“Word on the street is that the Honolulu Symphony Society is considering changing its Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Chapter 7. The difference is that Chapter 11 involves reorganization, and Chapter 7 means going out of business.”
Category: today’s top story
San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum Fights For Financial Survival
“The Asian Art Museum here is facing a financial crisis, the latest–and one of the largest–in a string of museums to suffer from problems amid the weak economy.”
New Google Deal With French Publisher Could Break Google Books Stalemate
“A new agreement between Hachette Livre and Google could offer a way forward in the ongoing dispute between authors, publishers and the search engine over the digitising of out-of-print books.”
Are Women Artists Finally Getting Their Due?
“A picture is emerging of not just historical, but persistent discrimination against women in the art world. A slew of recent museum exhibitions aims to fill in the blanks.”
L.A. Phil to Premiere Lost Shostakovich Stage Work
“The surviving prologue of [Orango,] an unfinished, long-lost opera by Dmitri Shostakovich[,] will have its world premiere in December 2011 in a semi-staged production at Walt Disney Concert Hall, capping a multi-year process of musical sleuthing and improbable discoveries that’s nearly as eye-opening as the work’s bizarre subject matter.”
How Apple Finally Got the Beatles Catalog for iTunes
“After years of litigation and ill will, it took two men just a couple of hours to hammer out the basic terms that would finally bring the Beatles’ music to the iTunes Store.”
2010’s Word of the Year: ‘Refudiate’
“Refudiate has been named the New Oxford American Dictionary‘s 2010 Word of the Year! Now, does that mean that ‘refudiate’ has been added to the New Oxford American Dictionary? No it does not.”
Boston’s Museum Of Fine Arts Opens Ambitious New Wing
“The biggest news about the MFA’s new Art of the Americas Wing is the name. The museum could have called it the American Wing (up until relatively recently, in fact, it planned to). But it chose not to.”
Dino De Laurentiis, 91, ‘The Last Emperor of Hollywood Producers’
“A consummate showman whose epic career belongs to a bygone era of Hollywood grandeur, De Laurentiis produced more than 160 films” – from La Strada and War and Peace to Barbarella and Conan the Barbarian to Serpico and Ragtime to Dune and Blue Velvet.
A Writer Chronicles His Loss of All Language
“For art critic Tom Lubbock, language has been his life and his livelihood. But in 2008, he developed a lethal brain tumour and was told he would slowly lose control over speech and writing. This is his account of what happens when words slip away.”