicens Montaner [as a residence] and built between 1882-88, was the architect’s first major project. … Fifteen lavishly decorated rooms by Gaudí have been restored with input from the descendants of its original tenants as well as extensive archival research.”
Sydney’s Largest Art Museum Announces New Wing, Which Everyone Will Now Argue About
“[The Art Gallery of New South Wales’s] new wing, Sydney Modern, will step across the Cahill expressway and spill north down the Domain towards the harbour, under an ambitious plan to increase visits to the city’s pre-eminent gallery. But the latest plan, though more modest than the first version released in 2015, is still likely to spark a furious debate about the loss of open space in Sydney.”
Toxic Culture? No, Everything’s Lovely Here, Say Queensland Symphony Chairman And Musicians
In response to a news report saying that staff turnover has been high and morale low at the Brisbane, Australia-based orchestra – with sources blaming music director Alondra de la Parra and CEO David Pratt – the QSO section principals released a statement supporting the two, and the board chairman said, “I know that morale is strong under David’s and Alondra’s leadership; we promote a culture of speaking up, of respect and achievement.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.16.17
Did Ken Griffin Buy the Leonardo (or provide $$$ for Art Institute of Chicago to acquire it)?
While we’re all still coming to terms with the fact that a damaged 26″ x 18″ oil-on-walnut painted panel has just sold for $450.3 million, here’s a potential scoop that is based on some data, … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-11-16
“Sotheby’s Drudgery”: My Storify on Contemporary Art Sale Short on Excitement
Last night’s Contemporary Art sale at Christie’s, headlined by a certain very non-contemporary religious painting, was a hard act for Sotheby’s to follow. It did interpose its own anomalous lot to jazz things up – a red Ferrari. … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2017-11-16
Seattle: A Culture Of Growth (For Both Good And Bad)
“Over the past decade, Seattle has added 220,000 jobs, an increase of nearly 15 percent. Amazon, which employs 40,000 people here and holds about one-fifth of the city’s premier office space, has keyed that growth, but the revival has spilled far beyond it. Thirty-one Fortune 500 companies now operate research and engineering hubs in Seattle, up from seven in 2010. More construction cranes are working here than in any other U.S. city, many in the South Lake Union area where Amazon has centered its burgeoning operations. Seattle is now adding about 60 people daily, many of them well-educated Millennials. That’s the city’s most rapid rate of population increase since the Klondike Gold Rush around 1900.”
Kickstarter Launches New Artist Project Subscription Program
Individual artists and collectives, podcasters, and experimental groups create pages on the site, and visitors can subscribe to certain projects, or whatever else the artist decides to make available to them. Artists have the option to create tiers of membership for different kinds of access, and the goal is that these subscriptions will help fund the artist’s future projects, at the same time encouraging the artist to create more content for subscribers.
The Russian Oligarch And The $450 Million Leonardo Painting
One can be forgiven for initially overlooking another elephant in the room — the identity of the seller. When there’s this much money involved, though, it usually pays to follow it, and here the money leads directly back to the Russian billionaire Dmitry E. Rybolovlev.