“A rare copy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet failed to sell on Wednesday because no one was willing to pay the minimum price set by the seller’s estate. Christie’s had estimated the 1611 edition of the classic tragedy — the last such copy in private hands — would fetch $1.5 million to $2 million.”
Tag: 04.15.04
Broadway Producers: Actors Should Make Less For Road Tours
Broadway producers have proposed to actors that they lower their pay in national touring companies. “Over the last several years, the road has changed dramatically. Today, low-cost non-Equity and nonunion touring companies and alternatives to theatre such as ‘Riverdance,’ etc. are everywhere. This competition has meant fewer opportunities for us, league producers, to produce. That’s why there are fewer jobs and fewer workweeks for Equity members. If we cannot produce, you cannot work.”
How Will LA Make A Downtown That Works?
Civic boosters for years have been trying to transform Grand Street downtown into a proper city center. Yet another plan as emerged – this one to cost $1.3 billion. Will it succeed? “Paris has its Champs Élysées. New York has its Rockefeller Center, Times Square and Central Park. Now, Los Angeles will have at its center a grand boulevard and urban park.”
Brooklyn Museum’s New Face To The World
The Brooklyn Museum’s $63 million makeover goes far in redefining the museum’s face to the world, write Ariella Budick and Justin Davidson. “Its new face represents not just an institutional rebirth but also a full- blown Brooklyn Renaissance.”
Kara Walker Wins Smithsonian Art Prize
“The Smithsonian American Art Museum will announce today that New Yorker Kara Walker has won its annual Lucelia Artist Award, worth $25,000. Walker, one of the country’s most prominent African American artists, is best known for taking the genteel medium of the Enlightenment silhouette and enlarging it to wall size, then using it to convey surreal images of the antebellum South.” The result is frequently shocking and controversial imagery conveyed in the normally soothing medium of silhouette, making Walker’s art a fascinating reflection of America’s shadowy history of race relations.
Progress vs. Public
In France, the peculiar type of civic modernization often referred to as “progress” by politicians is frequently met with anything from skepticism to outright hostility, and the construction of a huge new bridge over the Tarn River is the latest battleground. “The project is paradoxical. Nobody can dispute that it is going to be one of the most beautiful bridges in the world… But the bridge will do much more than lop two hours off the journey from Paris to the southwest coast. It is proof that in one of the most centralized countries in Europe, a bureaucrat in Paris can draw a line on a map and, at a stroke, bypass any local objections.”
Shaking Up Canada’s Canonical Publisher
“Venerable Canadian publishing company McClelland & Stewart is shaking off its dust jackets with the announcement that Doug Pepper will replace Douglas Gibson as the company’s new publisher and president, effective May 31. Gibson, who became publisher of M&S in 1988 and president in 2000 will continue to work at M&S, returning to oversee the imprint Douglas Gibson Books, which he founded in 1986, on a full-time basis… Founded in 1906, M&S’s catalogue is often viewed as the canon of Canadian literature with a list of authors that includes Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro and Guy Vanderhaeghe, many of whom came to international prominence during Gibson’s tenure.”
Banff TV Fund Files For Bankruptcy
One of Canada’s most venerable arts institutions is in an unexpected financial crisis. The Banff Television Foundation yesterday “confirmed that the 33-person operation, cash-strapped and burdened with debt, sought protection yesterday from its creditors in a Calgary court. The organization mounts cultural events such as the 25-year-old Banff Television Festival.” Officially, the foundation is blaming the SARS epidemic and the war in Iraq for much of its fiscal decline, but sources inside the organization are whispering that a pattern of mismanagement is the real culprit.
The Real Underground Art Movement
Most people wouldn’t think of a subway car as artistic inspiration, but apparently, there are more than a few individuals who do. “It turns out that New York’s subways have long been associated with art, and have themselves even been considered art, ever since the first IRT train rolled down the tracks in 1904.” From the subway’s original turnstiles to long-forgotten ads exhorting the public to use the service, to the stations themselves (no, not all of them,) art is everywhere in the New York underground, if you can just see through the grime.
A Dictionary For The Clueless And Uncreative
Everyone hates cliches, but no one does anything about them. In fact, at the end of the day, most of us would have to admit, with all due respect, that we are driven round the bend on a daily basis by friends and co-workers who can’t stop tossing out overused metaphors and meaningless catchphrases. So what to do? Run right out and pick yourself up a copy of “The Dimwit’s Dictionary,” a compendium of 5,000 of the worst abuses of the English language, as well as reasonable alternatives for the more overused and irritating entries, all authored by the man who wrote the book on tired expressions. The tome may be a work in progress, but it’s almost sure to be an overnight success with language geeks.