Category: today’s top story

“For Amazon, books are a business, and the more hegemony it exerts over the market, the better off it is. For the culture, though, books and information serve as a collective soul, a memory bank, something bigger than mere commerce that shouldn’t be merely bought and sold. Because of that, it’s not the incidents themselves but their ramifications that are disturbing, the idea that Amazon can effectively alter the collective memory at will.”

“Over a career of nearly seven decades, Mr. Cunningham went on posing ‘But’ and ‘What if?’ questions, making people rethink the essence of dance and choreography. He went on doing so almost to the last. … Even when it became known that he was fading, and friends began coming to bid farewell to him in recent days, he told one colleague that he was still creating dances in his head.”

The 200+ pieces of the Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection – including works by Kandinsky, Nolde and Kirchner, among others – have been acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond through a gift-purchase agreement.

The layoffs of 11 corps members of New York City Ballet “have produced a complicated set of responses among these dancers, who, since childhood, have endured grueling hours of cloistered study to achieve a remarkable level of artistry, a position at the pinnacle of the ballet world and then, suddenly, unemployment: anger mixed with grief but also a sense of new possibility and youthful optimism.”

“Funding of some of the most prestigious cultural grand projects in Britain is in jeopardy because a £100m black hole has been discovered in the budgets of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Whitehall sources disclosed tonight.”

“If the investment goal of arts endowments is the preservation of capital, how can they now face decreases of 35%, aside from the criminal actions of investors like Bernard Madoff? For the answer, look to nonprofit money managers and ‘managers of managers,'” which “have encouraged arts organizations to seek ‘total returns,’ including capital appreciation, from their endowments, rather than merely preserving capital and accruing dividend income.”

“Amid growing rumors about the Prince Music Theater’s ability to continue operating – and a remark from its stage Monday night that indicated it would be closing – its producing director, Marjorie Samoff, says that the Center City theater plans a 2009-10 season that includes its annual renters plus at least three productions the Prince will mount.”

“For many decades, the courts let the Post Office decide which books people could read; then, suddenly, they didn’t.” Fifty years ago today, the publisher of Grove Press won a lawsuit against the Post Office, which had confiscated copies of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” The novel “had long been banned for its graphic sex scenes,” and the ruling set off “an explosion of free speech.”

“Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. That’s an awesome power, and Amazon’s justification in this instance is beside the point. As our media libraries get converted to 1’s and 0’s, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections. .. I’ve predicted the Kindle is the future of publishing. Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too.”

“Live music is fast disappearing from pubs, clubs, wine bars, restaurants and other small venues, musicians claim, because of a law passed in 2003, when the Government was trying to eliminate teenage violence that they associated with badly organised music events.”