Power To The Pub Lady

Sandra Esquilant’s East End London pub has been a gathering place for a generation of BritArt conceptual artists. Now, “for her role as a homely mother confessor to the angry generation of British conceptual artists, has won the improbable reward of 80th place in a list of the 100 most powerful figures in contemporary art.”

Most Powerful List Short On Artists

Who are the most powerful people in the artworld? ArtReview Magazine names them, but there are very few artists on the list. So who makes it? Mostly “collectors, businessmen, a pub landlady… The top 10 “list includes just one artist, German painter Gerhard Richter, with the rest mainly coming from the business sector. Advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi heads the list, which is chosen by critics, dealers and other experts, for his contribution to the British art scene.”

My Fair Box Office

London’s National Theatre began the year with a £626,000 debt, which it hoped to eliminate by next March. But thanks to the commercial box office success of My Fair Lady, the theatre popped into the black last March, about a year early. But, the theatre warns, financial prospects for the next season look less certain than usual.

Exit Smiling

Trevor Nunn leaves the National with a record of success As director, he introduced many new plays, generated lots of buzzand even…gasp.. made some money with high-profile commercial prouctions…Still, there were those pesky critics who refused to leave him alone.

Police Bust Pirate Ring

Police bust a New York-area pirate CD operation which turned out 10,000 bootlegged CD’s a week. The operation was run out of a strip mall, and the family, (with mob ties) “sold rows of the CD’s at the store and also delivered about $50,000 of pirated goods each month to various sites in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, making about $2.5 million a year in profits.

Power To The Pub Lady

Sandra Esquilant’s East End London pub has been a gathering place for a generation of BritArt conceptual artists. Now, “for her role as a homely mother confessor to the angry generation of British conceptual artists, has won the improbable reward of 80th place in a list of the 100 most powerful figures in contemporary art.”

The Case For Deregulating Media Ownership

Americans have access to so much information, some experts believe that corporate consolidation of ownership isn’t a problem. “With all this in mind, the F.C.C. is considering sweeping away or greatly relaxing rules that limit how many television stations a company can own nationwide; that bar companies from owning a major television station and newspaper in the same town; and that limit the number of radio and television stations that companies can own in one market.”

FBI Tracked Greene

For 40 years, the FBI had author Graham Greene under surveillance, according to documents recently obtained by The Guardian newspaper. US officials went to “extraordinary lengths” to track Greene, believing he was anti-American. ” ‘Unsurprisingly, Greene’s views on the United States government policies and actions are not flattering,’ a cable to Washington said after the novelist gave an interview about Latin America in 1984.”