Who are the 50 people who make Chicago a great literary place? NewCityChicago made a list: “On this year’s list we have a living legend, the Nobel Prize winner for literature, a literary card shark, last year’s publishing Cinderella story, rock ‘n’ roll poets, Hef’s chronicler and more.”
Tag: 06.02.04
Crunch Time For Miami PAC
The overdue, over-budget Miami-Dade Performing Arts Center is at a flashpoint this week, as county officials are demanding a final cost estimate from the PAC’s designers and builders. “The builder’s contract with the county calls for the center to cost $254.6 million, but the builder has asked for $47 million more and estimates that its final extra costs could run as high as $61 million, the county said. The architect’s contract is for $25.35 million; it wants more, but won’t say how much. County Manager George Burgess vows to hold the line. The county has offered the builder an additional $8.9 million, rejected $26 million and is negotiating over the rest.”
Crisis In Harlem
From an artistic standpoint, Dance Theatre of Harlem has never been stronger. But behind the scenes, the company “is in financial tatters. It is $2.5 million in debt. The staff was laid off in March. The board of directors has dwindled to two members aside from company co-founder and artistic director Arthur Mitchell.” Mitchell is preparing to step aside at the board’s request, and is reportedly close to hiring British socialite and arts patron Janet Boateng to run the company, a controversial move, since Boateng “appears to have no previous history of turning around a troubled arts entity.”
Concern About Culture At WTC Site
“Last June, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation invited arts groups worldwide to submit proposals for a museum and a performing arts center planned for ground zero. Since September, the corporation — together with the city and state — has been evaluating the 113 responses. It was expected to announce its selections in April, but the decision has been delayed, in part by the difficulty of finding a chairman of the foundation charged with raising $600 million for the cultural buildings and a memorial.” Critics are unhappy with the lack of transparency in the process. “Unfortunately, residents, arts sector leaders, artists and local elected officials have had little or no direct say in any of these decisions so far, and that does not bode well for a successful memorial/cultural fundraising campaign.”
Recording Companies To Limit CD Copies?
The recording industry is testing technology that would restrict backup copies made from CD’s. “Tools under review by the major labels would limit the number of backups that could be made from ordinary compact discs and prevent copied, or “burned,” versions from being used to create further copies, according to Macrovision and SunnComm International, rivals that are developing competing versions of the digital rights management (DRM) software.”
The Asperger’s Connection
Michelangelo is the latest historical figure to be diagnosed posthumously with Asperger’s Syndrome. It’s conjecture, of course, but “what is the link between this condition and creativity, be it in the arts or sciences?” Some experts suggest that it makes people more creative. “People with it are generally hyper-focused, very persistent workaholics who tend to see things from detail to global rather than looking at the bigger picture first and then working backwards, as most people do.”
In UK: A Ratings System For TV?
The UK TV regulator Ofcom is suggesting it may be time to implement a ratings system for TV. “People want to know what a programme contains, such as bad language, sex and violence, and that is something very much appreciated by parents.”
When Good Readings Go Wrong
The author reading seems perilously ripe for disaster. Why? “The world of letters” seems “to offer a near perfect microclimate for embarrassment and shame …. Something about the presentation of deeply private thoughts—carefully worked and honed into art over the years—to a public audience of strangers … strays perilously close to tragedy.”
Is James Wood Our Geatest Critic?
“Mr. Wood is recklessly committed to literature (if he weren’t so flexible, I’d be tempted to call him a fanatic), and brave enough to risk ridicule by pushing every thought to the limit. Caution doesn’t enter into the calculation: He shows us, candidly—in prose overcrowded with metaphor, prose that palpably yearns for maximum expression—how his head and heart respond to what he reads (which is just about everything). He’s growing before our eyes. It’s perhaps his most impressive quality.”
Libeskind’s WTC Fee Dispute
World Trade Center site developer Larry Silverstein is in a bitter argument with Daniel Libeskind over fees the Libeskind firm says it is owed. “Even assuming that the Libeskinds do manage to come to terms with Mr. Silverstein before July 4, the episode has the potential to leave a bad taste in the mouths of Mr. Silverstein’s landlord at the World Trade Center, the Port Authority, which is in the process of evaluating whether or not to allow Mr. Silverstein to develop the rest of the buildings planned for the site.”