Category: today’s top story

“Great views of Sydney Harbour from inside a stylish new foyer, better disabled access and more toilets are just some of the improvements transforming Australia’s busiest building. The western side of the Opera House now has a colonnade and windows.”

“There have been at least six changes of national government in Italy since the [museum] was first announced in 1998, from left to centre to right, and the future of many such public projects has often seemed doubtful. But now here it stands … almost exactly as [Zaha] Hadid and her team first imagined it.”

“Teams are focused on season tickets, big theater groups are focused on subscriptions, that kind of stuff. We are really focused on viral social-marketing technology that will allow music venues and promoters to sell tickets.”

Activision Blizzard Inc. said it sold 4.7 million copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 , or $310 million (U.S.) of sales, on its first day, setting a new record for the video game industry.

“In the 1980s, [David] Letterman pioneered the kind of college-age male humor that dominates late night. But now, his audience is almost 55 percent women; [Jay] Leno’s is more than 53 percent, and [Conan] O’Brien’s just over one half. Yet the writing room and sensibilities of the show itself remain largely male.”

“The Pentagon has provided $3.7 million for an independent production company, Theater of War, to visit 50 military sites through at least next summer and stage readings from two plays by Sophocles, Ajax and Philoctetes, for service members.”

The New Museum of Contemporary Art’s upcoming exhibition of industrialist Dakis Joannou’s collection “is generating anticipatory chatter in the art world. But it is also leading to buzz of a different kind, about the propriety of turning over a public museum to a private collector who also happens to be a museum trustee and a chief patron of the curator.”

Christopher Wheeldon’s dream of a bi-national, transatlantic ballet company, while still intact for now, has been put in real jeopardy by the economic downturn. Tobi Tobias: “To judge by [his] latest piece, Wheeldon isn’t moving in a direction that makes his work seem worth sustaining a troupe largely dedicated to showcasing it.”

“It’s no surprise that gays and lesbians are strong supporters of the arts. What has changed in recent years is that they are choosing to be recognized as couples. Quietly in some cases, more publicly in others, these philanthropists are providing vital support and spurring the organizations to recruit other like-minded couples….”

“Much of current philanthropic giving, by foundations and individuals, neither meets the needs of our charitable organizations nor addresses some of our most urgent public needs. … Here are nine changes that would go a long way toward making philanthropy do what we all claim we want it to do.”