Monet’s Sketchy Story

A new exhibit at a Massachusetts gallery purports to show that Monet was not “the anti-draftsman he led the public to believe, and that he relied on drawing both to prepare for his paintings and as an independent form of expression… Although Monet helped perpetrate the myth that he did not, and maybe even could not, draw, nearly 500 of more than 2,500 works mentioned in his catalogue raisonné are sketchbooks, drawings and pastels. Yet, until now, few scholars have paid much attention to them.”

The Future Of TV?

“Somewhere between amazing greatness and raving geek fantasies of world domination lives the Venice Project,” an ambitious collaboration aiming to combine the best of television and the internet. “Free to viewers who download the player app. Friendly to content owners, thanks to industrial-strength encryption. Delightful to advertisers, adding pinpoint targeting to their all-time favorite medium. Everyone’s a winner!” Of course, it’s never actually that simple…

Location, Location, Location

Several Boston-based classical music organizations have begun to offer performances at pubs and nightclubs, in an effort to broaden their reach beyond the traditional concert hall audience. “It’s not a pops concert; it’s just a popular location. And it’s more intimate, in every way.”

LA’s ‘Literary Oasis’ May Dry Up

A landmark independent bookstore is facing possible closure in Los Angeles because its landlord wants to redevelop the site to take advantage of a surge in real estate prices. “In a neighborhood where median housing prices approach $2 million, neighbors fear the loss of a quirky, laid-back community gathering spot. But a reckoning between the burgeoning Westside real estate marketplace and this rambling, anachronistic store seems inevitable.”

NY Rejects A Norman Foster Building

“The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission resoundingly rejected a proposal yesterday to build a 30-story glass tower designed by Norman Foster atop a 1949 building on Madison Avenue. The decision was a major victory for a coalition of Upper East Side residents who argued that the tower would rend the fabric of their historic neighborhood.”