MAN: Taking Issue With A Collectors Group

AJBlogger Tyler Green agrees with Blake Gopnik that Washington DC needs a contemporary art center. But he takes issue with an idea floated by Gopnik for a local collectors’ collective. “Here are a couple problems with Gopnik’s idea: The art world is global, moreso now than ever, and his idea is based on a narrow, artificial, regionalist construct. Furthermore, Gopnik’s idea has nothing to do with art and everything to do with the mere geography of amalgamation. When the art world is becoming more interconnected, when group shows at even medium-sized institutions are filled with loans from two or three continents, why would we want something that is so internal, narrow and exclusionary?”

Miramax Downsizes

Miramax has cut 13 percent of its employees. “The company said it is laying off 65 staffers because it had too large a staff given that its output has shrunk. This is not a reflection on anyone’s performance, it was simply an effort to bring our staff levels in line with a smaller release slate’.”

Study: AM Radio Causes Cancer

A new Korean study finds that “regions near AM radio-broadcasting towers had 70 percent more leukemia deaths than those without. The study also found that cancer deaths were 29 percent higher near such transmitters. Two years ago an Italian study found death rates from leukemia increased dramatically for residents living within two miles of Vatican Radio’s powerful array of transmitters in Rome.”

Policeman Damages Royal Painting

A police officer at St. James’s Palace has damaged a painting. “The work, by a minor 19th century artist, was worth £1m before the incident. The officer was standing on a chair closing a window when he fell and damaged the painting. A Scotland Yard spokesman confirmed the incident but said no action would be taken as it was an accident”.

Keeping City Ballet In Saratoga

Saratoga, New York is struggling to keep the New York City Ballet in summer residence. Ticket sales were up this summer, but not nearly enough. “What are we going to say when we kick them out of our town – ‘Come to Saratoga Springs, population 28,000, we used to be the summer home of City Ballet? We are concerned until we have in writing that City Ballet will be welcomed back at SPAC for many years to come. Anything less than a long-term residency here is unacceptable.”

Omnivore In The Flesh

Lawrence Weschler is working on starting a new serious thoughtful non-fiction magazine – Omnivore. In the meantime, he talks about his ideals. “What he longs for is a return to the “non-Pavlovian” reading and writing experiences he enjoyed when he would come across a two-part, 40,000-word piece on surfing, say, and be swept away by the dynamic drive of the narrative, an experience that he could relive around the dinner table the following weekend because his friends would have exulted in the same article. As a writer, he mourns the cherished experiences under the halcyon days, for him anyway, when William Shawn edited The New Yorker.”

Where’s The “There” There?

Is “place” important to novels anymore? A group of Canadian literary types sit down to debate the question: “The commodification of place is so prevalent that even non-fiction writers, such as Pico Iyer, have based their careers on it. Read between his clever phrases and glib descriptions of a city in Bolivia or a Toronto street and his point is almost always the same: We’re living in a global village now and there’s no “there” anymore.”