Category: today’s top story

“JM Coetzee could become the first author ever to win a hat-trick of Man Booker prizes, after his latest novel Summertime was this morning shortlisted for the literary award.” The other finalists: bookies’ heavy favorite Hilary Mantel, Sarah Waters, A.S. Byatt, Adam Foulds and Simon Mawer.

In Mexico, “a festering dispute over a little-known archive of ephemera attributed to Kahlo has erupted into open warfare. Despite the tantalizing possibility that some or maybe even all the material is authentic,” bullying assertions that it’s fake are being made by art-world figures who’ve never laid eyes on it.

“After helping to build some of the city’s most impressive monuments over the last century — including the downtown music center, with its Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Disney Concert Hall — show business has been stepping back, according to nonprofit organizations in the city and some people in the entertainment industry.”

“Is building a message distribution network, for matters other than increasing access to the arts and arts education, the role of the National Endowment for the Arts? Is providing the art community issues to address, especially those that are currently being vehemently debated nationally, a legitimate role for the NEA?”

“The British Library revealed it has made its vast archive of world and traditional music available to everyone, free of charge, on the internet. That amounts to roughly 28,000 recordings and, although no one has yet sat down and formally timed it, about 2,000 hours of singing, speaking, yelling, chanting, blowing, banging, tinkling and many other verbs associated with what is a uniquely rich sound archive.”

“An international group of more than 50 prominent filmmakers, writers, artists and academics” are objecting to what they call “the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of … an apartheid regime.”

“Google Inc.’s YouTube is in talks with several major studios — including Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. and Lionsgate — about streaming movies when the DVDs become available in rental stores and kiosks, according to sources familiar with the situation. The move represents a bold gambit for the entertainment giants, which have been cautious in embracing the Internet out of fear it would disrupt relationships with major retailers and undercut lucrative DVD sales.”

“A long, low building snaking around three sides of a garden, the hostel’s clean lines and white walls hark back to the work of early modernists such as Le Corbusier or JJP Oud. But then what should a homeless hostel look like anyway? Before Spring Gardens, the first purpose-built homeless hostel in Britain, it was a question no one needed to ask.”

“The Grammy Award-winning maestro, widely dubbed ‘The Prince of Pops,’ was diagnosed with liver, colon and pancreatic cancer earlier this year. But Kunzel maintained many of his conducting activities,” giving his final performance on Aug. 1. He made more than 85 recordings, which have collectively sold more than 10 million copies.

“How do you instill an appreciation for the arts in your kids, thereby enlarging their creative and critical-thinking skills while deepening their enjoyment of life? The question has added urgency at the moment. The statewide education budget crunch has prompted many cash-strapped schools to cut back on programs in music, theater, dance, photography, and the visual arts.”