Category: people

“Nick Enright, one of Australia’s leading playwrights, died yesterday. He was 52. A prolific writer for stage, film and television, he was also an actor, director and teacher.”

Kirk Varnedoe epitomized the “stereotype of the contemporary art world in all its unapproachable elan” while he was chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art. But Varendoe left one of the most prominent curatorships in the art world last year. Now he’s preparing for lectures, and being treated for inoperable cancer. “I always thought I’d make it through the Mellon Lectures. I always thought I’d be able to do that. But I just don’t make any predictions about six months from now.”

At the age of 60, Charles Saatchi is embarking on his most ambitious project yet. “Halfway between Tates Britain and Modern, he is opening a new gallery. At 40,000 sq ft, it is larger than any venue he has managed before. In it he will showcase his major trophies – Damien Hirst’s shark, Tracey Emin’s bed, Jake and Dinos Chapman’s vision of hell – and lots more. If he gets only a tenth of the 12 million people who walk along that stretch of river each year he will have increased his audience by 100 per cent. And, with an £8 a head entrance fee, the new gallery, which he has leased from a Japanese property company, could pay handsome dividends.”

Beth Gillin wonders why Hollywood was applauding Roman Polanski last week when he won an Oscar. “Wait a minute. Did they just give the Academy Award to a child molester? And why are the beautiful people giving him a standing ovation? For many watching the Oscars Sunday, it was an icky moment, marked by obscenely excessive applause. Polanski could not be there to pick up his gold statuette for directing The Pianist, because if he sets foot in this country, he’ll be handcuffed and hauled off to prison for up to 50 years.”

The weblogger known as “Salam Pax” has a lot of readers worried for him. “For months, the mysterious Blogger of Baghdad, whose pseudonym translates as ‘peace’ in Arabic and Latin – and who is suspected by some of being a secret agent or a hacker – had chronicled the minutiae of life in a city on the edge of war… On Friday, Pax – a gay man in a repressive society, an atheist in a Muslim land, a lover of democracy but a hater of war – filed a worried dispatch as he awaited the first shock-and-awe assault on the city he cherishes.” A short time later, the blog, one of the most widely-read on the web, went dark. So far, no one seems to know if Pax is dead or alive, free or imprisoned, or if he ever really existed at all.

By day Donna Leon writes detective novels – 12 so far – and succesful thrillers at that. Successful enough, anyway, to fund her true passion, running a baroque opera company. By night she runs an opera company, largely funded from her life of crime. Not many of her readers know this, but it won’t surprise them. Opera seeps into her books – their plots, their atmosphere – like dripping blood. Each one comes prefaced by a few lines of Mozartian libretto – usually from Cosi fan tutte, which for some reason seems to lend itself to the mechanics of murder-mystery even though it’s an opera in which no one actually dies.”

Alberto Vilar, the philanthropist and opera-lover who has donated more than $300 million to arts organizations around the world, has missed mortgage payments on three vacation homes in Colorado, and local banks are foreclosing. Vilar, who was one of the first investors on the high-tech bandwagon of the 1990s, appears not to have gotten off in time to avoid heavy investment losses. In recent months, he has missed payments to several arts organizations to which he had pledges outstanding, and the current overdue mortgage payments reportedly total $2.74 million. Vilar is said to be furious with the banks’ decision to foreclose.

Adrian Mills, who was brought in last year to revamp the CBC’s programming, has resigned from the public broadcaster. “Mills’ departure was described by one observer as ‘reassuring,’ and it will certainly be applauded by those listeners who became disgruntled with CBC Radio’s dramatic changes under his leadership.” Mills had said his mandate was to go after a “younger, more diverse, audience. ‘Canada is changing, and society has changed, so CBC Radio needs to make sure it is as relevant to future generations as it was to previous ones.”

Harvey Weinstein is not a popular man in Hollywood. The Miramax cheif is known far and wide in the industry for being completely ruthless, infuriatingly single-minded, and unconcerned with such niceties as rules and taboos. He has been accused of trading favors and even cash for Oscar votes, but no one can deny that the strategy has worked. However, some in the business contend that Weinstein’s constant overreaching and bullying PR campains on behalf of mediocre flicks are costing his studio’s best films the recognition they deserve.

Collector and professional recluse Charles Saatchi will open a spectacular new public home for his vast collection of contemporary British art later this year, and early indications are that it will immediately become one of the UK’s hottest art destinations. Its proximity to the Tate Modern is also sparking rumors of a not-so-friendly rivalry. But for every visitor who comes for the art, another will come to see if the gallery holds any revelations about the gruff and mysterious Saatchi himself.