According to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, bookstore sales declined 1.8% last year, to $15.92 billion.
Tag: 02.15.06
A Record Price For Turner?
Auction watchers are predicting a record price for a JWM Turner when it comes up for sale this week. “The Blue Rigi: Lake of Lucerne, Sunrise, is predicted to fetch more than £2m when it goes under the hammer at Christie’s auction house on 5 June. The current record for a Turner watercolour on paper is £2.04m, set in 2001 by Heidelberg with a Rainbow.”
Does St. Louis Museum Have Stolen Mask?
Allegations have surfaced that the St Louis Art Museum has an ancient Egyptian mask in its collection that was stolen from a warehouse in Saqqara, Egypt in the 1980s.
St. Louis Mask Has A History In Dispute
The St. Louis mask was the subject of accusations as recently as Jan. 19, when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s David Bonetti reported that a “one-time forger and art smuggler” named Michel Van Rijn claimed that the mask was stolen in the 1990s.
A Culture Of Celebrity Swag
“Originally conceived at the Academy Awards in 1989 as a way to thank actors for presenting awards at the Oscars, the gift basket has in recent years outgrown its origins to become a marketing juggernaut in its own right, in some cases all but overtaking the events themselves. Even celebrities seem somewhat mystified by the trend.”
British Dance, 2006 Edition
“Publicly supported British dance seems politically correct to a fault. There were dances for babies and for the elderly, for the fit and the disabled, for people of most every culture and color, for adult audiences and children, for trained dancers and everyday folk. There was no ballet and not much classical-music accompaniment. But there was modern dance (“contemporary dance,” in British parlance) of every kind. Contemporary dance here is strung between the poles of abstraction and ‘physical theater,’ which is so engrained as to seem almost old-fashioned.”
What Does Australian Culture Need?
“The answer to Australia’s cultural crisis under Howard, according to the artists and their academic handbags, is more money. Our money, of course, in the form of taxpayer-funded subsidies to the arts. But those calling for more money had better be careful what they wish for. By all means let’s start a debate on this issue, but that means, as a starting point, following where the money has gone over the past few years. And it’s not a pretty picture…”
Just The Music You Want To Buy
In Australia “Sanity Music, through its Sanity, HMV and Virgin stores, will introduce ‘music kiosks’ where customers can use touch screens and a vast digital library to order tracks and have the CD and packaging created on the spot.”
Paperbacks For The Price Of Postage
It’s a swapping scheme, whereby you list books to share, and in return choose books to read. “At PaperBackSwap.com, members list at least nine paperbacks, earning three credits. Credits allow them to search available titles and choose up to three. Senders pay the postage. They receive one credit for each book they mail, enabling them to order other titles. The website formats a mailing wrapper. The sender then prints out the wrapper, adds stamps, and mails the book.”
American Museum Collections In Peril
“A survey of 3,370 institutions by the nonprofit group Heritage Preservation found that some 612 million artifacts – from photographs and paintings to nature specimens and pottery – are at risk of deterioration because they aren’t cared for properly. Nearly 60 percent of institutions surveyed acknowledged that light has damaged their collections, while 53 percent said moisture caused problems. And 26 percent of those surveyed have no special controls in place to protect their collections from light, temperature, and humidity. Perhaps most strikingly, 80 percent of the institutions surveyed don’t pay anyone to preserve their collections.